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Your Worst Day Geocaching


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While we all enjoy this hobby, sometimes things don't go as planned.  Ever have a day where you set out to cache and later wished you'd done something else instead?

Saturday, I drove 30 minutes to an area ripe with caches I hadn't found.  I had a nice long list, a mix of park-and-grabs and others that involved hiking.  After making one super-easy find at the halfway point, I then had 3 DNFs in a row upon hitting my destination.  Then I discovered there was a parade going through town, which prevented me from getting the next two on my list.  Later I got chased out of a parking lot and glared at suspiciously while exiting the scene of yet another DNF.  My overall DNF count for the day was higher than my find count.

And yet, guess what I'll probably be doing next Saturday...?

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Looks like "another day at the office" in the woods.

Happened to us too. We even had a whole day out caching and 1 DNF to show for it (long multi). We later returned to finish the multi only to get to the penultimate WP and only getting half a coordinate. Tried to "follow that line" hoping to get to the next WP, no joy. We then returned again, had to go to one of the first WPs because we had forgotten to solve something that would give us the other half of the coordinate. We could then continue and found GZ only to find the container missing. It's since then replaced so we have to go back to sign the log. BTW, that multi is about 80Km or 1 hour drive from here but the favorite point is waiting.

 

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I might sound strange to some; but my worst geocaching experience happened because it was too sunny and warm.

I prefer cool, overcast days with soft grey clouds and perhaps a light sprinkling rain. My body is intolerant of heat - I get heat exhaustion or even heat stroke easily. I sunburn easily, even if I wear a hat, sunscreen and all sorts of other precautions. I get horrible headaches from the brightness of the sun - even if I were dark sunglasses. To quote Adam Savage of the Mythbusters "The sun and I don't really get along"

I guess that just make me sound like a wuss when it comes to hot summer days - but it's a medical condition that perhaps some of you can relate to.

More of you can understand however, that warm sunny days also means more non-caching public (muggles, as they are often called).

So my worst caching happened on a day where the forecast called for rain and instead the morning clouds rolled off and it ended up being really hot out. When I got to the park where the caches were, I couldn't find parking - let alone look for caches in the crowds of people that were there. I came home hot, miserable, and with no smileys.

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The only thing that comes to mind was a day when my wife and I were on vacation and had taken an excursion train. During the lunchtime layover, I stopped for "a quick find". The cache was hidden in a hollow sculpture that was formed from sheet metal, that happened to be home to a nest of yellowjackets. They didn't sting me, but one did sting my wife.

I enjoyed exploring the sculpture, and we enjoyed the train ride. But the yellowjacket sting did put a damper on our day.

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2 hours ago, CascadeHandmade said:

I might sound strange to some; but my worst geocaching experience happened because it was too sunny and warm.

I prefer cool, overcast days with soft grey clouds and perhaps a light sprinkling rain.

I always prefer weather like that...love cooler weather, overcast is a bonus. Late fall/early winter is my favorite time of year.

I'm in Atlanta, so heat and humidity are the norm here from late March until late October.  With those come mosquitoes, ticks, poison ivy, wasps, kudzu, plentiful spider webs.

 

 

As for the original question, it may sound strange, but whenever I visit Stone Mountain I usually don't have much fun caching.  One particular CO has a high percentage of high difficulty caches, including two that have never been found in the 3 or 4 years they've been hidden.  He nicknamed himself (hey, here's a tip...NEVER give yourself a nickname.  It just makes you look like kind of a jerk) "The Curse of Atlanta".  That's not his official GC nickname...it's just a name he likes to call himself to, I don't know, make himself appear devious or wicked...?  Not really how it ends up looking, though...

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Possibly my worst was losing my car keys while on a rural trail about 45 mins from home in December.

I'd finished the trail and was heading back along an unlit country road to get my car (lone woman) when I suddenly realised my keys were no longer in my pocket. It was nearly dark so there was no point in retracing my steps. So I went to the pub in the village where my car was and tried to get a taxi back to where I thought I might have lost them.

No hope - it was the week before Christmas in the middle of nowhere. In fact, the pub was only open because it was doing a Christmas party for some local farmers. The landlord very kindly took me back in his car to look for the keys but no luck. It was too far to walk home, no public transport and my husband was at an event and not contactable. 

The only person I could think to call was my neighbour and I felt terrible about it as she had recently been in remission with cancer, and it was a Saturday night. Fortunately, she was lovely about it and didn't hesitate to come and pick me up. Meanwhile, the pub gave me a drink on the house and made sure I had transport home. 

The next day, my husband and I drove up to pick up the car and decided to have a quick look for the keys. Found them in about two minutes flat.

I always zip my keys in my bag or a pocket now. However, I did end up setting a trail of caches in the area. :D

 

 

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2 minutes ago, Cachez said:

Possibly my worst was losing my car keys while on a rural trail about 45 mins from home in December.

I'd finished the trail and was heading back along an unlit country road to get my car (lone woman) when I suddenly realised my keys were no longer in my pocket. It was nearly dark so there was no point in retracing my steps. So I went to the pub in the village where my car was and tried to get a taxi back to where I thought I might have lost them.

No hope - it was the week before Christmas in the middle of nowhere. In fact, the pub was only open because it was doing a Christmas party for some local farmers. The landlord very kindly took me back in his car to look for the keys but no luck. It was too far to walk home, no public transport and my husband was at an event and not contactable. 

The only person I could think to call was my neighbour and I felt terrible about it as she had recently been in remission with cancer, and it was a Saturday night. Fortunately, she was lovely about it and didn't hesitate to come and pick me up. Meanwhile, the pub gave me a drink on the house and made sure I had transport home. 

The next day, my husband and I drove up to pick up the car and decided to have a quick look for the keys. Found them in about two minutes flat.

I always zip my keys in my bag or a pocket now. However, I did end up setting a trail of caches in the area. :D

 

 

I have a small carabiner on my keys and part of my routine before leaving the car is to ensure my keys are firmly clipped onto a belt loop. One less thing to think about on the trail.

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My worst caching day was doing a maintenance visit on a water-accessible multi. I know I was there at about 11:30am because I have photos of the cache and log, and the kayak, neatly packed away in the garage, was still wet late that evening when I eventually realised something was wrong and I had no memory of what I'd been doing that day. The back of my shorts was covered in slimy mud so I presume I slipped while climbing down from the cache and hit my head on the rock. While I now have some memory of driving over to launch the kayak, the afternoon is still a complete blank and I can't help wondering if I spent it paddling around and around the bay before eventually finding where I'd parked my car.

When I went back a month later the cache had gone - I don't know whether I didn't put it back after photographing it, or it got muggled or was simply washed out of its hiding place in one of the torrential downpours we were having around then. Suffice to say the hiding place for its replacement is lower down where there's no danger of a repeat performance.

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This is a cut and paste from my 2008 find of Gl1X05KG. Locked my keys in my Jeep out in the Mojave Desert without any road nearby.

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It was about 6:30 PM, on my way home from work, with plenty of light time to find a couple more caches nearby, but I found out upon returning to my jeep, that I had locked my keys in it. My wife was away visiting relatives, so I had to call roadside assistance from my insurance company. They called a towing company in Apple Valley to send a tow truck to unlock my jeep. Over an hour had passed and it was now dark. The guy came down Wild Wash road and instead of turning left to go 3/10 of a mile south to me, he turned right and went north. He wandered around in circles as I was trying to give him instructions on coming to me. Finally, he got stuck. I walked a mile to his pos to see if I could be of any assistance. His dispatch told him that once he got unstuck that he was to return. They sent a second truck to rescue the first. But before the second truck could arrive, the first one finally worked his way out. The guy pulled forward and I thought he would stop once he got on solid ground. But to my dismay he kept going. I was absolutely shocked, that he left me in the dark, in the desert, a mile from my jeep (without keys) and two miles from the interstate.

Despite how shocked and angry I was, it was kind of humorous to watch the two trucks drive in strange circles as they were trying to find their way back to the interstate.

Now alone in the dark with just a cell phone and GPSr, I got in contact with my wife who called a neighbor, instructed him to break into our house, get one of our extra sets of keys and meet me at the Wild Wash road exit, while I hiked in the dark 2 miles to the interstate.

God bless my neighbor and my wife!! I finally got home in Apple Valley at 11:30 PM.

Not your everyday geocaching adventure. I still thought this cache was cool.

 

 

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Some time ago I wanted to show a friend of mine one of my favorite caches, which is placed about 1km inside a water cave (https://coord.info/GC2KZFE).

It was my third or fourth visit, so I was pretty familiar with the cave, at least I thought so. After a four hour drive we parked our car, got into gear and started our adventure. We took lots of photos, so it took us a little longer than necessary to get to the point where the cache is placed. After a break and a little snack we headed back, chatting and enjoying ourselves until I started to get a strange feeling. I wasn’t sure in which part of the cave we were, but thought it just looks different on the way out. We continued following the main water stream and I was getting more and more nervous. After diving through a small siphon I had to admit that I didn’t know where we are and that we have to go back to a point where I’m absolutely sure where we are. On the way back in my headlamp switched to low mode because the battery couldn’t deliver enough voltage, which was pretty useless for finding the way through the larger domes. Pulling out my spare flashlight I remembered that nobody of us told anybody what we were doing and we wouldn’t be missed for quite a while. Even if somebody noticed our absence, they wouldn’t know where to look for us. I was getting exhausted and even more nervous.

We reached a point where I knew for sure where we are and headed back out again. Suddenly my friend slipped and fell on her backbone. She fell hard. Luckily she is really a tough woman and was able to go on without my help; I was already too exhausted to carry her out and would have felt very uncomfortable leaving her back while getting help. So we went on in silence, fully concentrated and then I realized my mistake. I missed the only turn you have to take to stay on the main route. Relieved we went on and then I realized another detail: The point where I decided to go back in was already on the main route. If we just had gone 10 meters further I would have known again where we are.

Back at the car I ripped the sleeve of my dry top as a bonus. And that is not even the end of the story because my friend insisted that we also look for https://coord.info/GC43HAB as we planned, but this post is already lengthy enough.

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Out caching a couple days after a snow/ice storm. The main roads were all cleared but not the Forest Preserve road. I lost control and slid into a ditch. Called a tow truck and had to wait a few hours for him to get there. As he ran his winch, my car stayed in the ditch and it pulled his truck towards the ditch instead. He was able to run his front winch to a tree to hold his truck steady on the icy road and then was finally able to pull me out with the rear winch. So, $350 poorer but two smileys richer, I was on my way. 

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My least successful caching day was a walking/biking trail where I DNF'd 6 of the 15 caches I looked for. The worst part was that all of those caches had been found very recently before and after my DNF, so it wasn't as though they weren't there. My geosenses were just awful that day.

There have been plenty of cache outings that resulted in some pains from thorns, yellow jacket stings, stinging nettles, scrapes and bruises. And there were instances of flat tires (vehicle and bicycle) and dead car batteries. Those things added 'character' to those days.

A caching day that would probably qualify as "worst" though was during a GeoCoin challenge that resulted in a multi-day hospital stay. An inattentive driver behind us put us into a ditch and we both lost consciousness. I woke up to the emergency personnel cutting the roof off my car to remove us. I was the passenger and didn't have to stay in the hospital, but the driver was in the hospital for 4 days and has a much larger memory gap of the event than I do. That was a bad day!

 

 

Edited by noncentric
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Just a day? How about five days of consecutive disasters?

I set out to combine my two loves, sailing and geocaching. First up was the sailing, a racing regatta over two days in Canberra (capital city of Australia), so I had a 300km drive on the Saturday, towing the boat, got to the lake, rigged up and went out in my 14ft boat (NS14), it blew dogs off chains that day, I ended up with the boat upside down and being rescued, the next day was just as bad, but this time I drove a power boat and rescued other sailors.

Two days down, now came some relaxing caching, or so I thought. I had loaded a pocket query into my GPSr, so all should be good, but no, out at the edge of my target area, nothing on the GPSr! What the? Just as well I had a back up smartphone that I could use, only trouble was the battery was going flat, so I had to deviate off to get a car charger fitting to keep the phone charged, so not too bad of a day.

Day four, off on a power trail out to a small town, going well until... I tap my pocket where I keep my wallet, no wallet! I search backwards along the PT, no wallet*. So off to a larger town to cancel all my cards etc, and have a fight with the RMS (like the DOT in the US) to get a replacement drivers licence Then ring the wife to tell her not to use the cards she has as I have cancelled them...

Day five, run into a series of DNFs on a hot day, throw in the towel and drive home... Not my best experience caching.

* The wallet was found intact about six months later, under a bridge where I had been caching, and was returned to me by the police.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Rainbow Spirit
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On 8/28/2017 at 11:18 AM, MysteryGuy1 said:

Ever have a day where you set out to cache and later wished you'd done something else instead?

Often, and usually for the exact same reason: misrepresented Terrain ratings.  I don't know if it's because people don't read the descriptions at all, just read the first sentence and ignore the rest, or they just don't give a carp.  Prolly some combination of all three.  I've discussed this with many cachers at recent events, and while they generally agree, most don't care because it isn't an issue for them.  One fellow told me that--in his experience--most cachers don't read the descriptions; in their minds, caches are 1.5, 3, and 5 (easy, average, and hard).  Maybe so, but to make matters worse, on the occasions I've tried to politely point out to a CO that their terrain rating is incorrect (and why, citing the Help Center descriptions), I've been--without exception--ignored, even when they'll make other changes/corrections to the cache description.

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On 9/2/2017 at 1:24 PM, RufusClupea said:

misrepresented Terrain ratings

One thing I've learned from experience is to not depend so much on the posted terrain rating.  I did a trail in the summer of 2016 that was a 2.5 terrain and involved some very serious climbing.  So for a year I mostly avoided any and all caches with terrains of 2.5 or higher.  However, this summer I logged several caches with terrains of 3 that involved zero climbing at all.  Crazy!

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Ironically, my worst day geocaching was part of my best week of geocaching. I had a week long trip planned to the northwest quarter of Washington State. I was attempting to complete the WA State Park GeoTour. The goal was to find at least 100 of the 103 caches, and stamp a passport with the stamp located in the cache. I had spent the previous day getting across Washington (I am located in North Idaho), finding a couple of caches along the way. (That included finding the one at Steamboat State Park, which has a 700' elevation change in about half a mile.) The next day started out fine, until I got to one cache, and the stamp was missing. I knew of two other caches where the stamp was missing, along with another cache that was still under 10 feet of snow. That meant that I would not be able to complete my goal for the trip. I spent a lot of time agonizing whether I should give up, and just go home. I didn't, and this turned out to be a great trip. The rest of the trip was a lot of forts, and taking the ferry out to the San Juan Islands. There was one more missing cache on the trip. I did make a very long, very quick trip, several months later, to pick up all but one of the caches. I was only 1 of 2 out-of-state people to find 100 of the GeoTour caches.

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32 minutes ago, MysteryGuy1 said:

One thing I've learned from experience is to not depend so much on the posted terrain rating.  I did a trail in the summer of 2016 that was a 2.5 terrain and involved some very serious climbing.  So for a year I mostly avoided any and all caches with terrains of 2.5 or higher.  However, this summer I logged several caches with terrains of 3 that involved zero climbing at all.  Crazy!

Yes, it is.  I've been filtering my PQs to only include terrain ratings of 1.5 or less (while I could just as easily do that through my GPSr, it allows me to specify larger radii PQs--hence fewer of them for the same square mileage), yet I would say most of the caches rated 1.5 are actually 3 ("too difficult to ride a bike due to elevation changes or significant overgrowth").

A few years (decades?) ago, it wouldn't have made a difference to me, but with some years (and accompanying infirmities), T=3 is my making/breaking point.  Some I can make--others I can't even attempt (and I'm--regrettably :sad:--well past my climbing days).

Bottom line, Terrain ratings are the best (albeit flawed) way to tell if a particular cache is physically doable or not.  Descriptions & logs can help sometimes, but IME are even less reliable than T ratings.

As always, YMMV.

 

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6 hours ago, MysteryGuy1 said:
On 03/09/2017 at 3:24 AM, RufusClupea said:

misrepresented Terrain ratings

One thing I've learned from experience is to not depend so much on the posted terrain rating.  I did a trail in the summer of 2016 that was a 2.5 terrain and involved some very serious climbing.  So for a year I mostly avoided any and all caches with terrains of 2.5 or higher.  However, this summer I logged several caches with terrains of 3 that involved zero climbing at all.  Crazy!

There are other things that can contribute to the terrain rating besides climbing, such as distance and thickness of undergrowth. I have a T3 cache that's just a long hike (6km each way) without too much in the way of elevation change, and another that's a T4 primarily because of dense undergrowth (although it does have a fairly steep hill to walk up as well but it's not what I'd call "serious climbing").

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On ‎9‎/‎5‎/‎2017 at 9:11 PM, simpjkee said:

I think my worst day geocaching was the day I found out that geocachers were damaging property trying to find one of my caches. I find responsible and quickly archived the cache. It's made me a more thoughtful cache owner though so some good came of it.

Same...

We noted how the land owner was letting the area pretty-much rot away for new forest, as our way to get out of a series of caches that really bothered us.

One was a knee-high natural rock mound with an obvious natural cavity in the side, perfect for a hide. 

Those accessing our 1.5 simple hide had that mound widened by a few feet and (other than covering the container...) almost ground level.

Sheesh... 

Edited by cerberus1
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I've driven out of the way to find a D/ T 1.5 1.5 2 stage multi-cache, and we did eventually find it, but it took about 30 minutes due to it being in a busy university. After that I tried to find 3 more, but were all either DNFs or they haven't been found in years.

Moral of the story: Do your research : D 

Edited by TwistedCube
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