Stupid Human Tricks!

[+outlaw169]

I was out with a friend of mine, placing a tough cache at a bridge over a small creek. As I was going for a higher difficulty.terrain level, I brought along the rappelling gear, planning on going down the side of the bridge. I tied up the rope, harnessed in and got everything ready and safe for my decent. I would be using double-strand of 7/16 inch rope and a figure 8 descender to make my way down. So I walk up to the edge, unclip my carabiner from the descender to I can wrap the rope around......

 

.......KERPLUNK!!!!!!

 

There went my ONLY weigh-bearing biner, right out of my hands, and into the water below! Now this makes me mad, and as this is a pretty small creek, I figure it's not too far down, and I'm going in after it. I wrap the rope through the descender, TIE the descender to my harness with some rope, and drop off the edge, stopping myself a couple of feet above the water's surface. I lower myself a few more inches and stick my foot in the water, but can't find the bottom! my friend finds a nice long board. and drops it end-first into the water, where it dips completely below before bobbing back up again! This water is deeper than I thought. So here I am, hanging at the end of a rope with my tailfeathers in the COLD water, trying to figure out what to do. I want to set up a prusik climb so I can get back up the rope, but I don't have my carabiner to hook up to the rope with. I finally figured out how to do it, but not before I ended up completely in the drink, and I spent a half hour before I finally got my tail into the air! In hindsight, I've found that the water is about 7 feet deep there, and I could have dunked in there if there was more light.

 

Tomorrow, I am going back for my biner!!

 

Your turn. What darwin awards have you earned in your caching days? Tell your best stories here!

 

Jason

[+J-Way]

Not really a darwing award, but a lot of wasted effort just today. Cache was a film can rated 3/3, coordinates were actually centered right in the middle of a gravel path. Large Oak tree to right, fence line with smaller trees (8-14" diameter) to the left. I couldn't find an obvious hiding spot around the oak tree, so I poked around the fence line around... nuttin'. Decoding the hint says "look in the V". The large oak has a prominant "V" about 10-ft up, so ok, that explains the terrain rating. No hand holds, no limbs, no holes, no ladders. I finally decide to move a pile of discarded and mildewed flower arrangements (this was immediately adjacent to a cemetery) so I can back my truck up to the tree. I climb up on the side-rails to see, but the "V" is empty. hmm... Just as I decide to give up and leave I spot one more "V" in a cedar tree along the fence line... yep, there it was, soggy log and all. All this trouble for a cache I would have rated as a 1.5/1.5, maybe a 2 difficulty.

 

The other incident that springs to mind is one where I debated the Darwin-award-winning route but ultimately decided to play it safe. Details are here.

[+darklighter]

There was a cache I did last fall that involved me bracing myself between a steep eroded hillside and a tree growing out of it. If I had slipped, I probably would have gotten injured. But hey, I had fun. =)

[+outlaw169]

So I went back, but still no luck. I tried a magnet and fishing line, but that didn't work. THen I remembered that the biner is aluminum, not steel. So then it was diving down with my mini-maglight. Can't see a thing. Off to the store for some swimming goggles. But the light it still too dark to really see anything! Off to the store again to get some new batteries for my SureFire. Now if I can't find it with that, then something is wrong. It was getting late though, so I'm gonna go back tomorrow. I got the cache placed today though!!

 

Jason

[+DocDiTTo]

So I went back, but still no luck. I tried a magnet and fishing line, but that didn't work. THen I remembered that the biner is aluminum, not steel. So then it was diving down with my mini-maglight. Can't see a thing. Off to the store for some swimming goggles. But the light it still too dark to really see anything! Off to the store again to get some new batteries for my SureFire. Now if I can't find it with that, then something is wrong. It was getting late though, so I'm gonna go back tomorrow. I got the cache placed today though!!

 

Jason

 

Methinks for the price of the goggles and batteries you could have bought a new carabiner.

[+markandsandy]

So I went back, but still no luck. I tried a magnet and fishing line, but that didn't work. THen I remembered that the biner is aluminum, not steel. So then it was diving down with my mini-maglight. Can't see a thing. Off to the store for some swimming goggles. But the light it still too dark to really see anything! Off to the store again to get some new batteries for my SureFire. Now if I can't find it with that, then something is wrong. It was getting late though, so I'm gonna go back tomorrow. I got the cache placed today though!!

 

Jason

 

Methinks for the price of the goggles and batteries you could have bought a new carabiner.

 

But he needed the batteries anyway.

[+skisidedown]

So I went back, but still no luck. I tried a magnet and fishing line, but that didn't work. THen I remembered that the biner is aluminum, not steel. So then it was diving down with my mini-maglight. Can't see a thing. Off to the store for some swimming goggles. But the light it still too dark to really see anything! Off to the store again to get some new batteries for my SureFire. Now if I can't find it with that, then something is wrong. It was getting late though, so I'm gonna go back tomorrow. I got the cache placed today though!!

 

Jason

 

Methinks for the price of the goggles and batteries you could have bought a new carabiner.

 

But he needed the batteries anyway.

 

I think that now it is about the principle.

 

Hope he finds it...

[CACHED-AWAY-II]

 

Methinks for the price of the goggles and batteries you could have bought a new carabiner.

 

But he needed the batteries anyway.

 

I think that now it is about the principle.

 

Hope he finds it...

 

Seems like having an itch that ya can't get to!

[+Dread_Pirate_Bruce]

So I went back, but still no luck. I tried a magnet and fishing line, but that didn't work. THen I remembered that the biner is aluminum, not steel. So then it was diving down with my mini-maglight. Can't see a thing. Off to the store for some swimming goggles. But the light it still too dark to really see anything! Off to the store again to get some new batteries for my SureFire. Now if I can't find it with that, then something is wrong. It was getting late though, so I'm gonna go back tomorrow. I got the cache placed today though!!

 

Jason

 

The pivot pin is probably steel and a good magnet will grab it just find.

 

If you are going to swim for it, drop a weighted line from the spot where you dropped it. The weighted line will help you locate the GZ for your search.

 

At the risk of seeming snide, you might call the lost caribiner a cache and give it a rating of 5/5 and say that the FTF should clip it under the bridge so you can re-rate it 3/3!

[+Airmapper]

If you do it to find/hide a cache, can it really be considered stupid?

[+Bad_CRC]

What darwin awards have you earned in your caching days?

 

The darwin award is for people who've been killed before reproducing. Has any geocacher died while geocaching? I've not heard of that, but with so many people in such dangerous places, it wouldn't be out of the question. Anyone know?

[+GRANPA ALEX]

It was a grand old oak in the swampy woods near Charleston SC, slimy with algea (or something) on a very rainy day . . . the cache was an ammo can with a combo lock (bicycle chain) way out on a limb, very well placed, high off of the ground. It was a BIG oak, long high limbs - you know the kind, 100+ years old and the like!

 

It was getting dark, I was alone, no one knew where I was. I got up there, tenuously. I almost fell twice going up, again in opening the can . . . but, got it signed. THAT was when I fully realized that the going UP was the easy part.

 

Needless to say, I survived, sliding down the slimey limb doing a balancing act and learning how dumb I could really be at 60+ year of age and wondering if there were gators and other critters who might pick me apart if I fell and could not help myself (they have that stuff there, really).

 

A stupid human trick, for sure . . . unfortunately, I have more!

[+outlaw169]

Yea, I know I didn't correctly use the term "Darwin Award." It was more intended for humor.

You're right, Doc. I could have just bought a new biner, and since then, I've bought a few of them. But, as skisidedown said, it's just the principle of the thing. By now, the steel pivot pin and spring are probably rusty, so even when (yes, i said when) I get it back, it's probably no longer safe to use anyways.

 

I went back with goggles and my SureFire, but no luck. We tied my rope around a heavy rock, and dropped it off the edge of the bridge, about where I think the biner hit the water so we could use the rope to get down to the bottom faster, and have "Ground Zero" to start from. Then I took my mini-Maglight, clipped it to the rope, and let it slide down to the bottom so that, as we got close to the bottom, we could see some sort of a glow. The water is murky, and you can't see see much more than about a foot in front of you. But the deeper I go, the thicker it got, and the bottom was nothing but brown with rocks jutting out of it. After about a half hour of 30-second intervals of searching, I gave up.

 

But I'm going back as soon as it warms up!

 

I have an small video camera that runs off a 9-volt battery, and I've devised a waterproof container that it fits into, and looks through a small glass window. The camera can see in infrared, and has a bunch of IR lights on it, too. I'm gonna weight it down and lower it into the water so I can look around.

 

When that doesn't work out like I think it's going to, I'll come up with something else!! Yes, this is dumb, and yes, any normal person would cut losses and give up.

 

But D@mnit, I want my biner back!!!

[+ras_oscar]

I've heard that EG&G has some ROVs for about $60,000. They'd probably help ya gety your biner out!!!

[+outlaw169]

I've heard that EG&G has some ROVs for about $60,000. They'd probably help ya gety your biner out!!!

 

Sweet! maybe they'll let me borrow one for a few hours! LOL!

[GPS-Hermit]

Rather than get hurt I usually avoid the cache

I will not reach in if I can't see what I am doing - most of the time

NO PI for me

 

I did do a rock climb once on a 3 inch ledge about 35 feet up but only 15 feet of that

ledge was really scary. I was alone and very remote - not a good time for a injury.

 

Got 13 bee stings from yellow jacket and almost lost once

 

by the way - putting in the wrong co-ords gets you into big trouble. The cache ain't there

Edited February 19, 2009 by GPS-Hermit

[+DarkZen]

My tale of mis-adventure.

[+outlaw169]

My tale of mis-adventure.

 

Been there before! more than once have I rushed out the door without bringing ANYTHING with me!

 

As for HPG-Hermit's yellowjackets - I can relate. I stepped in a big ground nest once, goy my foot wedged, and got swarmed pretty badly. Sadly, this was shortly after crawling across a creek dam over the rocks. Getting back across in a BIG hurry didn't work out quite so well!

[+scuba dude]

There is a cache on a base here in Baghdad that has been haunting me for almost a year now. I have gone to get it several times, and each time I have walked away before attempting to get to ground zero. The cache is a camo-ed chapstick tune, hidden in the rock face of a bridge over a canal. The only way to get to it is to balance along an old conduit pipe, over the water, under the active bridge. I plan on getting it before I leave the country though. My biggest fear is falling and losing a weapon in the water. I don't think I could ever explain my way out of that.

[greenworldfeather]

I really think this a good one. I haven't really been caching except for the last day or two, since the Wed. before Valentines this year. I drive myself very hard sometimes to get a cache. I knew it was only a matter of time before I got sick. Got a cough Tuesday, made it a lot worse Wed. and became sick for the next week and a half. That's about the worst sickness I have ever had. It was influenced by other things, but partly because I didn't take care of myself very well that week or other times. Now I have learned that you need to be more careful when you cache. If you fell something coming on, don't cache for a few days. Now my parents have it, and it is not fun. Missed the first two days of work since I started in august last year, and I'm kind of hardy. Oh well, I learned my lesson. Thanks and have a great day! gwf

[+lcandela123]

Craziest find was tippy-toeing across a waterfall/bridge to then scramble down a rock wall and find the cache. I directed spouse from the safety of the other side of the river. I knew exactly where it had to be, but what a difficult find.

[+Savoy]

I knew that the cache was in a bad part of town (we are in South America), but many of the prettiest parks are' next to gang-held communities. So we went anyway (that is what makes it a stupid human move).

 

So there we are, walking around with sunglasses, GPSrs. and down from the hills comes the armed-'community'-patrol; most likely think we look a lot like some forward unit from the special unit police force.

 

Now, we have to try and explain what we are doing to these guys without making matters even worse. "Cache" isn't a work we know here, and we're thinking 'treasure box' wouldn't be a good approach either... so we settled on tourist looking for an area with good Feng Shui.

 

That seemed to work, but we got out of there anyway. That cache has been moved a bit further down the hill to a safer location (thats all relative down here of course)