DNF - a cache too far?

[+Happy Humphrey]

How far would you go just to log a DNF? I’m not claiming any record here, but you might find it an entertaining little story. If you have any good DNF stories, it's not a competition, but why not post your account (short or long). This one is long!

 

Obviously, I didn’t set out to log a DNF: it was supposed to be a glorious “Found It” smiley. The cache is now archived, so I’m able to relate the details of how I - with a little help - almost found it.

 

The tale (of woe) began one evening back in 2004 when I began planning a trip to the Black Forest in Germany. Although I’d been to the area once, we had but a brief glimpse of some superb scenery as we drove by en route to Strasbourg and eventually Calais. Though not obviously spectacular, it had a certain open and fresh character allied to some dark and brooding forest. So I was keen to return and take in the unique atmosphere of the Schwarzwald: and now I was into geocaching, what better way to get to know the area on a short visit than by selecting a few of the best caches in the district. So as part of the trip planning, I spent a few hours browsing through the Schwarzwald caches trying to select an assortment of interesting ones to attempt.

 

Somewhere in this browsing I came across an unusual puzzle which had me intrigued. Magisches Viereck, by someone called “Prinzessin aus Haithabu”. Now, the profile might get you intrigued for different reasons, but at the time there was only a strange photo and it was the cache itself that was of interest.

 

First problem, the description was all in German. I know a bit of French, but hardly a word of German – so it was out with the translation tool, which did translate (in a fashion). Not much help, although I could get the gist of it. The first section is a short poem, something to do with Norse legend from the look of it. After that is a tale written from the point of view of a princess. Nothing to actually give a hint as to the whereabouts of the cache, which is described as a multicache but appears more like a mystery cache: the coordinates point to the middle of a lake. There’s a “Treasure Map” (Schatzkarte) attached, which only adds to the mystery;

Why all the Runic characters? What have all the animal figures got to do with it? I suspected that the wiggly lines would be the key: perhaps it was to be overlaid on another map, and the squiggles would match rivers (or roads, or boundaries). Looking through all the logs from the few successful teams, it seemed that an overlay was the answer.

 

I had a detailed map of the area and tried to identify the overlay area. This was a real needle and haystack affair, as the overlay gives you no idea of scale (or so I thought). Even if you succeed in the overlay department: what are the other symbols going to tell you? I couldn’t imagine.

 

As time went on and the Germany departure approached, I got nowhere with the puzzle. I tried a couple of trusted (and very clever) cachers with the problem, to no avail. The late Bill Hemphill (Team Ullium) did translate the German: I think pretty well;

 

Do you know how to scratch?

Do you know how to guess?

Do you know how to find?

Do you know how to investigate to learn?

Do you know how to ask?

Do you chance to be a victim?

Do you know how to send,

do you know how to delete?

 

I am Atir, princess from Haithabu.

The powerful Magician Gorm wanted to kidnap me from my father's castle and chain me to his bed as his slave.

But the wise raven Mumin warned me that night and taught me a little magic rythm and remained to say to my nurse Ragna find me no time, my family, my loyal, farewell, no time to choose a proper robe in place of the thin delicate nightgown only time to quickly say the magic words.... and I find myself in a strangely nocturnal light, a rustling and sighs in the air.

I hear human voices, someone puts me a coat around my shoulders.

Thus began my exile.

It is a strange, an agitated, a greedy world.

For weeks I have wandered lost in the forests.

I had to hide my casket and my distinguished garb, so that no one would take them away from me.

I pray to the Gods that they show me how I can safely find my way home.

What did I do wrong when I cast my spell?

I dreamed tonight that I could return home if 23 brave and honorable searchers find my casket and everyone of them wrote a dedication into my small booklet, not enough hereby:

Everyone of them must insert a trinket and carry one forward, as a talisman.

The 23 brave and respectable searchers are also to leave a copy of themselves by the most careful artist whom they can find, dressed in my flax nightgown.

The 23 images must be displayed then in such a way that all the humans in the whole new world can look at them....

So that this can become true, I drew a treasure map to the best of my knowledge from the memory.

 

Eventually I went to the Black Forest with no idea about the cache, so didn’t attempt it – but that was far from being the end of the story. One of the caches we succeeded on was near Baden-Baden, called “Templar’s Mystery”. Despite some careful preparation, we had a bit of a struggle with the projection and had to ask local cacher Gerhard (“Asa”) for assistance. He kindly helped us out: and on return to the Isle of Man I e-mailed to thank him, and asked if he would have a look at Magisches Viereck.

 

In 2005 Gerhard logged Magisches Viereck. Many of the early finders seemed to have been working as a team, so I wasn’t too shy to ask Gerhard for a little pointer in the right direction. He gave me the crucial information that the animal characters relate to villages with animals in their names: an example being "Hundsrucken".

 

He also mentioned that it IS a multicache, but hardly any of the stages are findable – so I was going to have to deduce the final cache position with minimal data. He said that he’d worked out the cache position using local knowledge gained from finding part of another multicache nearby, and that it was near a hunter’s cabin in the forest (there are hundreds of these and thousands of acres of forest, so it was hardly a spoiler!).

 

With the animal names, I soon identified the general area of the map and the scale. Quickly, I scanned the Schwarzwald map and overlaid the Schatzkarte in Photoshop. With a few minutes spent sliding the two layers around, I managed to get the “wiggles” to match sections of road. Bingo!

 

 

But now what? The role of the animal names and wiggly lines was known: this left the Rune symbols. I guessed that these had to be put into alphabetical order – and then you had to go to the locations and find the numbers that would give the coordinates of the cache. That would be tricky: because of the map scale, each symbol covered quite a large area. Even if all the parts were in place, it may take days to locate a lot of microcaches with such vague instructions. I was fairly confident that I would never get to all the locations and get time to search for more than a few minutes. Even finding a micro where the GPS coordinates are a few metres out can be pretty challenging. This was hopeless!

 

But I did have another visit to the Black Forest planned. Was there a chance of getting to the cache area: yes. Did I have enough to locate a small box hidden somewhere in the forest: certainly, no, but perhaps a study of the log photos from various attempts would help. They did serve to eliminate some possible locations: and re-reading the logs, a few other pointers emerged. Firstly, there was another mention of someone knowing the area after finding a different multicache there. So I checked the profiles of the finders, and noted which multicaches they’d logged in the area. Most people seemed to have logged one of two particular ones, and assuming that one of these was the multicache in question I could also gain the same local knowledge by finding this cache. I felt that I’d pinned the location down to a few square miles of forest now (!). My gut feeling was that a cache called Circles and Line was the neighbour to Magisches Viereck, so I put it on the list of caches to attempt. The plan was to keep my eyes open when following this one, and check out any hunter’s cabins encountered on the journey around the cache stages. But I realised that C&L is a long and difficult cache and there would be many possible search areas on the way, so even if I’d deduced correctly it would be a long shot (to say the least).

 

The other information that Gerhard had furnished me with was that a clue to the exact position of the Magisches Viereck box was given away in a couple of the log photos. But you had to reverse the photos (make them into a negative), whence appeared a few extra details. A wire fence, a distinctive tree. Not much.

 

In January 2006, a cacher going under the name VidasKasko found it, and uploaded a couple of very useful photos. Although he looks like a bit of a perv from the poses, there was a good background view of the fence and the edge of trees. Wow – a fence and some trees, somewhere in the Black Forest: I just had to spot the correct ones!

 

No further clues presented themselves, despite a couple more finds, and in April 2006 I set off with Mrs. Humphrey for a long weekend in Germany. With so little to go on I wasn’t expecting to be able to log anything for Magisches Viereck, as it was unlikely that we’d come across any part of the cache or even begin to search. I was going to concentrate on the other caches rather than waste too much time on a fruitless long-shot. But just in case, I started with the multicache that I felt held the clue to Magisches Viereck.

 

So we parked next to a children’s playground near the village of Pfalzgrafen-weiler and walked downhill along a pleasant little lane. After ten minutes through fields, we entered dark woodland. A bit of forest up the bank to the right shaded the GPS signal, and I climbed up to check our location. In front, a hunter’s cabin. At the side, a clear meadow with just the right type of fence! I helped Mrs. Humphrey to the top of the slope, and from my rucksack retrieved the prints of various log photos that I’d brought along.

 

After a few minutes, we had the exact view of the background of VidasKasko’s photo – I knew we were in the right place.

 

 

There was a hunter’s observation tower here as well, and part of one of the legs of the tower appeared in a photo with two cachers opening the box. This was it! Now it was the simple matter of locating the box itself.

 

Two hours later, we were still combing the area around the tower and had found nothing. But surely we were fated to find it, having got so close? Or perhaps the cache had gone? The only options were to give up, or appeal for a hint so that we could return another day and try again. If I could assure Gerhard that we were in the correct area, I felt that we would receive a helping hand – so an e-mail describing the cache zone was fired off whilst we continued our fruitless search.

 

A couple of days later we returned, armed with the information that the cache was under a flat stone (in the area we’d already searched so diligently). A thorough search turned up nothing. Bitterly disappointed, I had to admit defeat. Perhaps I could have another look sometime in the future: or more likely, the cache was gone. In a way it would have been easier to accept had the location of the cache eluded me altogether: it was frustrating to get so close, a bit like almost catching a record fish on your first cast but then losing it at the landing net.

 

In July 2006, just to rub it in, “DG1GPX” found the cache at his second attempt. So it was still there. And to cap it all, in August 2006, Gerhard checked the cache and it had gone. As the cache owner seems to have given up long ago, there is no hope of it being reinstated.

 

Oh well, good thing I didn’t spend too much time on it!

Edited January 22, 2008 by Happy Humphrey

[+uk89camaro]

I once spent a wasted 30 minutes looking for a micro, after spending 3 hours doing a 10 point puzzle round a town centre. Think that beats yours.

 

Good story by the way.

[+scottpa100]

To Happy Humphrey,

 

what a fantastic story - in depth and lots of detail. It won't ever make it to a magazine short story and make you a few bob but all of us lot here who read your story will be able to relate to the "No... must not give in... must find little box... (Santiy kicks in) "But you don't know where it is..." Then geocaching kicks back in "No.... must not give... must find little box..."

 

Cheers Humph.

[+Team Madders]

And in spite of his glorious failure, HH felt sufficiently inspired to use elements of this in a cache of his own:

 

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...e0-83d303db2071

 

We haven't solved that one yet (although may glean some clues from this tale of woe......

[+Happy Humphrey]

And in spite of his glorious failure, HH felt sufficiently inspired to use elements of this in a cache of his own:

"Tribute caches" are good, particularly when you have tried the original and are aware of the flaws! Quite a few of mine are inspired by excellent caches from around the world.