Best Geocaching Injury

[Iplayoutside]

I'm not interesting in that time you got layed out in the backyard football game. Just geo-caching injuries.

 

Mine is kind of lame, but the worst thing that has happened to me while caching is I was searching for a cache with a stick under some rocks and disturbed a bee-hive. I got stung 8 times before I got clear. You can check out the HERE

[+Team GPSaxophone]

I didn't take pictures, but my legs were covered in chigger bites after caching in the middle of Missouri. Even worse was that the medicines my doctor prescribed reacted with each other and I swelled up like a balloon.

[+Corp Of Discovery]

I didn't take pictures, but my legs were covered in chigger bites after caching in the middle of Missouri. Even worse was that the medicines my doctor prescribed reacted with each other and I swelled up like a balloon.

Theres a joke inside there somewhere involving hot air and floating away- but I'm not gonna touch it.

[+Pasha]

I went to try to clear a DNF this morning and found a hive instead. Five stings and some madcap sprinting through the bushes later, I've decided to leave this DNF for colder weather. I had a fun time explaining to my office why my face was all lumpy.

[+Shop99er]

I've poked myself in the eye with a tree a couple of times.

 

Oddly enough, it turns out I'm allergic. To cedar trees, that is. Well, and being poked in the eye, too.

 

The first time I got PITE'ed, a lump developed in that eye a few days later. As you might imagine, I was a tad concerned about this turn of events, so I go to the Doctor. He was pretty sure I had gone off the deep end.

 

Anyway, I had to get special eye-drops, and couldn't wear my contacts for nearly a month. I had a major headace fire up after the third day or so, and it didn't go away until after I started wearing my contacts again.

 

Now, the Boss maked me take safety glasses when we head out, and when I'm flying solo.

 

Sometimes, I even wear them.

Edited April 23, 2005 by Shop99er

[+AndrewRJ]

After a visit to the doctor it turns out I cracked a rib, How? you might ask. I was leaning over a railing on a cache and my foot slipped dropping the end of the ribs on my right side into the metal guard rail. There was a loud audible POP. Owwch I was in some pain. Two weeks later my side is still sore, I went out caching today and will again tomorrow, and probibly the day after that, I just have to be a little more careful in the future.

[+SeventhSon]

I was searching for this cache when I sustained my only cache injury so far.

 

I decide to take the gravel road behind the rest area to get to the cache. Seemed the cache would be easier to get at from this direction. But when I get there, the fenceline is right next to the road. So I climb the fence, lose my balance and gravity takes over. My GPS, a Magellan ColorTrak, had a detachable antenna, and when I landed, it detached. Apparently, it bounced into a black hole because after several minutes of searching, I came up empty. So I decided to try and find the cache since I knew I was close.

 

There it was, in a tree, accessible from the other side of the fence. So back over I go. But, this time, the old wooden fence post gives out. Most interstate fencing doesn't use existing posts, but I guess they did here just for me

 

On the way down, I put a nice long gash at the base of my thumb with the barbed wire. Then my ankle finds the edge of a hole. So, here I stand, wounded, bleeding, twisted ankle, staring at a broken fence post wondering how I'm gonna get back on the other side. So, I walk (hobble) about 50 feet to find what seems to be a sturdy post, and with great difficulty, manage to get back over the fence.

 

Naturally, I'm ready to get back home, even tho I know my left ankle will really like the clutch, but I had to get the cache

 

Since I never did find the antenna, I went and got a Legend with a fixed antenna.

 

Moral: the grass may be greener on the other side, but you'll walk better if you stay put!

[+jamrasc]

I was out just a few days ago with just my 2 youngest kids, 5 & 2, when I decided to take a short cut and walk down a steep hill covered with pine needles. Needless to say, I slipped and fell backwards sort of landing on my right elbow and shoulder area. I thought at first I broke my arm. I got up and kept going. But, my arm is still hurting and it has been about 3 days now. It isn't swollen, so I guess I just bruised it good.

[Stony2008]

i fell off about a 20 ft cliff on to solid rock and then bounced off that into water. it sucked to cause it was about a 2mi. hike back to the car

[Iplayoutside]

i fell off about a 20 ft cliff on to solid rock and then bounced off that into water. it sucked to cause it was about a 2mi. hike back to the car

That happened to me once, except it was snow. But we're not talking about that because I was climbing a 14er, not geocaching.

[+mrmnjewel]

I had my funniest caching "injury" last summer...I was doing a fairly easy ammocan in the woods...I had gotten to the cache, and was literally reaching for it when a yellowjacket flew in and stung me on the upper part of my right ear. I aborted on that cache, but contacted the owner who allowed me to log it as a find anyway. Digging through previous logs, it turned out I was not the first to be stung. There must be a nest close by. I will say though, I do NOT recommend being stung on the ear...Lotta nerves there...painful place...

[+VO2WW]

On the shoreline in Quebec I was making my way down a rock face when I took a fall of about two meters, tucked my hands in over my rib cage and landed on my chest on a large boulder, out for a few minutes but when I once more became alert I found a few cuts to my knees and arm, later I was to find out I had a few rib fractures. My 20 year old Rolex had deep marks on the elasped time ring which was now frozen in place, took it in for repair, $4200 for new case, declined. It had been forced out of round and failed waterproofness on third test, would need to go back to factory. I had it polished and all scratches removed, ring freed up, new seals for $575 Sold it to a collector for $2600 who I told of its condition. Bought new Omega, cuts healed, ribs knitted and I am still Geocaching.

[booty_hunter]

My best (worst) injury occurred not while geocaching but on returning to the site of a cache for other reasons. The cache is in a rock wall of an old quarry in Freetown state forest. While finding the cache I explored a little and found a common recreational activity was to throw large stuff a couple hundred ft. from the top of the quarry cliff into the water below. There were bikes, washing machines, tires and best of all a scooter from Wal-Mart, you know the kind that they keep around for handicapped shoppers all just below the surface of the water. Well I decided that I wanted that scooter to come home with me. I had plans to clean it up and fit an engine to it or fit the body to a go-kart. How cool would a Wal-Mart scooter be tearing up the neighborhood at 30mph. I returned with my wife and son for extra muscle, believe it or not my wife was on board with this. It was October, cold water prohibited swimming for it. I started around the base of the cliff where the water was about 4 ft deep by clinging close to the cliff wall with my feet high and dry in narrow rock ledges. At one point I found myself almost there standing on a 4in ledge about 4ft above the water sideways against a 90 degree face and the next step involved sliding down the cliff about 3ft to a ledge a couple feet wide just above the water then wade in and grab the scooter. Getting it back was not a concern, I really didn't plan on getting close enough that I'd even have the opportunity to get wet. I reached forward with my right arm to a handhold about even with my head expecting to swing forward and drop down a little to the nice wide ledge. This is a good point in the story to explain that I dislocated my right shoulder close to 15 years ago and really never sought treatment for it. It's caused intermittent problems since when contorting into weird positions or really stressing it. (Backstroke while swimming, waterskiing, walking my unruly hundred pound lab.) Well it had been a while since it had "popped out" and I'd forgotten my limitations. When you have a trick joint there is a sub-concious tendency to protect it, apparently my concious stupidity suppressed this. As soon as I tried to support my weight hanging from my right arm the shoulder popped out hard. This is the first time it's really been out since crashing my bike as a kid. Usually it's just temporary pain and a weird sensation of crepitus. As expected I came down on the ledge hard but stayed dry. I put my left hand to my right shoulder and I could feel the head of the humerus protruding anteriorly against the skin and muscle. Almost instinctively I quicly rotated the shoulder and it slid back in. My wife and son's laughter was almost loud enough to drown out my weeping. My back was to them and all they saw was a less than graceful slide down the rock wall. Now I had to abandon my mission and return to safety. Usually after the shoulder gives me trouble the arm is all but unusable for a few hours and hurts badly for days. This was to be no exception. There was no way to scale the wall and traverse the 75 feet or so to level ground with one arm so my only option was to swim for it. I dropped into the water which appeared only chest deep but turned out to be over my head... cold, so cold. I began to swim one armed doggy paddle style fully clothed in my big rubber boots. I made it back with surprisingly little event and stripped off the wet clothes in the car. I rode home wrapped in the smelly dog blanket my wife keeps in the car. The shoulder is really much worse since this afternoon and now if I stand in front of a mirror with my shirt off I can see that my right shoulder hangs a little lower. Working out at the gym has been ok. If I'm careful I can protect the shoulder by flexing the muscles in a way I can't describe but feels right. We'll see how waterskiing goes this summer. If my son wants to play catch, I can only hang so long before the shoulder feels "loose and floppy". I expect I'll need surgery to tighten things up someday but I'm not even going to mention it to my Doc until it really causes problems all of the time. That is my story. I'll post a log note when I return to this cliffside cache with a canoe this summer.

[+tls11823]

booty_hunter,

 

You may have told the most interesting story in the world, I'll never know because it's so much work to read something that long with no whitespace. Try a paragraph break now and then, and it will be much easier to read without having to trace my finger along the screen.

[gridlox]

I could read it just fine.

 

Here's my injury report from a few weeks ago.

Did Ja?

 

Still limping around a little after being on my feet a lot in one day, but otherwise, business as usual.

 

--Sorry, some of the pics are missing, because I haven't gotten around to get my domain transfered since it expired last week. No way I'm paying what they want, when I can get it for less than $10 a year at several other sites!!

 

D-man

[+mrmnjewel]

I could also read it. Granted, it is easier to read something with paragraph breaks, but it was readable. Quite a story...yikes.

[+hwyman]

I caught Ebola while doing Quantum Leap...but it went away.

 

 

Hwy

[+Booknut]

I went out yesterday doing a couple of should-be-simple caches. I remember finding one and logging it, finding another one (but don't remember logging it), and going into the woods to search for another one. I do not remember coming back out of those woods, but based upon physical evidence, I fell pretty heavily into some briars and a sharp object or two.

 

Anyway, I went into the woods at about 11 a.m. The next thing I remember, I sort of "came to" while driving on a major thoroughfare in a neighboring county--about 20 miles from the last place I remember being. It was about five hours later. I guess I had been driving around all day while on "autopilot."

 

I spent six hours in the ER last night--no concussion, so he seems to think I may have had a seizure. (I bit my tongue pretty hard--it's tough to speak and eat--and that is what makes him think that. I am hoping that my tongue just got in the way when I landed heavily.) I have never had anything like this happen to me in my 41 years, and there is no family history of anything like this. As sore as all my muscles are today, I can imagine that maybe I really DID have a seizure, though.

 

It is scary--not just for me personally, but thinking about what might have happened yesterday while I was driving around all over the place with my subconscious running the show!

 

When I "woke up," I was convinced that I must have Alzheimer's or something. It was terrifying. I have perused my notes and tried to remember something from the afternoon, but to no avail. I was going to check my GPSr track log, but I guess I lost it in the woods.

 

Needless to say, I won't be driving--or caching--alone until this is all sorted out.

Edited May 7, 2005 by Booknut

[+Miragee]

Wow, that is really scary.

 

I hope you do get it figured out. It is frightening to think what could have happened.

 

My only injury so far has been a dislocated kneecap (or patella, in doctor speak). It was a freak occurrence when I took one step to the side and watched my leg fold up to the inside.

 

It happened just after I placed this cache and that is where the cache name came from.

[+Skip_]

I haven't got any serious injuries, but had the worst of the bunch today. I bashed my knee against a rock and it hurt like a whole string of words that I can't post in this forum.

 

When I got home I found that I'd sliced my knee open on the rock through my pants, even though my pants weren't damaged at all. I know, it's pretty tame. I'll try to get a more spectacular injury. I promise.

[+fairly_odd_family]

wow! those were great stories!! I don't have any worthy of reading...someone placed a cache in a nasty plant that has leaves like razors. I reached through, knowing what the long leaves can do, and ended up getting cut up anyhow! Took a week for the scratches to heal. *I'm such a whiny girl* LOL!! Does it count if there was a small amount of blood drawn? I guess I am not a die hard cacher just yet

[+ClanDeYates]

I slipped and landed on my rear fundament while taking a shortcut between trails. My feet went flying north and my head went south. I believe my gluteus maximus went east and west as I hit. 300 pounds of meat crashing down on a small point hurts very badly. And of course, since we were family caching, I couldn't say the things I wanted to say.

 

However, the scariest injury happened to the youngest human member of the Clan, as he was three and was headed down a brush filled hill. Normally sure footed, he got tripped up in some roots and leaves and fell forward.

 

I was standing ten feet away watching, my body filling with adrenaline, because he was falling head first into a stick that was pointing out of the ground. I can still picture this, and it was a year ago...

 

His face came straight down, and in that slow motion type of event, I saw in my mind's eye the stick hitting him in the eye. By the time I got moving over to him, he was at the bottom of the hill and crying, rubbing...

 

The side of his face, where a scratch from the stick was an inch away from his eye, going to his ear. The whole thing unsettled me for a long time. I had to take a break from Family caching because that vivid image of the youngest member getting maimed on a silly little brush covered hill. Crazy, but I couldn't shake it.

 

Now that he is almost 5 (he was almost 4 when this happened) and has feet the size of volkswagon beetles, his balance is much better than mine. But I still can picture that horrible image that my mind conjured up... even though it ended up being a superficial scrape. Ah well, such is parenthood... all events are like this, I suppose, I can imagine the worst all I want but real life is either much scarier or in actuality much tamer.

[FisherBear]

One night while mountain biking through our community forest from cache to cache we were on uur way back (about 15km back to house) and took one my favourite routes called The RollerCoaster. It was starting to get dark and the mosquitoes were getting vicious and I was trying to go as fast as I could. All of a sudden I slammed into a rock on the side of the trail that was about 2-3 feet tall and about 2 feet wide. I flipped over the rock and the bike landed on top of me. My head ended up stopped within 1/2 a foot of a large and pointy branch. Luckily all I ended up with was pretty bad trail burn on my legs and knuckles. The worst part of it was that most of the scabs were on the back of my knees which made bending and unbending a real pain.

 

My most recent slip happend while looking for a cache on the top of a steep hill. I saw a prime hiding location a few feet down the dirt hill and attempted to reach it. I ended up slipping and sliding down a few meters before a large log and some brush stopped me. Unfortunately it turned out to be an ant hill. Big black ants were crawling all over me and in my clothes and hair. I've never climbed a hill so fast in my life. Thankfully I got them all out.

Edited May 12, 2005 by FisherBear

[+CurmudgeonlyGal]

I thought I was going to die once. (No, really.)

 

But it's sort of irrelevent. I haven't written the cache log yet.

 

 

-=-

michelle

[Hide-and-Seek]

I’m not sure if this qualifies, but it sure scared the heck out of us, and has affected our lives negatively for months. CAUTION! Contains spoilers that give away details of a cache location. We were Geocaching with our grandson when the wife almost had a heart attach. As we drove to the cache I kept calling it “Home Is Where The Heart Is”, and each time the grandson would correct me saying that its “Home Is Where The Hearth Is”. So after this had occurred several times we realized there was something in the name and the cache must be hidden in a chimney. When we found the location the cache was hidden in a beautiful OSU Nursery and Research Station that covered several acres. As we neared the coordinates we were walking down a hill towards a foot bridge when the grandson spotted a chimney up on the side of a hill on the other side of the bridge so off he ran so that he could be the first to find the cache. But as we crossed the bridge the wife spotted another chimney to the left and farther up the hill, we checked the GPS and saw that sure enough it was at this second chimney, so off she went at a dead run so she could beat the grandson to the cache. He was all over the first chimney and didn’t see her running to the second one until he heard us laughing and he looked up, and he then took off after her, but it was too late she beat him to the chimney, but before she could locate the cache she fell to her knees in pain. She had such bad heart pain that we thought we were going to have to phone 911, luckily after several minutes the pain subsided. The next day she went to our family doctor, who then sent her in to have tests ran, which she failed. And two days later they performed an angioplastic for diagnostic purposes and possible stints. They found she had a 99% blockage to her heart, plus several other blockages, too severe for stints, requiring a by-pass surgery. She had the by-pass surgery the next day and following surgery she was in the hospital for 10 days. She was allowed to return home for a couple of days but then she was required to return to the hospital for a decortication surgery, the same surgery as that performed on former president Bill Clinton. And another 6 day stay in the hospital. Doctors say she was very lucky to have discovered the blockages before having a massive heart attach. Sadly after all she has been through she still can’t breathe properly so we still don’t know what the future holds.

[+mrmnjewel]

Booknut- Any further word on the cause of your "blackout"? Another possible explanation is a fugue state. For more on that, go here

[+EleriandBlade]

Nothing major... but Blade got scratched up and a sunburn on one of his first caches... said he was a Real Blooded Geocacher now!

[+chris-mouse]

Over the years I've done many things that would be considered 'less than sane' like climbing down a cliff in freezing rain, or up one at night in the middle of winter. in all these things, I never suffered any injury more severe than minor scratches and bruises. That changed when I was out hunting a cache in a city park.

First of all, I was hunting the cache in the wintertime, air temperature about -10c (14f for the SI impaired), and it was maybe an hour before sunset on a sunday afternoon. The park pathways here are paved bicycle trails, they're just not maintained in the winter months. I'd just finished coming down a set of horribly treacherous ice and snow covered steps, and was walking along the level ground at the bottom. I figured this was a good time to take a look at my GPS to figure out where to go next. Bad mistake! About three steps later my feet slid out from under me, and I heard something snap. At this point I decided to forget caching for the rest of the afternoon. A bit of cautious checking later and it was time to think of ways to get an ambulance.

fortunately there were other people in the park, so it wasn't long before an ambulance was called. Turns out that when I slipped, my toe must have caught on something in the ice, and my foot twisted as I fell. The result was a spiral fracture of the tibia and fibula in my right leg. A spiral fracture is typical of the kinds of breaks from skiing accidents.

Six days in the hospital, and several hours in surgery later I had a nice new pin in my leg. Two months later I was finally able to get out caching again - on crutches.

It hasn't stopped me though. I used the damage the GPS took in the fall (it was smashed display first into the ice) as an excuse to get a new GPS.

My physiotherapy for the leg included doing lots of cycling instead of walking, and it just happened that I cycled past a lot of geocaches []

[+souperteam]

I don't know about the "best" after reading some of these stories but I left a fair amount of skin in Kauai doing the "Tiny Bubbles" cache last week. We were running late on getting out of the area and were yelled at by a local to be sure we were out on time. We walked really fast back to the cache area and after finding it we saw on the GPS that there was another within 200ft. We took off to find it and my sensabilities took over and I called off the search. I hated leaving one unfound when we were withing 20 feet of it but we had at least half a mile to go back to the car and we only had 10 minutes. We headed out so we wouldn't get locked in and we were trying to hurry.

 

The area is rough lava covered with pine needles and I was wearing sandals that aren't good for running. I had had just stopped running so I wouldn't fall down when I tripped on a patch of lava and went down. Thinking only of my expensive GPS unit, I cradled it and landed on my right elbow, left hand and left knee. I was bleeding all over but my GPS was saved from getting smashed. It took about 30 minutes for the pain to really set in and then it started throbbing.

 

Last visit to Hawaii I left part of myself on the coral at Tunnels Beach. I'm much prouder of my scars/scabs from my geocaching adventure. While both stupid it sounds better when explaining the injuries. LOL!!

[+Tx_Secsy & Jeff]

I've been lookin for this forum....I knew I read it somewhere!!

 

A week ago last Saturday I broke my leg geocaching. I have hiking boots that have ankle support, but of couse, I wasn't wearting them. We were in the city (Houston) doing some not so dangerous caches (I've certainly done worse) but walking down this hill the dirt slipped out from under me and down I went. I didn't realize at the time it was broken. I'd never had a broken bone before. The Monday after I went to the docs...got xrays, and sure enuff its broken. .

 

Funny enough, at first it was almost exhilarating to think that I, the always careful one, had broken a bone!! But now after wearing this purple cast for over a week, I'm sick of it. It hasn't stopped me though, since the fall I've gotten 5 caches including 1 FTF!!

 

If I knew how I'd post a pic of me right after the fall and then one with the purple cast....but I don't, so you'll just have to trust me!!

[+CoastieGeorge]

I currently have really bad poison oak, that I got during some caching adventures. Yesterday I got sent home from work. What did I do, went caching!!

[+chaos reloaded]

I havn't been hurt yet. But I could have easily died when setting This Cache ( Molino Rapids )

 

I fell into 'quicksand' and could not get myself out until I was able to get turned around and grab a tree and muscle my way out.

 

My friend was a ways up the canyon and out of sight, had the hole been 3-4 ft deeper I would have sufficated.

 

I was pretty much laughing about the incident until we got in the car - then I realized what COULD have happened.

[+Ed & Julie]

I'm not interesting in that time you got layed out in the backyard football game.  Just geo-caching injuries.

 

Mine is kind of lame, but the worst thing that has happened to me while caching is I was searching for a cache with a stick under some rocks and disturbed a bee-hive.  I got stung 8 times before I got clear.  You can check out the HERE

While trying to find this cache my wife fell on the river rocks...her leg looked like this the next day:

 

Edited June 26, 2005 by The Badge & the Butterfly