Hello Spring and TLI adventure

GC11P3C -Hello Spring

GCT5ZC - TLI William Blore

So the videos may not make it up for a bit, we're having some firewire trouble with the camera, but we have some amazing footage that I cannot wait to show you guys. However for now I do have the pics posted, and I don't want to wait any longer to tell you of our ridiculous adventure last Saturday! This day actually started with us planning to get three caches, with "just add ice" (GC23FWT) as our main target. We never actually made it to "Just add Ice." Our goal was to find a five star terrain, but in the end, we took a couple 2 - 3 star terrains, and made them six stars. It was intense.

So I got a topographic map of the area, but it wasn't a very good one. It didn't work to well though because I took a guess at what the contour line scale was and was off. A hill that I thought might have been 15 - 20 meters high was between 50 and 60. Ben kept telling me the terrain wasn't that bad, but I could at least tell from the contours that it wasn't going to be easy terrain. But to have it 3 times worse than I thought was just crazy!

Again we could have taken a much easier way, but we wanted to hike, and in the fall all the trees were beautiful! We did quite a bit of bushwhacking for the first bit. When we came to the first river I knew there was a problem. For those of you who follow our posts, you know this isn't the first time we've come across a river. Although that river we were led to unintentionally (from ben's navigation mishaps), these ones we knew were on the path, and we were mostly prepared for them. We knew we just needed to find a way across. This first river however, was about 20 meters wider than expected. Looking back, I should of been able to tell that this river is about 30 meters wide from the map, but I just didn't think anything of it.

It was early in the morning, and it was fall ,which meant that the scenery was beautiful; but it was cold. If the air was as cold as it was, the water was going to be freezing! And it was. Nimoy was too afraid of the water. He jumped in, but would never go away from the shore. So I had to carry him. BBB went across first, and let us know that it was very cold, and very deep towards the other shore. Carrying Nimoy really threw off my balance, but I eventually made it across. Ben got some good video (again sorry about the wait, it will be up!) and then he came across.

The second river was after a hill that was 3 times bigger than I thought from our map, and quite the hike. The cache was also across the river, even though our map and geocaching.com show it clearly to be before the river. that was exhausting. But nonetheless we had to cross another river. this river wasn't so bad though. It still wasn't easy, but it was easier than the first. After BBB fell in trying to get across we threw him all of our stuff, and he video taped us getting across. I lost count at how many times Ben fell in this river (at least three), but Nimoy probably had the most fun getting across these rivers. He refused to go in the water (it was rough anyways) and I couldn't hold him for this one because I needed my arms for balance. So we put him in a backpack and I tossed him to BBB. Good thing he is so good natured; He just went along with it and was happy to be across.

Across the river was "Hello Spring." BBB had already found the cache while he was waiting for us to get across, but we still went to go look at it and sign the log book. I really like the caches that are in ammo cans, they make great caches. And this cache was in such a gorgeous spot! It was amazing. I liked just sitting there looking at the river. The fall was so beautiful. We dropped off our trackable, and were able to continue on our way.

There were lots of people around, however we really had no idea where we were. I had no idea that we had stumble across a conservation area. It makes me feel better that our actual bushwhacking was limited, and that most of our time was spent on trails. Most were not official trails, but at least we weren't trampling wild flowers. We really figured out that we were in a park because as we came up to our second cache and we searching for it, and woman came up and said "I know what you're looking for. You're close!" She was a parks and rec employee. She was also very into geocaching, so it was cool to meet her. She explained to us about the conservation (we decided to not mention that we had no idea we were in a conservation area, I just thought rouge park was a regular park...). She told us that the trail we came up was an unofficial trail and that they prefer we don't use it (oops). She was very nice about it though, it was an honest mistake. Even if we did realize that it wasn't a regular park but a conservation area, it looked like a legitimate path so we thought nothing of it. We were happy to know though, and we made sure we stuck to real paths after that.

After that we had a long walk out. We were far from our starting point, we had walked for almost 4 hours, and we were hungry. The entire time walking out I wasn't totally sure of our location, but we just kept walking. We knew a familiar road had to come up somewhere. When we finally got out we were tired, and ready too sleep. I hope soon enough I will at least have the raw footage if not the edited video of our adventure. For now you can amuse yourself with our pics, and keep checking back!!

Later!!!

Sampson028