Favorite Injuries

[+klipsch49er]

Last year, while scaling a 5 foot raod cut to make a terrain 2 difficulty 1.5 find in a tree that was a post for a barbed wire fence, I slipped and cut my stomach. The wound was about 8 inches long and bled profusely, but I was more concerned about the rusty nature of the barbs that caused the cut. Although you can not tell by my typing, no "lock jaw" resulted, got a cool scar though!

 

This year a good friend found a terrain 3.5 cache and hopped down from a picknick table and is now recovering from a compression fracture of his 12th vertibre .

 

Geocaching can be dangerous! So I was wondering.... Are there any good "Short" stories out there where an injury was incurred while Geocaching.

 

Please list your injury and the terrain and difficulty of your find attempt. Oh and please don't whine!

 

This may be oneof those guy things! You know...my scaris bigger than your's, kind of like on Jaws! I'd like the girls to not be shy about there adventure here as well!

 

Happy caching! Oh, and safely too!

[+BCandMsKitty]

I got a bad scratch around the side of my face when a wild raspberry vine wrapped around my face while hunting a cache called "Bloody Thorns"

 

Does that count?

 

I know ... boring .. but that's it for me!

[+NicknPapa]

I've had a few run ins with Green Briar Vines but that's about it. So far anyway.....

[+StarBrand]

I've never gotten any "serious" injury while caching but I have had a large number of scrapes and bruises.

 

I slipped and fell over some boulders one time and tore my clothes to go along with a few bleeding minor cuts and a large bruise on my side. My GPS unit landed under me and my full weight with less damage.

[+the4dirtydogs]

Does poison oak count. I get the stuff like 3 times a year. Just your normal scrapes and cuts.

[+Schizoid2k]

I leaned in to get a cache by a wooded area, and got a nice slash on my head... the perils of not having any hair for protection.

I always wear a cap now!

[+wimseyguy]

"Favorite" injury? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

 

I got bit by a copperhead snake two summers ago. It is certainly my most serious injury, but it isn't a favorite anything. Well maybe a favorite cautionary story to tell.

[+Chief301]

"Favorite" injury? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

 

.

 

Inconceivable!

[+MamaKatS]

Nothing more than thorn scratches and bruises from tripping & falling so far here. However, my 17 yo did step into a hole up to her thigh and twisted her ankle once. My motorcycle accident story is MUCH cooler, albeit, much more humiliating. LOL!

[+birder428]

Nothing quite as exciting as you all... I was with my daughter who was in search of a 1/1.5 (I think) that I had already found. It was a fake bolt in a guard rail. I bent over the guardrail to look on the back, and with my focus on the guard rail did not notice the half-inch diameter tree stump that had all vegetation weed-whacked off. It went straight into my forehead -- at least it wasn't my eyeball! Head wounds bleed a lot, and my daughter was very concerned as a dribbled blood in the parking lot, but all's well that ends well.

 

PS: She didn't find the cache - it was missing.

Edited February 8, 2011 by birder428

[+MoonCatKDT & Peanut]

KDT has a knack for tripping over downed wire fences, he got a pretty serious cut on his calf before winter that he almost needed stitches for. So now, whenever we are caching i warn him as soon as i see a wire fence on the ground, i warn him so he doesn't fal again haha

 

My baking scar story is much, much better

[RedShoesGirl]

on the owl canyon playground cache in the california desert. only a 2.5 if one had gone up the logical way. i went straight up the side of the slippery hill, fell and broke a rib. ouch. my own fault for not looking around for a better route. there was a wash that went straight to the cache. after all that it was full of rocks, dirt, spent shotgun shells and a dirty golf ball.

[+Penlowe]

I mooned the school nurse today

I'm a noob (painfully so). I got super excited when I realized there was one near the campus where I work. I had thirty minutes free before work and decided to try a preliminary look. I got very warm (I think) made a mental list of what I'd need for serious looking and headed to my post. I though I had grazed a mesquite, I'd felt the poke and seen the mesquite, but it kept hurting. I stopped at the bathroom and undid my pants to look, sure enough there are a couple hair thin cactus spines in my hip. So I told my boss I was headed to the nurse. She is now totally intrigued by geocaching and my hip is all better.

[+KBLAST]

This summer I got poison something or other (how can you tell when you dig through a little of all of it?!) I then got a secondary infection that I had to have drained and had to wear a sling and a wrap on my arm for a few weeks. That was a 3 terrain 4 difficulty cache.

 

Last summer my teenage daughter was doing a 4.5 terrain tree climb and was on her way down from the first stage and lost her grip on the rope. She landed on the back of her neck. She was dazed for a bit, but she got up and walked on to the next stage with me. While at the second stage, she said her back was hurting a little, so I looked at it, and it was all bruised. I took her to the emergency room, and it turned out she had broken her neck (C7 was crushed and others were hurt). She was immobilized in the hospital for a week and had to wear a halo for 8 months. She is now out of the halo, is actively participating in sports, and is waiting for the doctor to release her to climb her next tree.

[+MamaKatS]

This summer I got poison something or other (how can you tell when you dig through a little of all of it?!) I then got a secondary infection that I had to have drained and had to wear a sling and a wrap on my arm for a few weeks. That was a 3 terrain 4 difficulty cache.

 

Last summer my teenage daughter was doing a 4.5 terrain tree climb and was on her way down from the first stage and lost her grip on the rope. She landed on the back of her neck. She was dazed for a bit, but she got up and walked on to the next stage with me. While at the second stage, she said her back was hurting a little, so I looked at it, and it was all bruised. I took her to the emergency room, and it turned out she had broken her neck (C7 was crushed and others were hurt). She was immobilized in the hospital for a week and had to wear a halo for 8 months. She is now out of the halo, is actively participating in sports, and is waiting for the doctor to release her to climb her next tree.

 

Dang! You win! (or she does, rather) Glad she is OK.

[+edscott]

"Favorite injury"??? Don't like blood so rule those out.. Heel spurs were a drag on long hikes so don't like them... Pokes in the eye hurt as does falling hard on rocks so I'm not into that... Guess I don't really have a favorite injury.

[+Sol seaker]

I was caching alone along a trail in a wooded area. I was looking for the cache when a muggle came down the trail. I stepped up onto a nearby log and looked at the beautiful creek nearby, as if I was just off the trail to do that.

When I slid I fell so fast I didn't know I was falling until I was down. I have lightening quick reflexes!!!

I hit the log I had been standing on full force on my back with the speed of my fall adding to the impact.

I rolled off the log and was on my hands and knees for a long time because I was blacking out. The pain was intense.

when I finally was able to stand, I barely was able to make it back to the car. (I even bypassed another cache I was in such bad shape!!) I really didn't know if I'd make it. Luckily I had been on my way back and it wasn't far.

My back got worse for days before it started to get better. I wasn't able to walk more than about 50 feet for months. It took a long time to heal that one, but I'm doing great now.

That injury got me to appreciate LPC's because that was about all I could get!!!!

 

A friend of mine fell down a steep slope covered in scree. He was trying to get to a 5 terrain cache. He showed up at my house bloody from shoulder to ankle all down his side with two cracked ribs.

His response? "We have to go back and get that one next weekend." He had not made it to the cache.

It's a good idea to cache with a buddy, especially on 5 terrains!!

Edited February 8, 2011 by Sol seaker

[+Semper Questio]

I don't remember the D?T ratings on my cache, but it was on a high retaining wall that I decided I could climb. I did fine until I got to the top, decided it was time to come down, and just as I was repositioning my right hand, my left handhold came out. Down I went about 20' and I landed on my feet on a cement sidewalk shattering both heels. I was in the hospital a month and off my feet entirely for 4 months, didn't walk again for 5 months (the docs said it may be as much as 2 years before I would walk again). You can read the details and check out pics and xrays at my injury blog - Frankenfeet.

[+RobDJr]

The only geocaching-related injuries I've ever sustained that even come close to being worthy of the word 'favorite' are all variations of bruises and contusions of the ego resulting from failure to find a cache.

 

As far as physical injuries go (and fortunately they have been few), the most they got was a shake of the head and a mutter of, "that was dumb", along with a mental note to try not to do that again in the future.

 

But as much as they might have smarted at the moment I admitted defeat, there are a few DNF's that are the only geocaching experience approaching injury (albeit a mental and mostly imaginary one)that I have ever found myself reminiscing about afterward.

[+CanadianRockies]

I stumbled across a wasp nest and probably was stung 8-10 times before I figured out what had happened. I'm glad I'm not allergic to that venom.

[+Coordinate Bloodhounds]

My wife has fallen and skinned her knees. On a 1 cache. I have skinned knees and elbows, but I think the very worst was when I got into some chiggers and I itched for two weeks.

[+GeoReapers]

While caching out in the Deschutes River area, We got scratched by some rather innocuous looking tall plants. Said plants ended up provoking blisters all over our forearms that ended up merging into one mega blister.

 

Still got the cache, though.

Edited February 9, 2011 by GeoReapers

[+Skittler]

I had a very slight paper cut from an unbound logbook recently...

[+GeoGeeBee]

Aside from getting bitten by ticks or stuck by brambles, I only have one real injury from geocaching. And even that one isn't especially geocaching specific, I just happened to be looking for a cache when it happened.

 

I slipped on an icy sidewalk while looking for a cache in weather that would have kept a sane person at home. That was on January 11, and there is still a remnant of the lump on my left hip. The huge, multi-colored bruise lasted a couple of weeks.