Clurichaun

26/12/2013 By Kabutroid
Bit late on logging this one unfortunately. But then, the general craziness and overall insanity of the holiday season and new year tend to make things rather chaotic at the best of times. That said, this was my final cache find of 2013 (and given the minus kajillion temperatures outside, will probably be my only one for a bit).

I’ve been meaning to find this one for a long, long time now (or at least since it was placed... if that qualifies as a long, long time) since it is one of the closest caches to where I live. However, I’ve been in a bit of a caching slump for the past year or so (and arguably a generic slump, from which I’ve been slowly pulling myself out of for the past month or so). But... at long last, I’m able to knock this ridiculously close waypoint off of my to-do list. There’s still one that’s literally across the street from my apartment, but that one for the time being can remain hidden... wherever one can hide something around a bus shelter... for the time being. But at least the second-closest is finally found.

I went after this one during one of my snowshoeing ventures. I had some reservations about going after it at this time of year, if not due to the complete lack of leaves on the trees or biting cold, then for the fact that I would be leaving fairly distinct, easy to follow tracks. However, I figured I’d cross that bridge once I got to the area and assessed the situation better.

Cut to about an hour and a half later. Much snowshoeing (and a hammocking... see attached pic) later, and I eventually found my way close to ground zero. Before approaching the area, I assessed just how troublesome it would be to get to, and how obvious I would look going after it. However, since it was minus a billion out (in actuality, it was pretty decent... probably only -25 after the windchill), there was a rare jogger or dog walker going by, but those were far and few between. It was also pushing towards late afternoon, so that dropped the pedestrian population as well. In regards to the geotrails in the snow... I decided I could limit that by essentially flooding the area in prints, weaving just about everywhere and anywhere in the area. I started by circling the general area, moreso to find the best way ‘into’ the bushes. After that, I walked back and forth a little bit between the trees and bushes, having a general look at the area, seeing if I could spot anything. After poking around here and there, I soon spotted what had to be the cache container.

Or at least most of the cache container. I will be emailing the cache owner with a pic of what I found just in case I need to change this to a ‘note’ instead. The container which, in my mind, couldn’t be anything except a cache container lacked a lid, and was thus empty. I poked around on the ground to see if I could find if it slipped off due to the cold, but wasn’t able to locate anything in the snow. Scrounging around in my pockets (I didn’t have my full geocaching kit with me), I found a ziplock bag (freezer-bag quality to boot... a happy coincidence), slipped a signed piece of paper and micromail ball into it, and placed that into the cache container. It held itself inside pretty well, so hopefully it won’t fall out. I replaced the cache container as found, and after wandering around a bit more to completely inundate the area with footprints, headed out and made my way towards home. I was getting cold, starting to feel conspicuous (moreso), and was just about ready to warm up at home.

Thanks for the cache! It’s always nice to be able to go after something while snowshoeing BigSmile . Now if only I can tackle that bus-stop one beside my apartment, I can sleep easily again ToungeOut .

Took: Nothing
Left: Ziplock freezer bag, logbook entry, and micromail ball.