28/12/2009 By Kabutroid
Looks like I was the first one this year to take the "easy" route to finding this geocache... snowshoes 
. Aaaand, looking back at the previous logs, it seems as though this cache was only placed in mid to late 2009, making me the first person entirely to take the easy route.
Wow, does that make me sound kinda lame .
However, to add to the 'firsts', this was also the first cache that I've snowshoed to. I purchased my first pair of snowshoes (the ridiculously old beavertail type ones at my grandmas place from childhood not counting in this... but obviously that was where my love of snowshoeing began) in late November, hoping to use them as soon as possible. Well, Murphy's Law had something to say about that, so naturally we had arguably one of the warmest, least-snowy Novembers recorded... or at least since I was born. Damn you Mother Nature... damn you to hell.
And of course, to add to the frustration, most of December followed suite. So... towards the end of December, I took my snowshoes for their first test-run... in a dismal 2 inches of powdery snow at my mom's place, somewhere just prior to Christmas . Thankfully however, winter decided to FINALLY give in, and dump a truckload of snow on Manitoba shortly thereafter, and I got to get some action in. MAN, do I love it 
.
So with a new means of getting through the snow (which is still fairly shallow, but enough at least to not look insane while wearing snowshoes), I decided to take them out to Assiniboine park and get some caching in. I vaguely, vaguely remember thinking about this cache when it first came out, and figured I'd have to do it in winter. As it turns out, I was right . Although, walking over the river was quite interesting, since the ice was VERY broken up with jagged shards of ice poking up all over the place. Must have broken up after the first freezing, then re-froze. Looks like the giant ice-ring at the Forks is going to have to get significantly smaller this year.
I proceeded to amuse myself by smashing some of said shards with my hiking stick .
Once at the island, it took me a bit to find the cache. The description of the cache container is a tad misleading, but after I ended up having to circle around the island, I found my way back to where I was first standing, and spotted the cache... of which I have no clue how I missed it the first time . SUCCESS! Both of these island caches are complete . One chainmail ball and a logbook signing later (although, seeing as how noone else has found this since the river froze, I now understand how there were so few logbook entries), and I closed up the cache and headed out from whence I came. Walking over the surface of the river.
Thanks for the awesome island cache, even though I had to wimp out and do it the easy way .
Took: Nothing
Left: Logbook entry, Lone Ranger TB, and chainmail ball
Lego Island
| Difficulty: 
| Terrain: 
