ellistruss

We have so many Rattlesnakes is the desert and mountain areas of Southern California that my walking stick is a snake beater first than an aid to walking second. I started with just a old 7 iron golf club but now I use a ski pole that I've had for years. Cache hiders in the San Bernardino Mountains place the finds behind rocks and deep into rock holes or into a tree stump, so we use our hole as a who is in there test. We see a snake just about everytime we go out caching. Jim Ellis, EllisTruss, Hesperia, California

I'm placing this comment to see what my member ID could be to make it easier to transfer logs to GSAK. Sorry for the inconvience.

I was very curious how the power cachers get such big numbers so I went out with three people who had almost 30,000 finds between them. They were ORGANIZED. They knew the EXACT route from cache to cache. They even had the potty break locations marked on the maps. They knew exactly after which find they would take a break for lunch. The numbers where only 40 for the day I was with the group. The first reason was we traveled about 1 1/2 to 2 miles between each find because the group had already found most the area's caches the year before so we skipped 5 or 6 caches just to go on to the next totally unfound cache. Not one person used a PDA and this was amazing to me. The work was done the night before and printed out on a master sheet, with each person getting a copy. On the master sheet was everything we needed to know as per coords, size, diff, container type and past logs. After we found a cache, labels were out immediately and off we went. Garmin maps were used to head us to the next hide. The gentlemen riding shotgun also was using his Garmin with maps to just double check the direction and maybe throw in his two cents about maybe a better avenue for the next find. Everything was reported in a professional manner. If the log was wet, it was noted. If the container leaked we noted. Each and every find was given it's own report, not just a copy and paste. We averaged about 7 finds per hour. The total could have gone up to 8 to 9 an hour if as mentioned we didn't travel so far in between finds. Also, it didn't take long to find the hides. Remember this group had seen it all. We were all using the 7 minute rule. Gone in 7 minutes regardless. We had 1 DNF for the day as we reported, but there had been 4 DNF's on the same hide before we arrived. Finally, we did have FUN. I enjoyed the group. I still remember each and every find. Detail after detail. Three days ago I seen pretty much the same group at a Convergence and asked how they did.......75 for the day. They never set there GPS's to nearest. They already know the next, and next, and next, and next.