10/22/2005 : Hunt the Wumpus
is back online!
However, I've moved the final cache and turned
this one into a single-stage traditional cache. Many caches have
sprung up in the two-and-a-half years since I hid this one, so
while you're in the park, I strongly recommend hunting:
The Rainbow Dragon Treasure Series
A Point in the Distance
Expand Your Horizons
Minute Waltz
Cache Hound
Far Horizons
For those of you that missed it, I'm leaving the
original description intact below.
For my fellow geo-geeks, here is an aerial map showing the Loop A and Loop B
trails, with an overlay of the the (old) hex map.
If you're in the mood to hunt micros,
I have not bothered to recover the old 'rooms':
(You started in 'E', and the final cache was in
'B'.)
A N36 13.164 W80 13.628
C N36 13.164 W80 13.506
D N36 13.135 W80 13.567
E N36 13.090 W80 13.643
F N36 13.074 W80 13.558
G N36 13.111 W80 13.508
The Wumpus has been
injured by a crooked arrow, taken the treasure, and is now
hiding in one of seven 'rooms' in our 'cave'. The cave
contains seven hexagonal rooms, in a honeycomb pattern. Your
goal is to track down the Wumpus, while avoiding two types of
hazards:
Pits - If you fall into one of the
bottomless pits, you find yourself slung back out on the far side
of the Earth and in very poor shape to continue your quest since
you're dead.
Bats - As with any other cave, the
Wumpus cave has bats in residence. These Super Bats are a bit more
potent, however, and if you stumble into one of their rooms they
will rush up and carry you elsewhere in the cave.
(The Wumpus is not bothered by hazards, as he
has sucker feet and is too big for a bat to lift.)
This multi-cache consists
of six micro-caches and one large ammo can for the main stash.
The micros are bright-orange tubes, roughly one inch in
diamater and three inches long.
The main coordinates will lead you into the first room of the
cave, with coordinates for the adjoining rooms. Choose your path
wisely; A lucky adventurer might find the Wumpus in three stages,
but poor decisions could turn this into a six-stage multi-cache (or
more)! A map is provided to make your hunting
easier.
Hunt the Wumpus is located on the hiking trails of Horizons Park. Although you can reach most of the
stages from the trails, some bushwacking is
required. There are some terrain changes, so be
careful!
Please sign the logbook and take your picture with the enclosed
disposable camera. Good luck hunting the wumpus!
For those cachers not familiar with Hunt the Wumpus, the game was originally
written for mainframes by Gregory Yob in 1972. In the game, you had
three arrows, and were trapped in a maze formed from a squashed
dodecahedron, with the nodes being rooms and the edges being the
room connections. In any room, you were given hints as to
phenomena that are going on in adjacent rooms (you can't tell
from which one though) - breezes from bottomless pits, grunts
from the (very hungry) wumpus, and so on. The wumpus could move,
and the bottomless pits were frequently rearranged by
earthquakes. Your goal was to hit the wumpus with one of your
(crooked) arrows by firing it down a passageway into an adjacent
room.
I was introduced to Wumpus on the Tandy TRS-80 in the early
eighties, and have played several PC and Unix variants in the years
since.
NOTE AND DISCLAIMER: This cache is hidden in the great
outdoors. Welcome to the South! We've got skeeters; we've got
chiggers; we've got ticks; we've got ants; we've got snakes and
other critters; we've got poison ivy, oak, and sumac; we've got
mold and allergens; we've got kudzu and other pesky vines; and boy,
have we got briars, brambles, and stickers! Depending on the place
you elect to enter the off-trail portion of the hunt, you may very
well find these and other denizens of our environment. Please dress
accordingly and take adequate precautions whenever you interact
with nature. And don't forget to cache in, trash out.
