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Winter weather


pvtplt172

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Berried? Does that mean everything's covered in berries? What kind, blueberries? Saskatoons?

 

OHHHH!. You mean buried. :laughing:

 

I usually don't go for caches in the snow, when I do it's usually a newly published cache where I can follow a geotrail and know I can find it, if someone else did that day. But I am also lucky to get several chinooks (Warm, dry wind that comes over the Rockies. Melts the snow) and we can go from North Pole cold, to Florida warm, and back to cold again in as little as 2 hours, so the snow generally doesn't accumulate, and you get periods of good caching weather.

 

By the way, hows your hide coming along?

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Berried? Does that mean everything's covered in berries? What kind, blueberries? Saskatoons?

 

OHHHH!. You mean buried. :laughing:

 

I usually don't go for caches in the snow, when I do it's usually a newly published cache where I can follow a geotrail and know I can find it, if someone else did that day. But I am also lucky to get several chinooks (Warm, dry wind that comes over the Rockies. Melts the snow) and we can go from North Pole cold, to Florida warm, and back to cold again in as little as 2 hours, so the snow generally doesn't accumulate, and you get periods of good caching weather.

 

By the way, hows your hide coming along?

 

Not good! I have been so busy with things lately that I have not had time to go out and find a spot for it. Plus I plan on hiding it in a tree hole or stump because of the size of the cache. I have a small Stanley Cup that is going in the container. Unfortunately I did have a small micro hide I had permission to hide in a location then the person said no never mind.

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Here in West Michigan we have exceeded the 100 inch mark of snow already for the season so I can sympathize abit with you New Englanders. I have been doing a cache a day since the beginning of October and it's starting to get to be slim pickin's on the number of caches that are actually "findable". Did a PQ for caches with the winter attribute but even alot of those are not findable due to level of snow cover, snow plow banks, and/or no safe parking anywhere near the cache.

I've gotten use to climbing 4-5 foot plow banks and wading through knee and thigh high drifts. However, if I see the cache area is completely buried, I just nope it out of there. I hate just blindly digging trying to find a cache, better to leave it for the warmer months.

Recently did another PQ just to show caches that have been found in the last week. Figure I'll have a better chance at finding those.

Good luck and stay safe!

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I'm itching to get out to hunt caches but haven't been out since late December. Here in southern Ontario, it's still too cold, too much snow and then there's the after-effects of the ice storm. It's very likely that caches are going to be stuck in ice. I've been disappointed too many times by winter-friendly caches that really aren't ice friendly. And this year I learned that some of our winter-friendly caches really aren't ice-friendly. So this winter I added not-winter-friendly attributes to a couple of our caches. I have been out a few times to check on our truly winter-friendly caches - hanging in trees in forests (snow isn't a high where the cedars shelter the area). They are doing well.

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Went out last Saturday (Toronto area) to a series of 17 caches that had been placed in early December. Even then, we only found 10 of them. The others are either buried in snow, or we were getting too tired to bother looking hard for. The CO confirmed that a couple are probably buried in the knee- to thigh-high snow. It was a nice walk, though - hard packed snow trail, weaving in and out of fallen trees from the ice storm, walking right past the "trail closed due to fallen trees" signs. :laughing:

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I planned to do a cache in a swamp, purposedly waited for winter time to easily access GZ over frozen ground. Usually we have strong winters with a lot of snow on our side of the Alps. However, this year's winter over here is so warm, the swamp still is muddy. Bad luck, I guess...

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2 for 2 today. One wading hip deep in the snow for about 100 feet. The other was easier, until you got to gz, it was only knee deep. Took me longer to get the little critter out to sign the log than to spot it. Needed to use some on-site engineering to retrieve the prize. 10 minutes later, cache was in hand. :grin:

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Besides I thought that caches in theburriedsnow were not allowed as per the rules.

HA! I suppose if someone dug a hole in the snow to place the cache, that might be the case. But what if you put it in a natural snow depression and pile the snow on top? What if you place it, and the snow drifts in on top? :unsure:

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Besides I thought that caches in theburriedsnow were not allowed as per the rules.

HA! I suppose if someone dug a hole in the snow to place the cache, that might be the case. But what if you put it in a natural snow depression and pile the snow on top? What if you place it, and the snow drifts in on top? :unsure:

 

I see you see what I did there, LOL... guess that makes a lot of caches on the ground covered in snow illegal then, includeing one of mine that I wont be able to check on till enough snow melts to get to it.

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Besides I thought that caches in theburriedsnow were not allowed as per the rules.

HA! I suppose if someone dug a hole in the snow to place the cache, that might be the case. But what if you put it in a natural snow depression and pile the snow on top? What if you place it, and the snow drifts in on top? :unsure:

I guess it all depends on whether the reviewer had his/her cup of coffee yet.

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Besides I thought that caches in theburriedsnow were not allowed as per the rules.

HA! I suppose if someone dug a hole in the snow to place the cache, that might be the case. But what if you put it in a natural snow depression and pile the snow on top? What if you place it, and the snow drifts in on top? :unsure:

 

I see you see what I did there, LOL... guess that makes a lot of caches on the ground covered in snow illegal then, includeing one of mine that I wont be able to check on till enough snow melts to get to it.

Are we saying that proper maintenance of a cache includes shoveling the snow at GZ?

Edited by wmpastor
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384709cb-2ab7-42e6-894f-01b19bfc2dd6.jpg

Terrain ratings may jump a bit higher in winter. :P:o

 

A level five terrain LPC! What's the world coming to???laughing.gif

 

That cache clearly violates the guidelines as it is buried. I suggest immediate archival. :yikes:

Yes, but if the terrain is listed as 5, you couldn't be sure if it's at the top of the pole or bottom! :rolleyes:

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Yep, living in the Northeastern U.S., one of the first things I noticed after LPC's started rearing their ugly heads (I predate their existence in my area :lol:) is that it is very common for snowplow crews in shopping complexes to pile snow at the base of lampposts. I've actually taken a few photos over the years. None where I was aware there was a buried LPC, just "if there was a cache there" situations. I'm sure I posted a couple to Twitter.

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Yep, living in the Northeastern U.S., one of the first things I noticed after LPC's started rearing their ugly heads (I predate their existence in my area :lol:) is that it is very common for snowplow crews in shopping complexes to pile snow at the base of lampposts. I've actually taken a few photos over the years. None where I was aware there was a buried LPC, just "if there was a cache there" situations. I'm sure I posted a couple to Twitter.

In the photo, there's a cache at the obvious location. I posted the photo with a note, since i had found the cache in warmer weather. A cacher with no other finds and no email address claimed a find shortly after the photo was published and said:

 

That’s one more find for me! Thanks so much for hiding this geocache.

Before we blame those puppy-eating intro-app n00bs, I'm beginning to think a friend of the CO is being a prankster!

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Yep, living in the Northeastern U.S., one of the first things I noticed after LPC's started rearing their ugly heads (I predate their existence in my area :lol:) is that it is very common for snowplow crews in shopping complexes to pile snow at the base of lampposts. I've actually taken a few photos over the years. None where I was aware there was a buried LPC, just "if there was a cache there" situations. I'm sure I posted a couple to Twitter.

In the photo, there's a cache at the obvious location. I posted the photo with a note, since i had found the cache in warmer weather. A cacher with no other finds and no email address claimed a find shortly after the photo was published and said:

 

That’s one more find for me! Thanks so much for hiding this geocache.

Before we blame those puppy-eating intro-app n00bs, I'm beginning to think a friend of the CO is being a prankster!

 

Yeah, I think that's an experienced Geocacher prankster. So is that snow gone yet? Looks like some of that wet, heavy "barely got below 32 degrees" snow like they get in Virginia or something. :lol:

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Winter in New England really is a pain for caching. We decided to take the snowmachine trails out and see what caches we could find, but it's been proving pretty difficult. Slogging through three feet of snow has been exhausting and we even found a few caches that were completely encased in ice. Looks like we'll have to wait until things thaw out to add these to our logs. (Or buy ice picks..)

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Yep, living in the Northeastern U.S., one of the first things I noticed after LPC's started rearing their ugly heads (I predate their existence in my area :lol:) is that it is very common for snowplow crews in shopping complexes to pile snow at the base of lampposts. I've actually taken a few photos over the years. None where I was aware there was a buried LPC, just "if there was a cache there" situations. I'm sure I posted a couple to Twitter.

In the photo, there's a cache at the obvious location. I posted the photo with a note, since i had found the cache in warmer weather. A cacher with no other finds and no email address claimed a find shortly after the photo was published and said:

 

That’s one more find for me! Thanks so much for hiding this geocache.

Before we blame those puppy-eating intro-app n00bs, I'm beginning to think a friend of the CO is being a prankster!

 

Yeah, I think that's an experienced Geocacher prankster. So is that snow gone yet? Looks like some of that wet, heavy "barely got below 32 degrees" snow like they get in Virginia or something. :lol:

At the time of the photo a couple of weeks ago, it had been between 0ºF & 25ºF for several weeks straight. We've just had a week of 30-50ºF, & half the snow has melted. A bit more snow is scheduled for this week.

Edited by wmpastor
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Winter is not a problem for caching around here in New Brunswick. Most caches are placed above the snow line.

 

Ma and I have found about 500 caches since Dec 1 and have hid about 75 in that same period.

 

 

*************

 

A neighbour who is spending two months in Florida said the following in a recent email:

 

“We have been following Moncton weather from here and it seems like this winter has been a real lulu. I am starting to think that the snowbirds do have the right idea.”

 

I replied

 

“The last storm 2 days ago was great but the previous one was supposed to give us 30 cms but it was mostly rain here. We were very disappointed. We have done some cross skiing and will be going again today although we don’t know if they have done the trails after last nights 10 cms. We should be getting 10 more cms by tomorrow morning.

Yesterday we walked 8 kms on snowmobile trails in Turtle Creek area picking up 30 geocaches. The snow was often hip deep off the trail. Monday I snowshoed to Shediac Island with a group and did about 10kms, checking on the conditions of the 29 geocaches over there. Next week we may go finish the job. Tomorrow we will snowshoe over to Cocagne Island to check on the 28 geocaches. March 1 we will have more than 100 people at the center in Grande Digue for the annual geocaching event to go over the islands. http://coord.info/GC4V1EV

 

Maybe that makes us snowbirds”

 

************************

 

Here is part of the story of our 4 hour maintenance run on the island

 

Crossing the ice to the islands is often possible without snowshoes but the recent storms has left a thick layer of snow on the ice so snowshoes were needed. Once on the island we had to work hard. The snow was deep and we were often sinking deep even with snowshoes and in addition, the snow was moist and heavy and stuck to the snowshoes.

 

It was hard work going through the woods but it was a nice day and we enjoyed the challenge. After finding number of caches and making necessary repairs and replacements, we eventually got across the island and then were finally able to walk in the open along the dunes as we headed north checking more caches. Eventually we had to head back into the woods and cross the island again checking caches, including our favourite, the Condos cache. http://coord.info/GC19F3D

 

 

 

.

Edited by Ma & Pa
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I think caching has gotten easier now that lakes are frozen.

 

 

Yup I noticed my Finnish caching pal suddenly had a T5 find and he's no abseiler... he'd strolled across a frozen lake for one.

 

This winter in England has just been rain rain rain - lots of caches including one of mine will have got washed away. Another week or two of dry weather before walking by the Thames will be safe in many spots.

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I think caching has gotten easier now that lakes are frozen.

The snow every-other-day finally stopped and since we finally broke down (before I do), grabbing the last humongous snowblower, thought we'd be caught up enough to head to a multi that ends in a lake.

- The past coupla days almost fifty... figures...

Lake's still frozen, with seven inches of water on top.

Have to head out with Winter waders to walk on top of the lake.

:laughing:

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Yep, living in the Northeastern U.S., one of the first things I noticed after LPC's started rearing their ugly heads (I predate their existence in my area :lol:) is that it is very common for snowplow crews in shopping complexes to pile snow at the base of lampposts. I've actually taken a few photos over the years. None where I was aware there was a buried LPC, just "if there was a cache there" situations. I'm sure I posted a couple to Twitter.

In the photo, there's a cache at the obvious location. I posted the photo with a note, since i had found the cache in warmer weather. A cacher with no other finds and no email address claimed a find shortly after the photo was published and said:

 

That’s one more find for me! Thanks so much for hiding this geocache.

Before we blame those puppy-eating intro-app n00bs, I'm beginning to think a friend of the CO is being a prankster!

 

Yeah, I think that's an experienced Geocacher prankster. So is that snow gone yet? Looks like some of that wet, heavy "barely got below 32 degrees" snow like they get in Virginia or something. :lol:

At the time of the photo a couple of weeks ago, it had been between 0ºF & 25ºF for several weeks straight. We've just had a week of 30-50ºF, & half the snow has melted. A bit more snow is scheduled for this week.

 

Yes, I did not mean to imply that Philadelphia doesn't get cold, or that was "lame snow". Lame cache, yes. :laughing:

 

Even places like Cincinnati have experienced single digit daytime highs this winter. It has indeed been brutal. The 1st or 2nd snowiest winter in my Geocaching career. I remember my very first winter (2003-2004) being quite the snowy one. But fortunately for me, I got to take 12 weekend trips to central New Jersey that winter, and cached my butt off. By the standards of caching your butt off back then. :)

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Usually we have knee deep snow in February here, at the bottom of the Alps. Caching isn't very popular for me, then, just for special reasons: Earlier I mentioned the swamp cache I intentionally wanted to try in winter because it should be frozen then. It never was cold enough this winter. However, I got there last weekend and now it was hot & dry (!!) enough to cross the swamp without special equipment. In mid February!

 

Plus, I've got my first tick byte. In mid February!!

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Sometimes it is not easy to get a cache in winter but dedicated cachers do what they have to do to get a cache. Here are two winter related logs from châtelaine for two of our caches. Very funny stuff.

 

****************************************

 

We had intended on picking this cache up enroute but ran out of time, so we decided to make one more stop on the way home. Well, we drove as far as the snow plow had gone and then looked in dismay at the 500 meters we still had left to travel. Its already 5:30 p.m. so none of us really want to walk in and back but none of us want to leave it there either. Finally, egging on Herr Minnz he agrees to drive over the ridge row left behind by the plow its really not that high and is definitely frozen solid. Once past that we can pretty much see bare pavement all the way to the cache except the snow drifts across the pavement were a tad deceiving and I wasnt too sure that we were going to actually get through that one drift. But we did and we drove until we were parallel to the cache with 70 meters still to go. No choice but to post-hole. Well, hindsight being 20-20 we might have been better off taking the time to don our snowshoes but then we wouldnt have found ourselves rolling in the snow with laughter. Globuf went tripping along ahead of us, just flying over the snow. I swear she moves so fast that the snow doesnt have time to grab her feet and haul her in. Me on the other hand, well I move slowly and deeply. Sort of up to my crotch deep in the words of Walden07. I am wallowing in all this snow and shes not doing a whole lot better. Globuf in the meantime arrives at the cache only to break the wire as she removes it from its perch. No doubt about it, that little sucker is not going to hang anymore. Worst of all, no where to wedge it. Well, being the kind people that we are, we decide that since the CO is so nice (Ma all the time, Pa quite often) and we have just had a great weekend with them, well do some maintenance and replace the container. Now you realize that means getting back to the vehicle, through all that REALLY deep snow, get the cache and make another round trip. Do we really want to do this? Im questioning our folly as once more Im up to my crotch in snow. I decide the only way to get back to the car is to crawl. So off I set but then I think what if I sink in while Im on my hands and knees; I could plunge my head into the snow and suffocate! Up I get, all the while were laughing like a bunch of hyenas. Back at the vehicle Herr Minnz has found a new container and is trying to persuade Globuf to put on snowshoes for the return trip. She figures weve made enough of a geotrail that she doesnt need them. Im not arguing with her, Im just letting her make the trip by herself this time. Cache in place, now we have to get back through all those snowdrifts. Just gun it we advise Herr Minnz, so he does and we plow our way out. Whew.

 

Lord only knows what anyone watching our antics from the Trans Canada Highway must have thought. Twas the best adventure ever (well, of the weekend anyway). TFTC

 

***************************************

 

We had a great time caching in Truro with the COs and others but the best adventures happened in Sackville, almost home, but we just HAD to stop for a couple of micro-logics. This one we had pretty much given up on before we ever got there since Pikpik had been by a week earlier and couldnt get to it due to the extraordinary amount of snow that we have had to contend with this winter. But Herr Minnz is always the optimist and figured the snow had likely melted enough in the intervening week. As we drove up to GZ we can see the guard rail where we think its going to be totally clear of snow. Unfortunately, the guard rail on the other side of the road was buried in the snow and, yes, you guessed it, THAT is where the lucky little cache is hiding. Walden07, Globuf and I jump out of the vehicle while Herr Minnz goes to turn it around. The three of us follow our respective GPS to GZ and all three actually take us to exactly the same spot where, coincidentally, there is a post in the guard rail. We can tell this because the very top half-inch of the guard rail is peeking out of the snow. So, we begin to dig. Its pretty easy to clear out the top half of the guard rail, except the cache isnt there. The bottom half is a little trickier because we are having to dig through ice, not just snow. Finally we get a hole just large enough for me to get my hand inside with a little pushing and squeezing. Im thinking, yeah, but am I going to get it out? That wasnt the problem. The problem was that the cache wasnt there! Oh dear we think, its a nano, more than likely we dislodged while we were digging. Now we have to dig through the snow for a nano! As Walden07 and I are contemplating this very sad state of affairs Globuf gives up. Actually, she doesnt. She simply walks down to the next post which is half uncovered, sticks her hand in and pulls out the nano. Ha. Well, the jokes on her because she drops the log in the snow! Now she has to start digging. Never did find that sucker but I happened to have a nice rite as rain nano log in my caching bag so now the cache is safely back in place with a brand new log!

 

Time to go home. I cant take any more adventure. Not to mention my sides hurt from laughing so much! TFTC.

 

.

 

,

Edited by Ma & Pa
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