Injuries Or Accidents While Geocaching?

[+MNTA]

Was searching for a cache once and heard my dog yelp. Almost immediately felt a sting to my leg. I could not react fast enough and one of the wasps followed me running to my car .25 miles away, and I don't ever run, Well got hit 12 times and heard 3 yelps from my dog. Benadryl was our friend that evening (got appropriate dosage from his veterinarian mom) sound and early sleep that night.  

 

After the next searcher got hit, CO moved the cache.

[+Gill & Tony]

Day 1 of a one-week tour of the Southern NSW Silo Art Trail with our granddaughter.  We stopped on the side of the road and climbed a grass embankment to look for a cache.  Hidden in the grass was a hub cap.  Gill stepped on it, it slid away and she fell face down inches from a barbed-wire fence.  No damage from the barbed wire, but she fell awkwardly and broke her wrist. 

[+EthisEthat]

Stepped in the long grass while trying to find a park and grab on the side of a minor road when there was a pretty bad pain in my foot. Felt like some sort of sting and since I live in Australia, rushed to the doctors which was nearby to see the problem. Arrived and soon had the conclusions that it was probably some kind of sting insect but I would be fine, and all I had to deal with was some pain and swelling. Overall, not that bad...

 

https://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LUID=7981d79d-5ed0-4204-a239-237ed71a8a38

 

Another one that comes to mind was me disturbing a wasp nest next to an abandoned train track. Some others include:

Lots of awkward stacks involving the bike on the way to caches

Getting swooped by magpies at GZ

ALMOST falling off the side of a rock face while trying to reach a cache

Slipping while rock hopping to a island in the sea, falling into a separation in the rock and almost drowning as well as pulling a muscle

Those are the ones that come to mind, never broken any bones and all of them were minor injuries 

[+Gill & Tony]

33 minutes ago, EthisEthat said:

Stepped in the long grass while trying to find a park and grab on the side of a minor road when there was a pretty bad pain in my foot. Felt like some sort of sting and since I live in Australia, rushed to the doctors which was nearby to see the problem. Arrived and soon had the conclusions that it was probably some kind of sting insect but I would be fine, and all I had to deal with was some pain and swelling. Overall, not that bad...

 

https://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LUID=7981d79d-5ed0-4204-a239-237ed71a8a38

 

Strange coincidence.  That was the first cache that we found at the start of our trip.  It was the second one where Gill fell.

[+terratin]

Ah yes, I have a new one!

Rain, cycling around, stop for a cache which seems to be on a fence in the middle of a cattle grid (well, on both sides of it). I very carefully walk over, still slip because rain and cattle grid is a poor combination, somehow end up with one foot between bars and fall on my nose. And then realize that my foot went in, but would not go out. So took shoe off, squeezed foot out, squeezed shoes out, cursed thoroughly. Gave up on the cache. The bruises are amazing though!

[+jaysonC]

I've had minimal injuries so far but some near misses. Most notably, while heading up to GC43 - the oldest cache in Europe - I took a bit of a scenic (read: dodgy) route up to GZ, and fell several times with the rocks, leapt a wall and slipped, scratched up my hands and legs in the process, and then got stung by nettles as I got back down to the track. I'm lucky I didn't fall farther or hurt myself worse as the hill face was quite steep. 

[+terratin]

1 hour ago, jaysonC said:

I've had minimal injuries so far but some near misses. Most notably, while heading up to GC43 - the oldest cache in Europe - I took a bit of a scenic (read: dodgy) route up to GZ, and fell several times with the rocks, leapt a wall and slipped, scratched up my hands and legs in the process, and then got stung by nettles as I got back down to the track. I'm lucky I didn't fall farther or hurt myself worse as the hill face was quite steep. 

When you mentioned gc43 I thought you'd come down from the top I scrambled up after doing this cache for a Wherigo. Don't recommend, especially not when the vegetation is higher than you.

[+colleda]

On 10/27/2022 at 5:06 PM, colleda said:

The reason for all the blood was a leech! I suspect he/she/it is sleeping it off somewhere as it had a good feed. I've never come across leeches before in my area and lived here for 35 years. Where I picked it up, cachers sometimes complain about mozzies but never leeches. Must be all the rain we've been having this year and last - thanks la nina.

 

An update. The little varmit hitched a ride home on my leg and dropped off, and crawled away while I was watching TV, because two days later I found him behind vertical drapes in a sliding door track. The give away was a massive pool of dried blood on the floor. He must have decided he didn't like my blood group, heaved it all up, crawled away and died.

[+DreamMachine74]

I must think about this,

 

I've been geocaching since I was 13, but I don't recall ever doing anything very bad to myself for a geocache, other than the usual scratches, bruises and cuts. 

 

I did manage my longest streak (21 days) whilst nursing an injury from work, which I "earned" on the 8th day of said streak. It was a bad cut to my thumb, reuqiring a few stitches, so opening up cache containers was a bit awkward, but I still managed to walk every day for a cache, and a walk or two in the woods to hide a cache or two.

[+baer2006]

Given my record of harming myself during geocaching , I should contribute to this thread ...

• Slipped on a mountain hike, and severely hurt my ankle, resulting in a ligament rupture. But I could walk (slightly limping) back to the car on my own. Needed compression bandages on the foot for a few weeks, so only T1.5 max for me for a while.
• Had a tiny twig poke my eye while bushwhacking. Hurt like hell, didn't get much better after a few minutes, so I went to an ER for check and treatment - turned out to be a very tiny scratch in the cornea. Got a protective patch for the time it was healing, so I walked around (and geocached) one-eyed for two weeks or so. Didn't affect my DNF rate, which proves that I'm quite a blind cacher anyway !
• And the "highlight": Fell off a tree, from about 2 m height. A T4 free-climbing cache, I stood on one of the lowest branches, and hadn't yet located the cache. I was stupid, and tried to move around while at the same time staring into the tree searching the cache. I slipped, and slid off sideways, landing hard on the right side of my body and face. The immediately visible injury was "only" a large cut around the eye, bleeding like hell. Otherwise, I felt more or less good (not dizzy or anything), given the circumstances, so I drove on my own to a nearby hospital ER. They treated the cut, put my head in a scanner, and luckily, the only internal injury was a small crack in the cheekbone (nothing dislodged) and no problems in the brain. When asking the doc, what I should do now while the bone is broken, he only said "Nothing, the bone will heal within a few weeks. Um, no, one thing: Don't fall off a tree again."  Good hint , and with this in mind, I continued my caching trip for the day.
  However, it was only later in the day, that I truly realized how lucky I had been, and that my carelessness could easily have killed me. Also, my wife was not amused at all , and gave me quite a lecture. Psychological recovery from the accident took much longer than the physical one. It took me more than half a year, before I attempted to do a very easy tree climb again. Also, quite a lot of high-T caches now land on my Ignore List instead of my list of finds.
  Good thing is: Lesson learned, and since then (11 years ago) I didn't have any major geocaching-related mishap .

[+barefootjeff]

My worst injury was doing a check on one of my own hides after it got a CHS ping. I still have very little memory of anything I did that day prior to cooking dinner, realising something was amiss and going off to the hospital for some checks, but from the photos I'd taken and the physical evidence I've sort of pieced together what happened. I'd kayaked out to GZ, climbed up the two metre rock face to where the cache was, found it all in good nick and took photos of the logbook. Judging from the slimy stain on the backside of the shorts I'd been wearing, I suspect I slipped when climbing down and banged my head, although the doctor couldn't see any evidence of a head injury and the scans were clear. The rest is mostly dream-like flashes of wandering in the bush, paddling over the other side of the bay (presumably looking for my car) and driving home. I don't remember washing the kayak and putting it away, only when I checked afterwards it was neatly stowed in the garage and still slightly wet.

 

On my next visit there a couple of months later, the cache was missing so I presume it was muggled although it's possible I hadn't rehidden it at the time of my accident. Anyway I put the replacement in a different spot that doesn't require climbing that treacherous rock face.

 

Aside from that, my only other injuries have been a sprained ankle acquired while group caching in a steep gully in northwestern Sydney, which healed after a few weeks of hobbling, and just the usual assortment of scratches and abrasions on my arms and legs when battling through scratchy scrub.