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Logging current water / mud levels


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As I live and work in the Thames Valley a large % of local caches are considerably muddier / wetter to reach at present than they might be in drier times. Sometimes that means getting mud on your trousers; in other cases even approaching alone / with children could be extremely dangerous.

I look through logs both for extra hints and to plan suitability (Oxford Stone Junior is 3 1/2 so anything roadside is out). I appreciate, and am adding, comments on water levels / muddiness, and have seen this appreciated in turn ("to add to OS's note, access from E just as bad as from W" etc)

Such notes might be seen as cluttering the log - but I think the helpfulness for people who want to plan a safe and not too wet / muddy caching trip, outweighs that. So keep those comments coming even if it's just an aside in your log.

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I have disabled a few of my hides due to exceptional levels of water & mud, I could say this would only effect these hides in extreme circumstances but that is exactly what we've had in the past few months!

 

There were two occasions whereby I disabled other hides having found for myself that the dry leaf filled ditch that had been adjacent to GZ was now a moat several feet deep and just as wide across, the cache was accessible with extreme caution but the difficulty rating should have doubled!

 

I am very proactive with my cache updates as producer of such hides in muddy places and I too think it a good idea to add "Notes" where applicable to warn the not quite so prepared that it might not be the same leafy lane as seen in last Summers photographs :rolleyes:

 

Good idea and one I agree with :D

Edited by JJEF
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Pfft, bunch of wusses!

 

A few puddles, a bit of mud, so what? It's walking in the country in a British winter. It's a given you're getting muddy. Stick to the urban caches if that's a worry, and then you're more likely to end up with dog muck on your shoes instead.

 

Fair go on including anything special in comments, but not disabling a cache. Cachers are supposed to make their own decisions about what is safe and what isn't, and what's too muddy for some in posh trousers and trainers is just another country ramble to others.

 

Come on, I expected more of you!

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Pfft, bunch of wusses!

 

A few puddles, a bit of mud, so what? It's walking in the country in a British winter. It's a given you're getting muddy. Stick to the urban caches if that's a worry, and then you're more likely to end up with dog muck on your shoes instead.

 

Fair go on including anything special in comments, but not disabling a cache. Cachers are supposed to make their own decisions about what is safe and what isn't, and what's too muddy for some in posh trousers and trainers is just another country ramble to others.

 

Come on, I expected more of you!

I have disabled caches due to intemperate weather in the past but not to preserve the integrity of the boots of 'wusses'.

The disable feature was used in the occurrence of a river and canal which had become ‘one’. This action was taken to acquaint fellow cachers that the cache was completely inaccessible and the towpath was in parts, officially closed. So, in order to not waste the time of cachers going out there, the affected caches were disabled.

So in short, there are sometimes informed, persuasive and exacting reasons for disabling a cache due to inclement weather.

Edited by thehoomer
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I would hope that if it's a series then any current water level info would be on #1 of that series.

But I doubt that would happen in most cases.

 

Obvious problem there is that some people will do the caches in reverse order - or be on a tangent and just pick some off in the middle...

 

(Don't tell me that's not allowed and I've got to go back and do the Route Canal series in order...???)

 

More the merrier though - while dartymoor thinks it's spurious, thehoomer and I and other people in the Oxford area will know stories of kids getting swept off the Thames towpath and so on. It's a genuine safety thing, not just preserving a nice pair of jeans.

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Where rivers, streams, lakes or canals are involved then I think cache owners should be keeping a close watch on the safety of thier caches, I recently temporarily disabled 3 of my caches whilst the water levels where so high, I would not want anyone to risk thier life going for one of my caches. That said, I also think that posting what the conditions are like on the day you visit a cache is all part of the story that cachers should be adding to thier log anyway.

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I'm always very grateful if conditions underfoot are mentioned in others' logs.

 

I have some mobility issues and would often pick (for example) a towpath cache or something in similar terrain to try; obviously I'm not going to go tripping off to the heart of flood country in the conditions we have at the moment, but in general it's great if I know what the ground is like. What might just mean soggy jean bottoms or a welly-cleaning job for most people can be really tricky for me, particularly if I go out alone.

 

And yes, I probably am a wuss; one cache we did the mud was of that 'holding' kind it's hard to pull your boots out of and I did actually get quite scared. Sorry :cry:

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You've reminded me that the canal towpath N of GC3TFQ0 has been washed away and you need to climb along a fence over a stream if you arrive from that direction... I'm very happy to see that thehoomer and another cacher have already flagged this up in their logs, possibly saving a lot of hassle / danger for a family / reduced mobility caching trip.

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I would hope that if it's a series then any current water level info would be on #1 of that series.

But I doubt that would happen in most cases.

 

Obvious problem there is that some people will do the caches in reverse order - or be on a tangent and just pick some off in the middle...

I chose to put the flood / mud info on the Bonus cache because that's also where the explanation of the whole series and the map resides, and the other caches in the series link to this.

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