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Ever Accidentally Broken A Cache?


scavok

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I felt real bad but the camo was one of those super tough to spot ones and without giving it away... one of the dowles holding the camo together was aparently bolted down so you had to unscrew it to open it. You can't see the bolt or anything so I thought it was just a dowel and pulled it apart. No cracking wood or physical effort in doing it and it went back together just fine but apparently I broke the dowel connected to the bolt or something.

 

How badly is my geo-reputation bruised by this? I've never broken one before!!

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Accidently knocked half of a micro through an uncrossable chain link fence.

How badly is my geo-reputation bruised by this? I've never broken one before!!

It shouldn't be bruised at all if you report all of this to the cache owner and help him with repairs, if neccesary. In other words, the normal courtesy between adults that you'd expect in this circumstance.

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Yea thats the thing. I thought I'd done it right and only saw that I had broken it when I checked the logs later and saw it was disabled.

 

I emailed him of course apologizing and offering my help but I think he was mad I didn't let him know I broke it. I didn't know!

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Yea thats the thing. I thought I'd done it right and only saw that I had broken it when I checked the logs later and saw it was disabled.

 

I emailed him of course apologizing and offering my help but I think he was mad I didn't let him know I broke it. I didn't know!

 

Life goes on! We're dumping man-made containers into the harshest environs known to mankind, and then expecting people to figure out our little "tricks" on the fly when they're potentially cold, tired, hungry, and excited with the find.

 

I just despise it when people leave things off in their haste or lazyness. Carefully designed waterproof caps, for example, left laying next to the cache "oops!".

 

If someone broke one of mine taking it off, I'd personally consider it a design failure, unless it were obvious that they were out with the sawzall and the demo hammer. :laughing:

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We have a local cacher who used to love to place multis that used aluminum cigar tubes to hold coords. One cache had the tube placed in an upright lightning split tree. Found the tube and got the coords. Upon placing the tube back in the tree it slid down into an inaccesable part of the split. We're talking about three feet past unreachable. Never did report my screw up. Just crept out of the woods so no one else would see us.

 

I feel better now with that off my chest :laughing: . Don't know if BJ checks the forums but he will recognize himself if he does.

 

Deane

AKA: DeRock & the Psychic Cacher - Grattan MI

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Tried to pry up a plastic container frozen to ground. Ended up putting a hole in container. Bundled everything inside into a plastic bag so that it would stay dry. Made a note in my log that I broke it and offered to replace it. Owner thanked me for informing him and decided to upgrade it to an ammo can.

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Our specialty would be destroying hide-a-keys. Though I will say these have all been more in the nature of inevitable container failure than through some sort of brute strength attack on our part. I've had metal hide-a-keys crumble in my hand (Florida, coast, salt air) I've had the magnet remain on the ferous object and the hide a key release into my hand, I've had the plastic side wall break away as I slid the drawer open (Florida coast, sand in everything, friction excessive to design strength). And I've had hinged plastic hide a keys open only to have the thin plastic hinge tear.

I dont own a hide a key type hide - wonder why?

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Life goes on! We're dumping man-made containers into the harshest environs known to mankind, and then expecting people to figure out our little "tricks" on the fly when they're potentially cold, tired, hungry, and excited with the find.

That happened to me a couple weeks ago. The cache was so neat, and I was so excited about finding it that I was a bit careless in the retrieval process. I realised my error when I was replacing the cache. It was a little chilly and I spent 30 mins barehanded and dripping snot trying to repair the cache. Gave up, put the cache back in its damaged condition, and e-mailed the owner to let him know what I had done. The cache owner said he damaged the cache the same way while setting it up, and that he was expecting such an incident to happen eventually (though I'm sure not by the ~6th find). Fortunately for the both of us, another cacher came along later in the day and fixed the damage I had inflicted!
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Yes, it was a cold day and the container was gladware. The tab on the lid snapped off and took a small part of the lid with it.

Emailed the owner, and offered to replace it or pay for another container. They declined and just replace it, eventally I think they even upgraded to an ammo box.

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Yup broke two in 3.5 years. Stepped on a plastic fake rock and cracked it once, and had another custom clay container disintegrate in my hands when I pick it up (good thing it was fake too-it was a doggie deposit :D ) I felt really bad about the second as it was made by an 'evil little girl' who spends too much time caching with her grandparents. :D Supposedly it was all her idea.

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Recently while caching in Oregon my wife and I came across a cache where a PVC tube was sunk into the ground as a sleeve. The cache was a six inch or so container glued to a rock and then inserted into the sleeve. I came along and nudged some of the rocks on the ground in the search and I broke this cache. Oops! Give me a chance and I'll trip over anything.

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I felt real bad but the camo was one of those super tough to spot ones and without giving it away... one of the dowles holding the camo together was aparently bolted down so you had to unscrew it to open it. You can't see the bolt or anything so I thought it was just a dowel and pulled it apart. No cracking wood or physical effort in doing it and it went back together just fine but apparently I broke the dowel connected to the bolt or something.

 

How badly is my geo-reputation bruised by this? I've never broken one before!!

 

Okay it was my cache and I have to admit it was difficult to see the means to open the cache, you have to remove a piece of wood to find the screw. But no problem as I have beefed up the bolt and nut and it will be back in the woods soon. Also Scavok showed me a minor flaw in the cache I thought camo had covered so I say THANKS!!!!!!!!! Scavok. No worries here. And hopefully we can meet up soon K.

cheers

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About a month ago, I broke one. It was a drink bottle up about 15 ft in a tree. It was suspended with fishing line and it led to a crank mounted on a nearby fence. I got it down,and signed. The crank was high for me (I'm 5' 4") and while trying to reel it back up, the line wouldn't stay on the reel and snarled. The handle on the crank also broke off, bounced off of me and into the darkness (it was twilight). I tied off the line so the bottle was 10 ft off the ground.

As soon as I got home I profusely apologized to the owner. They fixed it the next morning and said that they had designed it badly and were intending to improve it anyway.

Edited by Wacka
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While I haven't broken any caches, I have ripped a couple of logs trying to cram them back into their micro containers. I've also done the following a couple of times....

 

Right at the moment I find a cache a muggle is near. I grab it quick and tuck it away. When I go to put it back, I have completely forgotten where I got it. "Was it that crack? Or this crevasse?" Since they were found soon after me I figured it wasn't too far off - but maybe not exactly where the owner placed it. :D

 

-al

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Once cache was hanging on a branch of a really thick bush. I made a grab for it, but didn't realize the hook holding the cache was still on and I RIPPED the cache lid clean of (a plastic waterproof match container with s screw-on lid). No amount of spit was gonna fix this, and to make things worse, I LOST THE LOG in the thick ivy. So I took the cache back home with me, and bought a replacement lid and modfied the cache so that it no longer hung on the lid, put in a fresh new log and put in the names before mine (there were only 3 finders including myself).

 

So that is my story for an accidental breaking of a cache.

 

Now for intentionally destroying a cache there was this one cache I really hated... :D

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I was showing my sister-in-law how to cache in Chicago. It was cold and the container was a magnetic key holder. In trying to open it, I ended up showing her how NOT to geocache. Well, that isn't really fair to me... I broke the cover off, walked the three blocks to the CVS, bought a better magnetic key holder, walked back to the cache and replaced the container.

 

To my sis-in-law's credit, she used the old one to practice opening them so she wouldn't do the same thing, and she walked with me to get the replacement and do the repair.

 

It wouldn't have seemed so bad, except the next day my husband managed to knock a geocache container down into a fence post, and although we tried everything we could think of to retrieve it, we weren't able to get it back out again.

 

We imagine that the Chi-town geocachers were glad when those destructive Team Neos people went home again!

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I am new to this and I haven't broken any yet. I do have a question though since I was thinking of placing some myself. Where do you get ammo boxes at?

 

eBay or Army/Navy stores. Or you can be lucky like me and have a ex-Army buddy who has a garage full! :D

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Yup broke two in 3.5 years. Stepped on a plastic fake rock and cracked it once, and had another custom clay container disintegrate in my hands when I pick it up (good thing it was fake too-it was a doggie deposit :D ) I felt really bad about the second as it was made by an 'evil little girl' who spends too much time caching with her grandparents. :D Supposedly it was all her idea.

 

And you made her cry too.....only five years old.

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I am new to this and I haven't broken any yet. I do have a question though since I was thinking of placing some myself. Where do you get ammo boxes at?

 

Thanks, there's an army surplus store in town. I'll check it out. I like to go hiking so I want something that will stand up to the weather if placed in the woods.

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I am new to this and I haven't broken any yet. I do have a question though since I was thinking of placing some myself. Where do you get ammo boxes at?

 

In your case, Army Surplus Warehouse just south of IF. 30mm are fairly cheap. They also have Decon Containers for 1.00.

 

Thanks. What is a Decon container?

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I was FTF on a fence post type of cache. As I replaced it I heard a swissssh-THUNK as the cache slid down the post. Oops. What to do now? I ran home, logged my FTF (of course, I found it and SL) and then warned others to await further developments from the owner. I contacted the owner, went back to the site, took the cap of the post and took it to his house so it could be repaired. To make a long story short, the glue fastening the cache to the cap had failed and I was off the hook (no pun intended). I was very relieved. Stuff happens.

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I was showing my sister-in-law how to cache in Chicago. It was cold and the container was a magnetic key holder. In trying to open it, I ended up showing her how NOT to geocache. Well, that isn't really fair to me... I broke the cover off, walked the three blocks to the CVS, bought a better magnetic key holder, walked back to the cache and replaced the container.

 

Don't feel too bad. Plastics tend not to fair too well in cold winter weather.

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A magnetic nano was hidden under an attached leaf of rust. Two earlier cachers failed to find, but I'm a touchy-feely kinda guy so I used my big ape mitts on the bottom of the rusted object and 'accidentally' broke off the rust. As I was about to throw it away, I noticed a cache in my hand... :rolleyes:

 

Not all camo stands up to the rigors of field testing...

Edited by edchen
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Regarding "what is a decon container": "Decon" is short for "decontamination". It's what the military decontamination kits come housed it. For practical purposes, they are generally black or OD (Olive Drab) and run about 3" x 2.25" x 4.5", molded plastic.

 

The often contain frightening words molded into the top like "harzardous" or "toxic" or "caustic" ... Cover-up those, or file 'em off. Might as well not frighten the muggles into having another container blown-up by the bomb-squad. Talk about "accidentally breaking a cache"!!! :unsure:

 

See, this is a great thread. If you read it with another point of view, you see all the design failures I was talking about. That's the common thread to the, errr, thread...

 

I love this thread because I now have a couple dozen ways NOT to construct a cache... :rolleyes:

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I haven't actually broken any yet, but... I was feeling for a magnetic cache on a bridge, and accidentally knocked it into the Passaic River. I e-mailed the owner, and apologized profusely. :unsure:

 

Well, that sure upped the difficulty on that one! I think I saw scuba caches somewhere else on the forums. :rolleyes:

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Once. Urban cache in a strip mall, cache was in a post 2 feet from the restaurant table the family and I were eating at. The kids were going nuts cause I just knew the cache was in the post. I made them wait until we were done lunch, then popped the lid off the post and I saw a flash of the micro cache dropping down the post. The magnet didn't quite hold. :unsure::rolleyes: !! :) (remember there are little kids present) @*#! :)

 

So, figuring there must have been metal in the cache container, I went to my truck and dug some magnets out of my geocache-spares ammo box (really!). But how to get the magnet to the bottom of the post to fish out the cache? Magnets on a cord? Nope -- the magnets latched onto the metal post walls even though I'd put a ton of duct tape around them.

 

Next stop was a "dollar" store next door. Pipe cleaners? Nope -- still not stiff enough. Another trip to the "dollar" store. Bought a broom so I could attach the magnets to the handle end, after removing the cap and making a real Rube Goldberg mess out of the deal.

 

Oh yeah, do you remember this is lunchtime at a restaurant? Outdoors at a strip mall where the parking lot's about 2 feet away from the cache post? By now, I just didn't care about the odd stares I was getting. The waiters at the restaurant didn't seem to notice, cause the kids were making artwork with the pipe cleaners and everyone's involved there while I'm stuffing this broom, business end up, down a metal post. (I didn't even get a single "Why?") :)

 

I never recovered the container, just a bunch of mud on the magnets taped to the end of the broom handle. "Cache Needs Maintenance" was my log, with an apology to the owner.

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A few days ago, a newer cacher took his children out to my cache.... and this one's a definite half-mile back in the swamp (good trail, if unmowed often). I like to make small wooden boxes (and nail them onto the branches of a downed tree, a nail in the hold holds the door shut, and this one was just a little tight. He popped the hinges off. But he emailed me. I'm easy-going, and I also had an extra box, so on Saturday I walked the dog that way (and then had to give him a bath), and replaced the box. Soon I'll fix up the older one. Not a big deal. I DO THINK WE NEED TO PLAN FOR AND EXPECT SOME OF THIS KIND OF THING. I once couldn't get a film canister out from under a cement landing because of frozen-ground swell........... so I had an extra canister, made a small log, wedged it in. You do yourself a favor (as a hider) if you plan well.

 

And in the post just above me, IS A PRIME EXAMPLE OF NOT THINKING THINGS THROUGH well enough. It was bound to happen. Some sort of added "floor" just below the cache was in order.

Edited by Robespierre
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I was looking for stage 2 of a multi out in the woods along a fence line that had hollow meta fence posts. I was feeling around the top of one of the posts when I heard something dropping down inside it. Uh-oh.

 

Then I saw the (broken) piece of fishing line leading to the post. I had snapped the line wthout ever seeing it.

 

I e-mailed the owner and apologized profusely. She fixed the cache-stage AND was nice enough to give me the coords to stage 3 so that I would not have to venture back out to stage 2. Then again, maybe she just did not want me to destroy it again.

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The often contain frightening words molded into the top like "harzardous" or "toxic" or "caustic" ... Cover-up those, or file 'em off. Might as well not frighten the muggles into having another container blown-up by the bomb-squad. Talk about "accidentally breaking a cache"!!! :blink:

Naw, just keeps the muggles away. :anibad:

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Here in the Frozen North East, ammo boxes tend to become solid blocks of ice completely frozen to the ground 5 or 6 months out of the year...hence we carry a small ice pick and a hand-torch during the winter months. However...a few times I've given a mighty tug on an ammo box or two and...off came the handle! With a quick flick of the Swiss Army Knife however, Tiny and I have always been able to repair them :anibad: !

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