What was the hardest cache you did?

[+Macro]

I'm not just asking about a rating...What was the most difficult cache you logged a find against.

 

What made it hard? Physically difficult? Scary? Well hidden? Required solving a difficult puzzle?

 

Lets hear it.

 

My vote is a three way tie between "Wheretogo?Vertigo!" and "The Teddy Roosevelt" both by King Pelinore, and "Revenge on the King" by Mopar

 

More than just difficult to locate, these places were just plain scary. I still have nightmares about that swamp...I can honestly say that I am a changed man since that experience.

 

Vertigo

 

Teddy Roosevelt

 

Revenge

[+Mopar]

I'll give Pellinore another vote for the Teddy R.!

As for Wheretogo?Vertigo! That wasn't so much hard, as it was TERRIFYING! (btw, I'm pretty much afraid of heights, and dying, and that one has both elements!)

Add Muskrats, Mosquitos & Muck by Marty621 onto that list as well. I'm willing to bet as soon as my gonads get big enough to try Marty's Melvin's Multiple Madness I'll be adding that to my list as well. After M,M&M, I have so far refused to attempt one like this solo, hehehehe

 

Illegitimus non carborundum!

[+Jamie Z]

Mine was Geocache. I searched three times before I found it. What made it really difficult is that unbeknownst to me, the nearby lake was flooded and covered the trail normally leading to the cache, so I had to bushwack for 3/4 of a mile over very rough terrain. Gullies and ravines galore.

 

When I went back the third time, the trail was exposed, but covered with mud. Still, it was easier (but not as fun) than slogging straight through the woods.

 

Jamie

[+Renegade Knight]

This gives me an idea. There is a spot near Shoshone Falls in Idaho where you can stand straddeling a crack in the rocks. The crack exists becaue the rock face of a large cliff has separated from the main land mass. Looking down through the crack you can't see any support for what you are standing on for a couple of hundred feet and if I recall correctly then you can only see it on the land mass side and not the canyon side. Needless to say this is unnearving (which is why like a moron I did it with all the other guys I was with). The thing I can't figure out is where to put the cache! Maybe I'll go down river a bit and showcase another canyon feature. A multi leg cache.

[wanderlust]

The most difficult cache I have encountered yet would have to be TUBE TORCHER located near Asheville, NC. You can go there and read the logs. It's relatively new, but it is INSANE! Tight tubes, DARKNESS, dizzying heights, mazes of tunnels...whew, it exhausts me just remembering it!

 

Wanderlust

[wanderlust]

Also , check this one out ...RUMBLING BALD ADVENTURE CACHE.

 

It was placed by the same guy who did TUBE TORCHER...Crotalus Rex. He and his Smoky Mountains Extreme Team are responsible for placing some very exciting and challenging caches in our region.

 

In this one, you enter the deep and dark bowels of a VERY rocky mountain. Caving, darkness, and climbing...how much more fun yet difficult can it get!

 

Wanderlust

[King Pellinore]

thanks for the plugs, guys

 

King Pellinore

[+15Tango]

the hardest cache i found was cherokee regional park in minnesota, placed by king boreas. there's an easy way to the cache and a hard way, and of course my fiancée and i had to pick the hard way. the cache itself is just below the top of the mississippi river bluff in st. paul, and we parked at the bottom (our first mistake). the parking lot was a solid sheet of ice (and i've subsequently driven past, and it is now barricaded off until the minnesota mud and ice season is officially over, probably sometime in august). there is a trail to the top, and it also was solid ice--a cacher who came by later and from the top refered to it as a glacier. of course, i'm your typical sierra clubber/imba/etc. leave-no-trace advocate who beleives in staying in the trail, no matter what the condition, but it didn't matter, as the parts of the hillside that weren't trail was mud at least two inches thick and almost as slippery as the trail. as an added bonus, i've lived in minnesota for nearly five years and never knew there were so many sticker bushes until i started geocaching. suffice it to say, this is the first cache that i was so warn out by the time i got there, that i hardly looked at the loot, i just took enough time to write t.n.l.n. in the log book. the trip back down was even worse, and when we got back to the skating rink cum. parking lot, there was a guy putting on his ice climbing gear, and if he would have been there when we started, i would have gladly given him anything he wanted for his gear. a close second is to try the hyland ski summit in minnesota from the backside--lots of those lovely sticker bushes there, too. 15T

[Geo Quest]

The hardest one I found was The Contact Cache by Fractal. It wasn't hard for physical reasons but it was mentally challenging. I'm still waiting for an adventure-type cache to be placed near me. Maybe I'll have to be the one to place it!

 

[+GatoRx]

The most difficult cache I've found was the Brass Affair cache, which has since been archived. The terrain was quite easy - a cemetary, but the cache was quite difficult (a George Washington coin, about the size of a gold dollar, buried under about an inch of sand.) It took my group of five people about 45 minutes to find. The GPSr got us in the right area, but from there we were trying to use a roman numeral from the clue to find the coin. Needless to say, we were checking all the headstones, but the number was referencing a small marker on a tree to count the burial plots. It was my first geocache, and I was the one who found the coin, so obviously, I was hooked after that.

[+GatoRx]

The most difficult cache I've found was the Brass Affair cache, which has since been archived. The terrain was quite easy - a cemetary, but the cache was quite difficult (a George Washington coin, about the size of a gold dollar, buried under about an inch of sand.) It took my group of five people about 45 minutes to find. The GPSr got us in the right area, but from there we were trying to use a roman numeral from the clue to find the coin. Needless to say, we were checking all the headstones, but the number was referencing a small marker on a tree to count the burial plots. It was my first geocache, and I was the one who found the coin, so obviously, I was hooked after that.

[+Nuwati]

It's got to be the TUBE TORCHER. If there is anything like near western nc let me know. I just finished reading Angels and Demons (by the same guy who wrote the Davinci Code), this cache came right out of the book.

Nuwati

[+Tprints]

By far the hardest cache I've ever found is... What a Long Strange Trip it's Been

 

It has 20 steps of various types, including puzzles, quizzes, and you name it. The entire cache took me about 10 miles of hiking through streams and up & down hills. The total time was around 14 hours.

[+BeachBuddies]

No contest -- it's Blood & Guts in Virginia (aka Iron & Stone). It's been posted for a year, and no one's found it yet.

 

I'm on a team of a dozen or so cachers. We've been working on it non-stop for a couple weeks. We're getting close.

Edited January 22, 2004 by BeachBuddies

[+RocketMan]

It had to be Off to Find a Wizard.

 

It requires solving some tough puzzles/clues and driving all over San Diego County (200+ miles total).

 

RM

[+briansnat]

I'd have to say two of the previously mentioned caches were the toughest. Melvin's Multiple Madness and Wheretogo?Vertigo! I participated in the hunt for Wheretogo?Vertigot, but wasn't I the person who actually went out to retreive the cache (which requires a lot of daring, or plain stupidity).

 

Melvin's was tough, but a lot of fun.

[+Johnnie Stalkers]

I'll just link myself on this one.

[+wildearth2001]

This gives me an idea. There is a spot near Shoshone Falls in Idaho where you can stand straddeling a crack in the rocks. The crack exists becaue the rock face of a large cliff has separated from the main land mass. Looking down through the crack you can't see any support for what you are standing on for a couple of hundred feet and if I recall correctly then you can only see it on the land mass side and not the canyon side. Needless to say this is unnearving (which is why like a moron I did it with all the other guys I was with). The thing I can't figure out is where to put the cache! Maybe I'll go down river a bit and showcase another canyon feature. A multi leg cache.

you could put in a bolt or somthing and hang it about 20 feet down. that way they have to eaither pull the rope to get it (reqiuring them to lean over the crack) or chimney down (this is what I would do)

you could also chimney down yourslef and place it on a small ledge and secure it with a short rope to a bolt that way everyone must go into it and experiance the thrill

[+rover-r-us]

the hardest cache for me was the Brushy1 (GCA163).took me 3 hours to do and when i got to the cache something had trashed it. plus i had to buy a one day pass to hike up to the cache.then later that day someone told me back in 1970s two poeple had been killed where i'd parked

[+Polgara]

These are my most difficult so far, keep em coming!!!

 

Polly takes the Plunge

Brush Mountain

Will O' the Wisp

Choices

Eagles Nest

The Fellowship of the Ring

Thousand Steps

Fire Elemental

[+ClayJar]

I'm not sure it was the hardest, but definitely the most memorable for the effort required to reach the waypoint was when RBDupuy and I paddled a canoe (with a dingy) over 6.5 miles of open water to the middle of Mobile Bay, AL.

 

The dingy was because we started off in two canoes, but the wind was buffeting his too much, so he needed a frontman. I hopped over, we tied my inflatable to the rear of his fiberglass canoe, and we paddled the whole way. When a largish ship crossed our route, we had a few moments of excitement to avoid being swamped by the rolling wake, and by the time we were a mile or two from being back, the seas were quite a bit heavier than when we started.

 

So, basically, it may or may not have been the "hardest" cache I've ever done (the 20+ mile day hikes are significant, too), but paddling a *canoe* to the *middle* of Mobile Bay has to rank up there *somewhere*. (Incidentally, if you're wondering, yes, we were the most gawked at two cachers in a canoe with a dingy 6.5 miles from land in the middle of Mobile Bay that day... I bet somewhere, *someone* still tells people about the crazy guys in the bay.)

[MOCKBA]

My most strenuous thus far was a N*v*cache. Dunno if we are still banned from mentioning that site over here ... the cache is linked from my profile though. But it should have been easier if we didn't choose the only route legal for the dogs (which has 6,000 ft elevation gain, but stays out of protected watersheds).

Now looking forward for Royal Treasure (scheduled for 3/30). It's an annual ski outing organized by the Swensen brothers, and I haven't skipped one yet, but I didn't learn about caching till last April. The box is hiden at 13,500 ft and the road to the summer TH isn't plowed in March yet. It takes under 9 hours to get to the top (or to give up, 'cause you aren't gonna be back till midnight if it takes you much longer to get there). Anybody wants to join?

[+SamLowrey]

Four Cache Loop was the hardest physically - long hike. Probably wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't gone in the heat of the Summer, though.

 

One West of X was the hardest puzzle.

[+programmer64]

The Other Sister I had to climb into the niagara river to reach this cache,not far into the river but in none the less. The coords said I was right on top of it and I was had to climb down into river and under rocks to get it!!

[n0wae]

Well I guess the most physically demanding and scary cache I've done so far would be this one: Scary Cache

[GrandpaCannon]

The hardest physically was Big Baldy http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...B-744B6A6A450F}

Not as scary or hard as some of the above but a 7 mile round trip with a 3000 foot climb is a big deal to me. The hardest search was Sure Shot http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...2-E73230136A59}

He even had decoy caches in likely places to find the cache telling you that this was not it. I am sad to see that this cache is now gone.