Really cool ARCHIVED locations

[+Snoogans]

I know of 2 really cool locations that no longer support caches for one reason or another. They happen to be among the most interesting places geocaching has taken me.

 

Outdoor Nevada Geocache #3 was one of those "Oh WOW, this is SO COOL," geocaching moments for me and others upon discovering it. I still stop there when I pass bye.

 

 

So...Why is this here? Is one I got to by word of mouth and it didn't disappoint. It was one freaky cache that could probably use a look see. Read the logs. I think there may still be TBs stranded there.

 

 

What are some cool archived locations you have been to that no longer have a cache...?

Edited November 27, 2008 by Snoogans

[+Vinny & Sue Team]

My offering for this thread is a bit weird, but nonetheless true, as anyone who was involved in the brouhaha at the time can testify. Here goes:

 

A bit under three years ago, I placed a Psycho Urban Cache in H3ll. Yes, in H3ll, you know, The H3ll. The 5/5 rated extreme cache was actually located just about one hundred feet into H3ll, and could only be accessed by traveling to the Back Door to H3ll (well, it was one of the Back Doors to H3ll; it appears that there are several in existence), which was located in the middle of a large and eerily barren and "dead" farm field near an abandoned farm near Centralia, PA. To access the cache, prospective finders needed to go to the published waypoint coordinates, which were located just a few feet in front of the Back Door to H3ll (which was a large glowing oval hole in the ground, measuring about ten feet across at its widest dimension, and clearly marked with warning signs as the "Back Door to H3ll") and then needed, if they wished to claim a find, to descend through the Back Door to H3ll and then proceed about one hundred feet straight ahead into H3ll, where they would find the cache container (a traditional ammo can) inserted in a cleft on the rock wall on the right. An archival photo of the Back Door to H3ll appears below:

 

 

While Groundspeak published the cache with little problem, the cache listing was destined to be short-lived. Its short life was due not so much to the mild controversy that the cache generated in the geo world durig the few months that it was in existence, but simply due to the by-now infamous fact that an entire team of cachers from the Philadelphia PA/Camden NJ area visited the cache site one sunny Saturday morning and were never seen again. All in all, five men and four women disappeared forever from the face of the earth. Three children who had been left behind outside the gateway reported that the nine geocachers had entered the doorway/glowing hole after telling the children that they would be "...back in five minutes or less, after we sign the log." The team of geocachers never returned, and local rescue crews refused to go into the Doorway after them, pointing out that there were numerous warning signs int he area which cautioned visitors not to enter the Back Door to H3ll, and warning that in the event of an emergency, rescue service workers could not and would not travel through the Back Door to H3ll.

 

Within one week after the incident described above, Groundspeak archived the cache, telling me that it was essentially "illegal" because the cache itself was "...located outside our normal space-time world and thus in an area where GPS receivers could not and would not function." Three days after they archived the cache listing, they went even further, and they redacted/de-listed the cache listing meaning that the cache listing page can no longer be found on our list of owned caches. They apparently took the extra step of redacting the listing because of the fact that a few news agencies, wishing to publish lurid tales of the disappearance of the team of geocachers inside H3ll, had found back door ways to access the archived cache listing page by visiting our profile page and looking at our list of caches owned.

 

Here, in closing, is a close-up shot of the opening at the Back Door to H3ll:

 

 

And, the only surviving photo which we have of the interior, shot from a position just inside the Back Dor to H3ll, and about 80 feet from the cache (which was located to the right of the area shown in the photograph) is:

 

 

.

Edited November 27, 2008 by Vinny & Sue Team

[Dinoprophet]

Can't go wrong with any of Quest Master's in SW Pennsylvania. These are actually still active, just not on this site.

 

Sand Quarry

 

Scattered Remains - a WWII era gunpowder facility reclaimed by the mountain

 

 

 

Polly Takes the Plunge

 

 

I'll pat my own back on Higher Education, which was on top of an 8-story campus building (understand, we don't have mountains in SE Michigan, so a view like this is a huge thrill around here)

 

 

The cache was an AOL tin painted to match this metal overhang

[+Klatch]

Thanks to the NPS we have lots of them in PA.

[+The Leprechauns]

This is an easy thread for me to reply to, because I have an entire Bookmark List for our favorite archived caches. When a cache on my Top 5% Favorites list (link in my signature line) is archived, I move it to this list.

 

From that list, my contribution is Light House Point in Washington State, also known as the "Scary Ladder Cache." It was archived when the authorities declared the area unsafe for visitors.

 

Here is the view from the top, in a photo taken from Moun10Bike's log memorializing the very FIRST drop of a trackable geocoin into a cache, in the company of Jeremy Irish on the occasion of Moun10Bike's 100th find, September 30, 2001:

 

 

Here's a photo of my daughter and me climbing the scary ladder during our visit in 2004:

 

 

Close-up of my fearless daughter on the scary ladder:

 

[+TrailGators]

ABDSP

[+Snoogans]

AWESOME!!! Keep 'em coming.

[woodstrider]

One in a series of extreme caches hidden by this one geocacher named Riptoshreds. It got archieved, the Olive Troll, after the Power-that-be got wind of it and saw a photo of someone retrieveing the container. . But don't quote me- I really don't have all the facts in hand.

 

Cool factor is it was a challenge to anyone with height issues. I was really disappointed because I hadn't gotten a chance to find it and challenge my own fear of heights.

[bogleman]

One in a series of extreme caches hidden by this one geocacher named Riptoshreds. It got archieved, the Olive Troll, after the Power-that-be got wind of it and saw a photo of someone retrieveing the container. . But don't quote me- I really don't have all the facts in hand.

 

Cool factor is it was a challenge to anyone with height issues. I was really disappointed because I hadn't gotten a chance to find it and challenge my own fear of heights.

was it this cache?

 

oh here is my obligatory post

[+Harry Dolphin]

Not as dramatic as some, but

 

 

View of the RFK Bridge (formerly the Triborough Bridge) from a cache called He[[ G^te, on Ward's Island, NYC

[+hydnsek]

Dang, Lep beat me to Light House Point.

 

How about this one? It's "archived," but I think it still supports caches...

[+tlbeers]

I just had one archived because the owner of the cache is no longer on Okinawa. The cache was called "ONE MEAN LOCAL". See link http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...d6-15509045093e It really should have been a 5/5 but there will be another cache close it.

[woodstrider]

One in a series of extreme caches hidden by this one geocacher named Riptoshreds. It got archieved, the Olive Troll, after the Power-that-be got wind of it and saw a photo of someone retrieveing the container. . But don't quote me- I really don't have all the facts in hand.

 

Cool factor is it was a challenge to anyone with height issues. I was really disappointed because I hadn't gotten a chance to find it and challenge my own fear of heights.

was it this cache?

 

oh here is my obligatory post

 

YES, That is the one!

Edited December 3, 2008 by woodstrider

[+NYPaddleCacher]

One in a series of extreme caches hidden by this one geocacher named Riptoshreds. It got archieved, the Olive Troll, after the Power-that-be got wind of it and saw a photo of someone retrieveing the container. . But don't quote me- I really don't have all the facts in hand.

 

Cool factor is it was a challenge to anyone with height issues. I was really disappointed because I hadn't gotten a chance to find it and challenge my own fear of heights.

 

It would require a day trip for you but you might want to consider this cache.

 

Regarding the cache that you described. I recall seeing one that looked similar in an old thread on extreme caches. It was located in one of the Scandinavian countries if I recall and there were lots of photos on the cache listing.

Edited December 3, 2008 by NYPaddleCacher

[+Vinny & Sue Team]

My offering for this thread is a bit weird, but nonetheless true, as anyone who was involved in the brouhaha at the time can testify. Here goes:

 

A bit under three years ago, I placed a Psycho Urban Cache in H3ll. Yes, in H3ll, you know, The H3ll. The 5/5 rated extreme cache was actually located just about one hundred feet into H3ll, and could only be accessed by traveling to the Back Door to H3ll (well, it was one of the Back Doors to H3ll; it appears that there are several in existence), which was located in the middle of a large and eerily barren and "dead" farm field near an abandoned farm near Centralia, PA. To access the cache, prospective finders needed to go to the published waypoint coordinates, which were located just a few feet in front of the Back Door to H3ll (which was a large glowing oval hole in the ground, measuring about ten feet across at its widest dimension, and clearly marked with warning signs as the "Back Door to H3ll") and then needed, if they wished to claim a find, to descend through the Back Door to H3ll and then proceed about one hundred feet straight ahead into H3ll, where they would find the cache container (a traditional ammo can) inserted in a cleft on the rock wall on the right. An archival photo of the Back Door to H3ll appears below:

 

 

While Groundspeak published the cache with little problem, the cache listing was destined to be short-lived. Its short life was due not so much to the mild controversy that the cache generated in the geo world durig the few months that it was in existence, but simply due to the by-now infamous fact that an entire team of cachers from the Philadelphia PA/Camden NJ area visited the cache site one sunny Saturday morning and were never seen again. All in all, five men and four women disappeared forever from the face of the earth. Three children who had been left behind outside the gateway reported that the nine geocachers had entered the doorway/glowing hole after telling the children that they would be "...back in five minutes or less, after we sign the log." The team of geocachers never returned, and local rescue crews refused to go into the Doorway after them, pointing out that there were numerous warning signs int he area which cautioned visitors not to enter the Back Door to H3ll, and warning that in the event of an emergency, rescue service workers could not and would not travel through the Back Door to H3ll.

 

Within one week after the incident described above, Groundspeak archived the cache, telling me that it was essentially "illegal" because the cache itself was "...located outside our normal space-time world and thus in an area where GPS receivers could not and would not function." Three days after they archived the cache listing, they went even further, and they redacted/de-listed the cache listing meaning that the cache listing page can no longer be found on our list of owned caches. They apparently took the extra step of redacting the listing because of the fact that a few news agencies, wishing to publish lurid tales of the disappearance of the team of geocachers inside H3ll, had found back door ways to access the archived cache listing page by visiting our profile page and looking at our list of caches owned.

 

Here, in closing, is a close-up shot of the opening at the Back Door to H3ll:

 

 

And, the only surviving photo which we have of the interior, shot from a position just inside the Back Dor to H3ll, and about 80 feet from the cache (which was located to the right of the area shown in the photograph) is:

 

Folks, for reasons that I do not at all understand, I have, over the past four or five weeks, been receiving a flurry of PMs and notes sent via private email, asking me, no, begging me, to share the waypoint coordinates for the starting point for the long-archived Psycho Urban Cache in H3ll, located just inside the Back Door to Hell. A typical request is one which I received last nite via email; it appears below for illustration purposes:

Hello. I am sure your team have received many e-mails asking this very question: What are the coordinates for Psycho Urban Cache in H3ll. I read about it in Really Cool Archived Caches. My friend and I are heading out to Centralia from Brownsville PA early Saturday morning and want to take in all the sights. Thank you for your time.

Folks, the reality is that I cannot share with you the starting waypoint coordinates for this long-archived cache without getting into serious trouble with Groundspeak admins and without getting into VERY serious trouble with several law enforcement agencies that were involved in the unfortunate incident that resulted in the archival and subsequent redaction and "unpublication" of the cache listing in question. One guy who contacted me last month even went so far as to offer me a thousand dollars. My reply to him was that even if he had offered me a million dollars, I could not share that information with him.

 

Period. Enuf said. Case closed. Please do not try to contact me privately to revisit this matter; it is done and closed.

 

It is worth stating here that it is true that one private, members-only Urban Exploring/Urban Exploration (UE) website, a rather small one, and one of many such sites based in Canada, does still carry a few articles about the site, and one small photo gallery of photos from the site, and I hear that one of their resident UE gurus still occasionally leads trips to the Back Door to Hell site, but the chances that you could ever find that site, much less be approved for membership (in order to gain access to those articles and photos) are very slim, and I am simply not allowed to divulge any further information about that UE site, so please do not ask. Period. End of matter. Case closed.

 

Please do not bother me about this long-archived and redacted cache or about the Back Door to Hell site.

 

Thank you for doing the needful.

 

.

[+SUp3rFM & Cruella]

Sorry to spoil the "fun".

 

You can find more information about Darvaza, Turkmenistan (Burning Gas Craters http://johnhbradley.com/pictures2.asp?var=070707darvaza).

 

At wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darvaza

[+Vinny & Sue Team]

Sorry to spoil the "fun".

 

You can find more information about Darvaza, Turkmenistan (Burning Gas Craters http://johnhbradley.com/pictures2.asp?var=070707darvaza).

 

At wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darvaza

Yes, it is true that for most or all of the photos of the PA site which have been uploaded to Groundspeak forums, we used fotos from the Darvaza site, in order to protect the confidentiality of the Back Door to Hell location in eastern PA. As we discussed/admitted on the thread about the archival of the Psycho Cache in H3ll cache on the now largely-defunct Northeast Geocaching website forum, this was simply a prudent step taken in response to direct and strongly-worded requests from the then-director (who was since deposed due to an internal scandal) of the Pennsylvania State Police and the then-director of the Health Risk Reduction division of the Pennsylvania Department of Health that we not publish and photos of the actual PA site that would or could contain landmark clues/references that would help prospective finders to locate the Back Door. Since I, along with the other parties involved, deemed this to be a very reasonable and commonsense request, we decided to comply with the request, and we have done so until this day.

 

Incidentally, the photos of the site to be found in the photo gallery at the earlier-mentioned private members-only UE website ARE indeed actual photos of the real Back Door to Hell site in eastern PA, as are the three photos of the Back Door in the United States/Pennsylvania section on the UER website (but they are available only to fifth-level (highest level of clearance) UER Premium members.)

 

.

[+Kit Fox]

I have few archived caches on my watchlist that I don't want to reveal the actual cache due to a desire to place new caches near the spot. Here are some pictures of the locations.

 

A natural spring

 

 

 

One I don't mind sharing.

 

The Ole Swimmin Hole