A.P.E. Cache Stories

[+Beaverbeliever]

I had a great time when I went up to the A.P.E. Cache, and I want to tell you my story, and I hope others who have experienced it can do exactly the same.

 

I went up to the APE cache with Geogold, Brownheads, and Shadow101, all cachers of the Salem, OR area. We all rode in Geogolds SUV up to Snoqualmie. When we got there, we parked at the Hyak station, and started out hike through the Iron Horse tunnel. It is 2.2 miles long, and while walking through it you gain 280'. The most amazing thing is when you step into the tunnel, since it is perfectly straight, you can see a little speck of light, which is the other side. And as you walk through the tunnel, the speck grows little by little. There is also 2 caches inside the tunnel, and to find them, you have to count the outcroppings in the side. When you get out of the tunnel, there is another cache called Iron Horse you have to walk up a waterfall to get to. That was fun! And then, another 600' or so, you are at a giant weird looking stump. Gee, what are all these sticks covering up??? Then we had this HUGE ammo can in hand, and you literally have to pour out all the contents to get what you want. And don't forget to discover the A.P.E. coin inside! I signed the log as the 900th finder!

 

Now let me hear others stories, and feel free to post your pics too!

 

Beaverbeliever

[+EraSeek]

July 20, 2001 by EraSeek (1956 found)

#2. We came in second place on this one. WE WERE SO ON IT! We had this one nailed! But alas, it was not to be. I had never really looked at the APE project until yesterday. I noticed a post from Kansas (I think) where a Geocacher made predictions on the Tunnel of Light. “This sounds familiar”, I thought, so I checked and noticed that it was going to be in a state that started with a “W”. I knew right away where it was going to be! I did a little research and figured it was going to come down today and so started watching the site from 6am. When it was posted we were on the road in 5 mins flat. The funny part is this was going to be my day away from Geocaching; a day to get my life back in order. No way!

It was SO cool! The day was not foggy but there was a cold fog rolling out of that dark tunnel. “My Son Josh” and I kept up a good pace and half way through the tunnel we see lights behind us. Agents from the other side! we thought. Could it be? Now they are running! Gaining on us! They catch us. “Geocachers,” we ask them, “yup”. It was Avalanche and his buddy, on the run after seeing our lights. “My Son Josh” is no sprinter so we play it like the tortoise and the hare. But the hares won this one. But that’s OK, they had a lot of desire and had been on this thing for months. Plus we got to see and hold the artifact. Major cool!

They took it, we took the train software they left behind (the 3 kids will love it) and we left a large tube of, well, special effects for the next finder, plus a floppy disk with some shocking information on it from Sluggo’s UFO Cache in Kennewick. You could say Sluggo and the APE project have joined forces here. Whoever accesses the information on this disk please let Sluggo know where it has gone next. Watch your backside. Cache on!

[+Beaverbeliever]

Thanks for your story. After over 900 current (12/24/07) page views of this post, it is proving to be a very hot topic.

 

Any more stories?

[+Allanon]

Thanks for your story. After over 900 current (12/24/07) page views of this post, it is proving to be a very hot topic.

 

Any more stories?

Interesting...the 'views' number I see is 100 for this post...not 900.

 

As for my story, it's in my log for the cache. No need to repost it here.

[+Beaverbeliever]

Thanks for your story. After over 900 current (12/24/07) page views of this post, it is proving to be a very hot topic.

 

Any more stories?

Interesting...the 'views' number I see is 100 for this post...not 900.

 

As for my story, it's in my log for the cache. No need to repost it here.

 

Oh. I'm sorry. I could have swore is said 900 a minute ago. Still 104 is still a good number.

 

I didn't post this for people to copy and paste their logs, but to tell a story beyond that.

 

Beaverbeliever

[lucyandrickie]

Lucy here, here's my funny story.

 

Back in May '04 Pepper and I had already been through that tunnel many times but TIAG had not. As it was TIAGs birthday and she wanted to find the APE cache, we just kinda rolled our eyes and said 'well, she IS our friend, so okay'.

 

Through the tunnel we go and Pepper and I remembered why we thought it was so cool in the first place. We get to the west end and look back at the tunnel. On the left hand side is an electrical box about 15 ft up. TIAG notices there is an ammo can sitting on top of it. I climb up the side of the tunnel and can't reach the box. Pepper and TIAG find a BIG stick and I was able to knock it down.

 

We open the box and start reading. It's an old cache placed by Jeremy. We read more. There was a note left in it and this is pretty much what it said....

 

"Hi. I'm Jack from some town in TX and I found this box while camping here in the fall of '02. I did not know how to open it so I took it home with me. Once home, I figured it out and knew that I had to bring it back. So, here it is. I can't put it back in the same place that I found it. Sorry"

 

We wrote Jeremy and had it confirmed that one of the original items was still in the returned cached. A Toby engine. He unarchived it and we adopted it.

 

How cool is that? Sometimes it is the smallest of things that people do that is the most incredible.

 

So that is how we came to adopt the old Iron Horse cache.

[+Beaverbeliever]

Lucy here, here's my funny story.

 

Back in May '04 Pepper and I had already been through that tunnel many times but TIAG had not. As it was TIAGs birthday and she wanted to find the APE cache, we just kinda rolled our eyes and said 'well, she IS our friend, so okay'.

 

Through the tunnel we go and Pepper and I remembered why we thought it was so cool in the first place. We get to the west end and look back at the tunnel. On the left hand side is an electrical box about 15 ft up. TIAG notices there is an ammo can sitting on top of it. I climb up the side of the tunnel and can't reach the box. Pepper and TIAG find a BIG stick and I was able to knock it down.

 

We open the box and start reading. It's an old cache placed by Jeremy. We read more. There was a note left in it and this is pretty much what it said....

 

"Hi. I'm Jack from some town in TX and I found this box while camping here in the fall of '02. I did not know how to open it so I took it home with me. Once home, I figured it out and knew that I had to bring it back. So, here it is. I can't put it back in the same place that I found it. Sorry"

 

We wrote Jeremy and had it confirmed that one of the original items was still in the returned cached. A Toby engine. He unarchived it and we adopted it.

 

How cool is that? Sometimes it is the smallest of things that people do that is the most incredible.

 

So that is how we came to adopt the old Iron Horse cache.

 

What a great cache! We found it, and walking up that waterfall is really cool!

 

Thanks for the story.

[Moun10Bike]

I thought that I'd share the story of hiding the cache (well, more pictures than story).

 

Jeremy and I had gotten to know each other right after geocaching started and so, when Fox wanted to hide Mission 9 in Washington, Jeremy shot me an email to see if I wanted to help. We started by brainstorming on where it should go. My first thought was the Ape Cave area down by Mt. St. Helens, but we thought something closer to Seattle would be better. Jeremy had already hidden a cache up by the Snoqualmie Tunnel (the Iron Horse cache) and I had biked through it a few times so we both knew of the appeal. Fox really liked the idea of the tunnel, so we went with that.

 

Another goal of the trip was for some photographers for an entrepreneurial magazine to get some pictures of Jeremy for an article having to do with young CEOs of new companies. Since they would have a lot of equipment, we needed to find a place to hide the cache that was easily accessible. That issue became moot when Jeremy contacted the Washington State Parks for permission and they actually offered to accompany us and drive us to the site in one of their official vehicles. Not only would that help the photographers with their equipment, but it also allowed us to put the big ammo box in a spot far enough away from trailheads that it would be hard to steal the container without lugging it several miles. I think that is one factor that has helped to keep this cache going all of these years when all but one of the others seem to have disappeared.

 

Anyway, enough of my blabbing - here are some of the pictures taken on my camera that day:

 

This is Jeremy positioning the container for placement in the photo shoot. We would actually remove the container later and take it down to the tunnel for additional photos before returning to this spot for the "real" hide.

 

A closeup of the container.

 

Photographer Rex Rystedt setting up his equipment.

 

Each of the APE caches contained an original prop from the Planet of the Apes movie for the first finder. Mission 9, Tunnel of Light, included a torch. Here is Jeremy holding the prop for the camera.

 

I got my turn as well.

 

Washington State Parks Ranger Tim Schmidt looks on.

 

The photo shoot gets fully underway.

 

After shooting at the cache site, we hauled the container back into the car and returned to the tunnel for pictures there. Here is the Jeep by the tunnel entrance.

 

Packing things back up to return to the hide site.

[+Beaverbeliever]

It's really cool to hear the owners perspective...

 

TFTC! It was by far my favorite adventure!!!

[+fairyhoney]

Thanks for your stories

[+hydnsek]

I didn't read this thread when it was first posted, so thanks for bumping it, fairyhoney. I especially enjoyed the stories from lucyandrickie (it gets better with retelling!) and Moun10Bike - the pictures were great!

[+Dgwphotos]

It defiently is nice to hear from the early finders and the owner. I see they were using my favorite kind of studio lighting equipment. Me, I rode my bike through the tunnel, while my dad walked through the tunnel (he didn't go on to the cache), along with the big group that went on Father's day 2007.

[+Beaverbeliever]

I want to go back up there when the tunnel opens back up. Does anyone know when it is re-opened?

[+ICHTHYS]

I want to go back up there when the tunnel opens back up. Does anyone know when it is re-opened?

 

May 1

[+Allanon]

I want to go back up there when the tunnel opens back up. Does anyone know when it is re-opened?

 

May 1

Based on weather. If the tunnel is still frozen solid, it won't open.

[+Beaverbeliever]

I am bumping this one back...

[MrMonk]

Thanks for bumping, Beaver.

 

Here's my account from my log entry. I went with a couple cachers from the east coast. You can read their accounts as well: BlueOrca, TochiHunt.

 

Wow. Where to start?

 

BlueOrca, TochiHunt, and a non-cacher, were in town for the weekend. We were on our way back from a multi-day camping trip in Stehekin via Chelan. Naturally, we had to hit up this cache on the way back--one of the big 3 caches in PNW. By the time we reached the Annette Lake trailhead (which I've hiked--in daylight), it was not yet midnight, and quite dark. We left the non-cacher in the car (he was out like a light), and headed for the cache... *on the old road*!!! We came to a creek (more of a river actually) and debating crossing it, even though the rocks were quite slippery. We then headed south up a hill and hit these powerlines and kept following what we thought might be a trail before turning back after bushwacking for a bit. Where did we go wrong??

 

After an hour I was about ready to give up. We could either forcefully bushwack more than a mile to the cache, head to the other trailhead and walk through the tunnel, or call it a night. Spirits were kind of low. We returned to the trailhead, where I noticed a sign "Annette Lake ->". Doh! This kind of thing would never have been missed in daylight. Ah, the perils of nighttime caching.

 

From then on, it was fairly straight forward, although we almost took a wrong turn on the old road. It was a long walk in the dark after we exited the trail, but well worth it. Found the cache at 02:00AM!! Like an archaeological dig, we took many pictures before excavating the cache (whereupon BlueOrca proceeded to painstakingly document everything in the cache).

 

Left the trailhead after 3AM. I had to fight to stay awake while driving back home. Fun times. Definitely a cache I will not forget. TFTH!!

We headed off to HQ in the morning (7 hours later) too--it was a great day!

[+TotemLake]

Thanks for your story. After over 900 current (12/24/07) page views of this post, it is proving to be a very hot topic.

 

Any more stories?

Interesting...the 'views' number I see is 100 for this post...not 900.

 

As for my story, it's in my log for the cache. No need to repost it here.

 

Oh. I'm sorry. I could have swore is said 900 a minute ago. Still 104 is still a good number.

 

I didn't post this for people to copy and paste their logs, but to tell a story beyond that.

 

Beaverbeliever

 

Ah but sometimes the log is the story.

[+LindaLu]

Wow, this brings back memories. This was find number 20 for me, on August 2, 2001. I was the 8th finder if the logs are all still on the cache page.

 

Here's the log:

 

What a hoot! Loved this one. Went through the dark and scary place with my friend Jean, stealthily exchanged items, signed in and off we went before the crowds showed up to try the dark passage...Took an ape mug (to be left in another cache soon) and a paintball tube (to be placed as a cache soon), left POTA cards and a bracelet. LindaLu and JeanBean

 

I've been back by there a couple of times since, but nothing matches the thrill of that original hunt. I did not have a light on my bike at the time, so I remember we duct-taped flashlights to the handlebars!

 

After 7 years of caching I still love it! Thanks to all the people who make geocaching a wonderful sport/hobby/activity/addiction!

[+Teewinot]

hey beaverbeliever, remember me! I found the ape cache last summer when my wife had to go to Seattle for a job interview. It was sprinkling rain when we entered the tunnel. By the time we got to the other side, it had stopped raining, but you could tell that it had just poured while we were in there. My brother and another friend came with us. My friend got covered in black trying to find the cache inside the tunnel. This is one of my favorite caching memories. After finding the cache, we went to Snoqualmie falls, and that was a spectacular waterfall! Hope your doing well back in oregon. Take care, Teewinot.

[+Beaverbeliever]

hey beaverbeliever, remember me! I found the ape cache last summer when my wife had to go to Seattle for a job interview. It was sprinkling rain when we entered the tunnel. By the time we got to the other side, it had stopped raining, but you could tell that it had just poured while we were in there. My brother and another friend came with us. My friend got covered in black trying to find the cache inside the tunnel. This is one of my favorite caching memories. After finding the cache, we went to Snoqualmie falls, and that was a spectacular waterfall! Hope your doing well back in oregon. Take care, Teewinot.

 

Hey great to talk to you again! And what a great story. Thanks for posting!