Scariest moment while geocaching

[+slothywaffle]

only been caching for a few months now but already two pretty freaky moments!

 

first happened while caching down what seemed to be an abandoned road. we found a backpack and thought dadgum! awesome huge cache. opened it up and inside was a bob marley tape, rolling papers, and we're assuming weed in there somewhere. we both freaked out yelling "THATS NOT IT! PUT IT BACK!!" we put the backpack back where we found it and found the actual cache fast signed it and went looking for another one just a few feet down the road. while looking for this one a car drove by and stopped at the tree. we quickly stopped looking, jumped in the car and took off down the road. didnt want to have to deal with the druggies.

 

second happened a week-ish ago. we were looking through some tall dead grass for what was supposed to be a very simple find. couldnt find it! and it was hot and dusty and we were both getting cranky. we walked a little further up the trail to find the big hole that was warned about in the clues. on our way back to where the cache was supposed to be there was a big black snake sitting RIGHT where i was searching. i screamed SNAKE! pushed darrbizzare and we took off running back to the car. i dont care how harmless the snake supposedly was... my heart was RACING! we laughed about it later in the day but i still get the willies thinking that snake was RIGHT THERE the whole time i had my hands in that grass. ::shutter:: yuck!

[+gof1]

My wife likes to do the driving between caches. What could possibly be at a cache to scare me?

[+Klatch]

My wife likes to do the driving between caches. What could possibly be at a cache to scare me?

You are a brave, brave man, gof1.

[+Jeep4two]

 

That would do it for me ^^^^^^

[+kittyboodles]

Sometimes I hate to admit that as I get older, I have to calm down a bit on 4+ rated terrain , unless CJ's with me...

 

Was doing a 4+ series (multi) just as Winter ceased. Until the rains in Spring end, I usually carry a snowscopic (trekking ice axe) instead of a hiking stick.

One of the hides was on top of a very large slopeing flat rock about 30' up, with smaller rocks/boulders underneath.

Slipped on the wet rock at GZ and started sliding towards what may have been the end for me. Luckily the axe dug in 4" from the edge.

So now this old fart's hangin' by one hand, trying to figure how to get back up top (sure not dropping down !)

Finally got my wits (?) back. Knew I had only one option (and one chance) and swung myself up.

Took almost a month to heal the muscle tear.

 

OMG! I'm so glad you are okay! (We've met at a local CITO event a while back)

 

That must have been very scary...

[+TheFedora]

Oh, thats an easy question; I nearly rolled my brand new SUV. It actually happened to me about a month ago.

 

I was down in Greeneville TN for a DJ conference and decided to take a few hours on the last day to log some TN caches. I accidently drove past the cache and took a wrong turn down a side street. Well, the road that I turned down bordered a steep, grass covered ravine. The road actually overlapped the ravine for about a foot, creating a lip. I pulled into a driveway across from the ravine, and backed out to turn around. I backed out too far and drove one of my back tires over the lip.

 

Immediately one of my front tires went up in the air and I slammed on the brakes. Unfortunately, my Saturn VUE is a 5-speed and only front wheel drive, so I knew it was going to be tricky to move forward, but I had to try. So, I put it in 1st gear and let off the clutch. As soon as I did, my car fell backwards over the lip and down the ravine, my 2 front tires pointed skyward. Trust me, you havent had your nerves rattled until you see the top of the sky in your front windshield....about 5 more inches of backwards tilt and my car would have rolled end over end all the way to the bottom.

 

Thankfully, about halfway down the car slammed back down to all fours and slid sideways the rest of the way down the hill, stopping a few feet from a large stand of trees at the bottom. I tried to drive back up and out of the ravine, but recent rains had made the grass just way too slick, and my poor excuse for an SUV could barely make it halfway up without sliding down again. All in all, a very scary experience. But, all in the name of the hunt, right?

[+Harry Dolphin]

Besides the bears... Think what scared me the most was when I parked the car on a roadside pullout by a wildlife management area. Almost back to the car, I hear loud thumping, and loud radio. Last .10, and the other car was gone. Cachemobile was okay.

[+TEAM HARTSOCK]

Here is my log from GC1KAGM "Quest for Gold (Mountainfolk406's Gold Ammo Can). Long story short, is that we got lost in the woods. Before I get a 1000 PMs with advice how to never get lost again, how I should have been prepared better, and what I did wrong; please know that there is nothing more you can tell me that I haven't been razzed about from local caching, fire dept, emt, and scouting friends. LOL. I knew that really there wasn't a danger other than an uncomfortable night in the woods, but my kids thought otherwise.

 

I have wanted to do this one since before Mountainfolk found it. Finally, I get the idea that since the boy and I had so much fun doing the Birthday Cache in the dark the night it was put out, I would take him and the girls and we would head off to find this one after dark. Got to parking, jumped out of the car and headed up the trail. We got to the point the trail goes down hill and I mean down hill. We had a great view, however (and I still don't know how we did this, but we missed something in the dark) we got to a place where the cache was pointing off to the right a little over a tenth of a mile, so I tell the kids let's bushwack. We fight briars and mountain laurel and are within 500 feet of the cache when I realize we are at the bottom of the overlook and the cache is up top. So we started to try to find our way to the left to find a way up...no way in sight, so to the right....nope, we do the only thing we can do...crawl straight up the mountain. Took us about 45 minutes for myself, my oldest daughter (15), son (11) and youngest daughter (10). We get to the top after a long struggle and are rewarded with finding the cache. Then we start to follow the trail which I assumed is where we were suppose to come in on.

 

Trail turns into a hunting path, which turns into a deer path, which sudddenly becomes a sea of mountain laurel. When we go to backtrack we are faced with a zigzaging pattern of deer trails. at this point I realize that I had messed up in setting to co-ords where we left the truck and didn't have them in the handheld cause I use the Nuvi to get to parking co-ords when I can. After an hour of trying to even find our way back to the cache, I realize that with my kids out here, it could be dangerous. One of them could fall and get hurt, or I could and then they would be stuck....so when I exhaust all other options, I make the call to 911. The police will come to the truck location and then blow the sirens so we can find our way back. Great, we are only 1.5 miles or so from the truck so this will work.

 

It didn't work with the echo at first. led us in the wrong direction. I thought we were due to the GPS readings, but I was trusting the 911 guy. At that point, I text my wife and tell her that we are lost in the woods. Yes, I did the cowardly thing and texted instead of calling. We went in at 7:30 found cache about 9:00 and it was now 11:00.

 

So we get straightened out with where the siren is coming from and head toward it. This takes us through mountain laurel as thick as any I have ever seen, down the side of a mountain that was still covered in ice which took all of us holding onto the laurel and trees to make it down; then cross a stream, and more mountain laurel now 6 foot high. Only benefit was some of it we could kinda walk under.

 

At this point it was taking us an hour to go about .15 miles. And I was still uncertain with the whole, follow the siren thing. So, I call 911 back for about the 20th time ("hello 911, please state the nature of your emergency." "umm...yeah, this is Scott Hartsock again...the guy lost in the woods with his kids." "oh yeah, Hi Scott how's it going?" --- I kid you not.) And tell them again, I have a GPS unit, how about giving me the co-ords for where the police are right now? So they do and we head off in that direction. Again, all mountain laurel...really thick mountain laurel. Fire department guy asks me on the phone if we can see the moon. I said yeah, and he stated that we should keep it in front of us and walk toward it. Then 5 minutes later clouds roll in and the moon isn't seen the rest of the night.

 

We get within the distance that we can hear the cop over the loudspeaker, but GPS is bouncing like crazy and is hard to make way through all the laurel. Cell service was spotty, so that wasn't helping. We finally get to a small path and think we are making headway only to find out that the trooper is behind us to the left, so we make another b-line toward him...more bushwacking. We get so far and stop for a rest. I sat on a log which broke and dumped me to the ground and as I laid there, I called 911 to see if there was any update of where we were and where the cops were. Talk to them a little and then talk to the trooper again that is up somewhere ahead of us, then talked to one of the men from the fire department that came in as a rescue squad. Set up the thing where we are going to stay put and they will come to our location to get us. Just as we are finalizing that....cell phone battery goes dead. GREAT!!!! So the kids and I follow our last instructions and sit there for about 20 minutes.

 

I can tell that eventhough it is a nice night and eventhough that they have had a great attitude up to this point that sitting there was eating away at them. I would have been content to sit for 2 hours till daylight (it was 3:40 by this time...I think, since cell went dead I didn't have a watch on.) But I knew that staying would break their spirits, so we got up and heading toward the direction of where the cop was to be. As we walk along about .10 of a mile or so, we finally see a light. As we yell and head toward it, we get an answer. It was the guy who I had talked to on the phone from the fire department. So we were rescued and home at 4:30 (only about a 10 minute drive to our house.)

 

The kids did great, I was very proud of them. I took some pics which I will post on here shortly, but all in all they did great, even if they all have refused to ever go night-caching again.

 

The boy summed it all up though when he said "at least there was one good thing about tonight. At least we found the cache!" THAT'S MY BOY!!!!!

 

Eventhough we worried their mother to death and were in a little danger (I told the kids what those noises were after we made it to the truck ---- coyotes do make the strangest sounds at time.), I feel this was a real bonding experience for us all. Showed them that no matter what happens, as long as we stick together and as long as you never give up, you can accomplish anything. It also taught me to double check the waypoint of where you parked the vehicle.

 

TFTC!!! This is going to be probably the most memorable one for the longest time.

 

dropped 2 coins and retrieved 2 TBs

[Shiraz-mataz]

My scariest moment happened in the early days of my caching career. I was tromping through the woods, my eyes focused on the find ahead, when a shape on the ground caught my eye - a pair of boots. The boots were at the ends of camo-clad legs which belonged to the rest of a body laid out flat in the leaves, a shotgun in its grasp! My heart skipped more than one beat by the discovery... I stood there for about 15 seconds looking at the body and noticed - it was breathing! Relieved that the guy wasn't dead, I figured he must just be injured so I called out to him, "Hey!" He didn't move. I repeated my call, a little louder, "HEY!" At this the body moved a little. His head lifted out of the leaves and looked around as though trying to get his bearings. Seeing me standing about ten feet away, he sat up and rubbed his face and asked, "What time is it?" I told him that it was about 4:00. He pulled himself to his feet and said, "Oh man! I fell asleep!" He gathered up his hunting gear and made his way up the trail to the parking area.

[+Oxymoron]

My recent experience wasn't so scary but it gave me a shock. I easily found the cache which was a plastic tube about 18 inches long and 3 inches in diameter. It had a substantial screw cap on it. I unscrewed it and noticed there was a secondary cap underneath. Before I had time to put the screw cap down the second lid exploded about 2 feet into the air. That gave me quite a shock as it was unexpected.

Thinking about it the last time the cache was opened must have been on a cool day, sealed, and when I opened it it was 26C (80F) outside, so it was the air pressure that caused it.

[+Harry Dolphin]

 

That would do it for me ^^^^^^

 

I did refuse to see the movie until AFTER I'd section-hike the AT in Maryland. The action actually took place near one of the sheltrs I stayed in...

[Out]

Well, this wasn't actually during a geocaching session, but afterwards. I guess it still counts, right?

 

Well, to begin this was back in 2006 (man, I've really been neglecting this site!) and back when I was in a geocaching class in my middle school in Anchorage, AK. We were doing "urban geocaching" that day, and since our school was downtown, our class hiked all around downtown Anchorage in little groups.

 

Exhausted from a day of geocaching, the whole class rejoined for lunch at a local pizza place. We were all enjoying ourselves, eating pizza and telling jokes, when a homeless man walked into the pizza place and started cussing up a storm with the hostess. He was so loud, the whole place went silent and we watched as he got louder and more violent. He was probably on drugs or drunk. Then the hostess grabbed him by the coat and pushed him out the door, and held it closed. With both hands he slammed on the door (it was a glass door so we could see everything) and yelled "____ you lady!" and walked off.

The whole pizza place was silent for like 30 seconds just in staring at each other before we burst out laughing. LOL

 

We were all afraid to leave the pizza place when it was time to go back to school!

[+mikehoffman]

What really is the scariest moment you've ever had in geocaching?

 

(Pretty straightforward,isn't it?)

thats the worst thing that ever happened? ive gotten 12 ticks on a single 2 day camping trip. Anyway the worst thing to ever happen to me was being stulked by a bear .

[+fanoTBR12]

While looking for a cache in Potts Preserve in FL, fell into a swamp. Thankfully, no gators!

[+c@cache]

So far, just the usual falling down hills and almost stepping on snakes.

Although my dog once almost got her leg caught in a hidden hole, and that really got my heart racing. Just as quick as she had fallen she got herself up, but there is nothing worse than seeing your doggie fall to the ground.

[+the-bean]

The scariest moment ever! On my first cache ever my gps pointed to a tarp. So me and my buddy went over there not aware of what was underneath. We lifted up the tarp and there was a rotting cow corps underneath it. the cache was in the tree behind it. Then the local farmer spotted us! And he shouted something and then released his dog. We had to run for our lives.

[+TheMadScotsman]

only been caching for a few months now but already two pretty freaky moments!

 

first happened while caching down what seemed to be an abandoned road. we found a backpack and thought dadgum! awesome huge cache. opened it up and inside was a bob marley tape, rolling papers, and we're assuming weed in there somewhere. we both freaked out yelling "THATS NOT IT! PUT IT BACK!!" we put the backpack back where we found it and found the actual cache fast signed it and went looking for another one just a few feet down the road. while looking for this one a car drove by and stopped at the tree. we quickly stopped looking, jumped in the car and took off down the road. didnt want to have to deal with the druggies.

 

second happened a week-ish ago. we were looking through some tall dead grass for what was supposed to be a very simple find. couldnt find it! and it was hot and dusty and we were both getting cranky. we walked a little further up the trail to find the big hole that was warned about in the clues. on our way back to where the cache was supposed to be there was a big black snake sitting RIGHT where i was searching. i screamed SNAKE! pushed darrbizzare and we took off running back to the car. i dont care how harmless the snake supposedly was... my heart was RACING! we laughed about it later in the day but i still get the willies thinking that snake was RIGHT THERE the whole time i had my hands in that grass. ::shutter:: yuck!

 

"Druggies" who smoke pot and listen to Bob Marley are seldom dangerous. In fact they are usually quite docile. Just keep a bag of Oreos on you in case you come across an ornery one and you should be fine.

[+bittsen]

My scariest moment was when I was a foot away from a fast moving river (snowmelting season) below a waterfall and I slipped. I was walking on a log that was, obviously, wet.

My leg went between two logs and it seemed for a second that I had two choices. Fall into the river of 33 degree water or fight the fall and snap my leg in a horrible twisting motion.

I went for the leg break but somehow my leg found a way to slip and I fell straight forward on the log I was straddling and I only had minor contusions on my leg. I was able to hike up the 200' vertical trail though and that is all that really mattered.

[Starbreaker]

Some guy crept up on us on the walking trail tonight. I had no idea he was coming and we all kind of jumped. I think he was just bringing some beer home though.

[+RawPaws]

Two words...Spinner's Nook!

[+mfamilee]

Couple weeks ago in the dark of night on a back country single-track dirt road all by myself.

Two intoxicated male muggles between me and my getaway geo-car.

 

"Hey, pretty lady whatcha' doing?"

"Are you drinking tonight?"

"You wanna' have a good time?"

"Why don't you jump in with us & we'll go party."

"C'mon we don't bite."

 

After that my hubby has now 'banned' me going out alone caching after dark.

[+Lennu]

Look at my log for cache GCMA6A

 

I am still having nightmares about driving on that road

 

Lennu

[taylorXtx]

I was hunting late at night (becuase it just makes it more exciting) around a bridge that was at a local skate park. I was eighteen years old, and was new to the small town in Texas. A cop pulled up and shined his flashlight in my direction calling, "What are you doing over there?" I yelled back the only quick explaination that I could think of "Treasure Hunting!" not thinking that my respond would only increase his suspission. Aparently kids had been caught spray painting the bridge, so he assumed that I was a punk kid. Luckily he gave me the chance to elaborate on "treasure hunting". Just one of the many times that geocaching had brought me to an officer.

[taylorXtx]

 

That would do it for me ^^^^^^

 

what on Earth is that?!

[Bioengineer]

I've done a few caches around Northern Ireland Mourne Mountains. This one was a bit scary because i think we took the wrong way to the cache so we had to go down through a very inclined scarp, i dint felt that secure then... but we did alright.

 

Also, here i triped on my laces not at all near to a big cliff, so i was safe... but from the point of view of my brother, a few meters behind, it looked like i was going to die! He was really pale! I laughted a lot. He didn't.

cheers

[+Team A & M]

It's not that scary, unless you're afraid of spiders. We were searching for a catch in a huge weeping willow tree. I saw spider webs, which I stomached down, knowing about most of the spiders here in NorthEast Wisconsin. Matt was up in the tree, and said "Hey Ange, these webs are funnel spider webs". Remembering a story he told me about a huge funnel spider coming out of a circuit breaker box at him, I nearly fell off of a branch trying to high-tail it out of the tree. I still get the chills thinking about it.

[+mfamilee]

 

That would do it for me ^^^^^^

 

what on Earth is that?!

I don't think I'd want to know what it is.

[+TJdamon]

Blair Witch

[+bittsen]

New scariest moment while geocaching.

Was walking next to the river a couple nights ago at 3AM. Was heading from one cache to another when a HUGE salmon jumped and spalooshed about 15 feet from my caching buddy and I.

 

Was the first adrenaline rush in years.

[+the_bell_dingers]

This may sound silly but when i was caching, 3 deer jumped out in front of us. this was also when it was dark out so i couldnt see what it was at first! (deer have fangs!)

[porkchop401]

Well cacher's, about the scariest thing I have encountered was a man standing on a hill above me with some type of gardeners troll in the Kisatchie NF,I spoke he would not answer I am guessing I was near his pot patch. I abandoned my search and began to head for the truck only to have this scroungy looking fellow follow me staying about a hundred yards behind me all the way to the truck. Once I made it to the truck I grabed my side arm and waited to see if he was going to come all the way out of the woods , I never saw him again but I now carry my pistol in full view when ever I am caching out side of town. I don't consider my self a gun nut but the safety of myself and my loved ones is a priority .

[ninja_donut]

i myself do not have a "scary cache" yet. i more live off of of fear then most(you know the scarer rather then the scarie)

but since we just started caching last weekend the scariest for our group(around 6-9) people was our second to last one. our group is more of the nocturne species so we start around 10 or 1 in the morning, we actually have not had a day cache yet.

but onto the story. this was a double cache right off of a lake and the first cache was in or around this tree. so we start looking around it and walking under it's branches. then someone discovers a spiderweb and brings it to the groups attention, one girl is DEATHly afraid of them so we warn her to not be near the tree. then as we continue to search we find out this tree is basicly a spider brooding center. everywhere we shine a light on the tree's branches there are spiderwebs. now about four of our members back of for their fear of maybe being deadly.

now i love spiders but havent been able to study them as much as i would want to but i couldn't tell what they were( i know the basic spiders around the area found in our neighborhood) i'm now more interested in the web design then our cache and we soon decide to mark as a DNF that night.

 

i know not startling as most others but it sure gave our one girl a freight.

once i get a good one i will make sure to post

[+st1172]

One of the scariest things to happen while hunting down a cache was when we were in Duluth MN. My husband was driving us to a cache and pulled over to the side of the road because the GPS said the cache was .2 miles from the road straight into the woods. So I got out, taking the gps, my phone and a pen with me into the woods, well after wandering through the woods for about 30 mins, my phone was almost dead, I had gotten to the GZ but couldn't find the cache, had almost lost one of my shoes in the mud, the GPS was blinking low battery and I couldn't hear the car horn (I had my husband honk to give me an idea of how to get back to the car). Thankfully I wandered in the right direction and was able to follow the car horn back to the car, but it was nerve racking to say the least!

[+Sol seaker]

Wow, this thread hasn't been added to in a while.

 

I don't know if this was the scariest, but this is fresh in my mind because it just happened last weekend.

I'll post the log, but first, know that I played down the pain in my legs in the logs. It was so bad I was crying and couldn't walk when I got to the top. The problem was the angle my foot was at while climbing. It was like stretching your leg out after not being stretched out in years. You know how it hurts when you stretch, say with your leg against a fence to stretch the muscles in the back of your leg? Well if you keep stretching it it will hurt more. So my foot was at that angle for the entire hillside and my leg was way overstretched. It hurt to begin with, and then by the top it was about ready to just give out.

The drop down would have been brutal to say the least. And it was way too steep to be able to turn around and get back down it. Once committed, there was no turning around. If my legs had of given out at that height???? They say it only takes a 25 foot fall to kill someone.

the hillside was almost straight up in parts and was over 150 feet up. It looked shorter to begin with but after getting halfway up, what had looked like the top from the begining turned out to be a turn in the route.

Anyway, here's my log:

 

Third to find, although slow on the logging.

So much for a casual walk in the woods. This turned into much more of an adventure than we intended!!!!

We were actually looking for the tough to get to cache by the lake, and when we saw we were close to this one decided to go for it, then backtrack to the other one.

 

So we followed the GPSr's to a very steep hill. My "other" started up it, so like a dummy I followed. I really should have waited at the bottom for him to get it, but then where would the adventure be in that? It didn't look like a very long hill, so I thought I could manage that far. I grabbed two stout sticks along the way and dug them into the hillside as I went for extra traction when my feet slid. I got 2/3 of the way up, and saw what I thought had been the top turned out to be a turn in the route. It only got steeper. By now my calves, which were not used to such punishment, were screaming. I was glad for my boots, for even they were sliding back at every other step. Only my dug in sticks kept me from heading back down the hill head-over-heels.

I looked up at the rest of the course that I was commited to and did not think my legs would hold up. The body does strange things under extream pain and mine was at it's limit. I was afraid my calves would just give out and buckle. I called for my friend who had wandered off and took some forceful yelling before he came back and followed my instructions in lowering a long branch over the edge for me to grab, to pull me up. This way I was able to get up over the precipitous edge. I lay on the ground for a while with intense pain racking my body. Not young anymore.

After a while I was able to get up, and was very intent on finding the cache. He asked me if I still wanted to find it. Of course, I wasn't going through all that and NOT getting it!!!! He let me do most of the searching since I had paid the higher price in getting there. I called him in to help, but it still took us a while. I reached my hand into too many holes I couldn't see into for no reason that's for sure!!! I hate that part of geocaching!! (once I reached my hand into a hole, only to have it be followed out by a HUGE spider, ugh!). But it was all for naught, and I found it at last in it's safe perch out of any hole. I hate micros in the woods because of the damage it does to the forest in finding them, and I'm afraid we were a part in that, but I wasn't backing down now (no pun intended).

So we headed out trying to find a safer way back down from the ridge. I don't know if there was a better trail, but it was the only trail we found. It was pretty easy going at first and I was glad for the break in strenous activity.

But the adventure was not over, as we came across some pretty steep areas. One in which I watched my partner go sliding down in his boots as if he was on a skateboard, but there was no board. He was artfully doing a controlled slide that had started against his will. I watched him go down the slope as if he was on skiis, not knowing whether it would end in disaster or not, but he made it. Very good. I went down the slope on the side through the plants and grabbed onto a tree. Not as much grace, but safer. So then we forded a stream, and wandered around a bit until we ended up..... yes, back where we started at the bottom of the long steep hill. I pointed up the slope and said, "man, it looks like some crazy stupid people climbed that thing!!"

Thanks for the adventure.

[duke721]

my first "wierd" experience was it toledo at GC14D55

 

AFTERHOURS TB HOTEL....... hahaha a foggy windowed PT cruiser in a empty parking lot....i think they were "doin it"..we spotted them early..had lunch back an hour later...still there...dagummit were gettin it anyway.....lol