GREAT WINTER – caching, skiing and stuff.
I am sitting here next to the fire and there is another storm out there, with nearly a foot of new snow on our porch. I guess I will have to clean it off before folks show up at our place for the event on Saturday. This one of the best winters in a long time here in the Moncton area for those of us who love the snow. Here is some winter stuff
**Last Friday we snowshoed 30 minutes into a park in Moncton to get a puzzle cache. We then spent 30 minutes wandering around in the deep snow knocking snow off evergreens (and sometimes onto my head and down my neck) and digging in stumps looking for the darn micro without luck. We finally gave up and I thought we would wait till spring to get it. However the GC.com page says we need a cache on February 3, so Ma wants to take our garden trowel (and maybe a shovel) and go out again tomorrow in this new snow to try to locate that cache.
**Our 19 new traditional caches in Cocagne came out Monday noon as promised by Cache-Tech. Tuesday morning we got an email from incepit who was going out to get the new caches. I dressed quickly and headed out to join him because I wanted to ensure that they were still winter friendly. The first section of the trail (from cache 1 to 12) is plowed in winter so I decided not to wear my snowshoes as I joined incepit as he was heading into a field to get cache #3. (Incepit was wearing snowshoes because of the deep snow off the trail). We then headed along the trail to #4. When he headed off the trail to get the cache, I decided to follow him. I made two steps and sank waist deep into the snow. I crawled back to the trail and waited. I spent the rest of the trip walking along the trail and waited while incepit went off trail to get the caches. Fortunately most of them were within a few meters from the trail. MA & I had thought we had made them all winter friendly but Jim had to move a lot of them higher a few weeks ago when he checked them for us. Incredibly incepit had to move them higher again because of the last few storms and in anticipation of the two storms for later this week. When he had done more than half of the caches, I decided to turn around and and get my car so I could pick up incepit up after the last cache. Things didnt quite work out. here is his log for the last cache.
Found this one while waiting for the CAA to come and pull Paul (Ma&Pa) out of the snowbank. Thhough he was very kind and gave me a drive back to my truck afterwards. FTF here also. Thanks for the caches and the great fun.
**The wind chill on Monday January 24 was minus 38. We went to breakfast at the Casino with Belladan and then we went and and hiked a trail in the West End to get 10 of Jim52’s puzzle caches. Why were we out in that weaher? Well it was a compromise. Belladan thought that it would be a good day to go out on Shediac Bay and check the ice and try and get to Shediac Island. There was no way I was going out there in that temperature so we suggested getting Jim’s caches. Surprisingly Ma and I bundled up when we got home and went cross country skiing for a couple of hours at the Beaver Ski Club here in Grande-Digue.
**I mentioned that we are trying to fill all the days of the caching calendar. This has meant 2.5 hours snowshoeing to get some puzzles of Jim’s and another day snowshoeing for 2.5 hours on trails in Dieppe to get 2 of Tiger Tracker’s caches. Snowshoeing is strenuous and we enjoy it, but it is even more difficult this year because of the amount of snow and because it is very light snow and gives less support even with snowshoes
**Ma has been spending a lot of time solving puzzle caches in the Ottawa/Gatineau area. We are planning to do some caching there in the Spring before and after flying to the San Jose area in California to visit our son. Of course we will do some caching in California. There are about 1700 caches within 10 miles of his house. There are also hundreds of caches on the trails in the protected areas and parks in the hills along skyline drive. We are also looking at caches in the Cornwall area of the UK as it seems our biennial hiking trip to the UK in Septemberwill be in that area again this time.
**We put out 11 new Micro Logic puzzle caches in January. One oof them was too close to another cache and I had to go and move it a little. However, it had snowed since I had placed it and even though it was only 10 meters from the road, I had to wade into waist deep snow to get it. We received interesting comments from puzzle fans who are enjoying the Micro Logics. The latest one is #87 and is much tougher than previous ones. Apparently many have spent long hours trying to solve it. I feel a little guilty putting cachers through that.
**We were a little disappointed to have to cancel the ice crossing portion of our event this coming weekend, but we felt that we should err on the side of safety. Hopefully the new caches will provide fun for the cachers who show up. And of course, everyone is welcome to our place during the day for food and drink and geocaching chat and a prize or two, and we have a large number of tobacco contaainers that we are willing to part with.
**Many people think we live in Grande-Digue to be close to the water. Actually we moved here to be close to the Beaver Ski Club. We go there nearly every day and ski 3 or 4 hours or more. There are about 20 kms of groomed trails in the woods. This year it is wonderful to ski there with the snow clinging to the trees, forming tents over the evergreens, and making arches and tunnels over the trails. Here is a link to a picture on the trail.
Here is a link to the club website
There has been over 100 cms of snow this year in the Moncton area. But we were not going to let that stop us. We decided that today was the day to get Indy’s Blue Crayon placed by Zor. The cache has been out there for over two years and only has 5 finds, the last one in May 2010 and the other four in December 2008.
The reason for the low finds is that the cache is 750 meters from a road and is in a hard to reach location. There is a trail to get there but it is littered with fallen trees and some of the terrain is muddy. Zor could have archived it but instead he did some maintenance and said:
“I decided that I wanted to keep this cache alive because caches that require a bit of work to get to are becoming extinct.”
So today was our day to go for it. We picked up Belladan early in the morning and headed to the Casino for their great $5.99 buffet breakfast to build our energy for the caching. We then picked up the Sparky Memorial cache on Catamount road. We brought shovels with us and dug it out of the snow.
Then on to our target cache. We put on our snowshoes and headed to the cache with two shovels. We zigzagged through the woods with Belladan in the lead breaking trail (He is younger than us). It was tough going as we worked our way around downed trees, and trees bent by the weight of the snow. If we happened to touch a tree, we would often end up with a pile of snow falling on us. But it was a nice day and the scenery was beautiful. We really enjoyed the exercise.
We finally got to Ground Zero and started our hunt. It was clear from the hint that we would have to dig for the cache, but there was so much snow that we were unsure where to dig. Dan and I dug with the shovels and Ma poked in the snow banks with a ski pole. The search lasted about 30 minutes.
The walk back to the truck was a lot easier as we walked in the path we had made on the way in.
If anyone is interested in getting this cache, this may be a good time to do so. Snowshoeing to the cache location should be very easy on the hard packed trail that we made today. And your search should be much easier since you wont have to look in any place that we looked because we didnt find it.
But we had a great time.
Here is a link to my log and 3 photos taken by Dan.
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LUID=f0a9aa2b-84db-4a36-92ba-102698d84690
http://www.theweathernetwork.com/your_weather/details/620/4017287/2/canb0067/plpcities/
Sure was a lot of snow this winter.
In February I went with Belladan to find caches on the Dobson trail up near the windmills in the kent hills. There are nearly 30 windmills up on the mountain and the roads have to be plowed for maintenance purposes. The snowbanks were about 15 feet high at the side of the roads.
We found a place to park, put on our snowshoes and headed for the trail to find the caches. As you may know, you follow the trail by following blue blazes (2 inches wide, 6 inches high) that have been painted about 6 or 7 feet high on the trees. There was so much snow that the blazes were ankle high. We only found two caches and we had to dig for them, even though they were supposed to be hanging 6 feet up in evergreens. Despite all the fruitless digging and the DNF’s, we had a great 3 hours snowshoeing in the woods.
Geocaching certainly helps you enjoy the outdoors.