**WARNING** This cache is NOT listed at the posted coordinates.
Greetings and welcome to the Island County Blackout Challenge.
Unlike other blackouts in the area, the boundaries for this cache
are pretty simple, you need to get the caches on Whidbey and Camano
Island, that's it! One little county. Thats about 250 caches give
or take. Not too many right? Both islands have lots of great beach
walks, strolls in the woods, spits, and great views all around. The
caches here are not advanced as a general rule compared to say the
Seattle or Bellevue Blackouts, they are more scenic, but they do
take time to get as many require long walks to reach. There is at
least one cache on Whidbey that requires a 4+ mile round trip beach
walk and a number on Camano (only two when I wrote this out) that
require a 7+ mile round trip beach walk. A number of caches on both
islands require you to make sure the tides are low before
attempting.
Rules. Simply, you need every active
cache found or owned in these 2 islands.*
The boundaries for the islands are pretty clear, you need to
find all the active caches that are listed in Island County on the
land and the waters that just surround it (ie those mystery caches)
as any of those caches are defined by GSAK to be in Island
County.
In addition, the following 2 mystery caches are in Island County
as well and you will need to complete them.
You yourself can easily verify your finds by looking at the
Geocaching map of the 2 islands as the boundaries are quite clear.
However, for me to verify you have the island complete, you need to
do the following: Send me your groundspeak query file (or the zip
file download from Geocaching) which has all your finds. Here are
the steps you need to do. 1. Go to my profile on Geocaching.com. 2.
Go to Build Pocket Queries. Under "My finds" click "add to queue"
which will send you your zipped file of all your finds. Email me
that file.
If you want to filter your finds in GSAK and send me only the
ones that matter for the challenge, go for it. I would prefer that
export file as a txt file. Unless you are really good at GSAK
(which I am no expert), its easier for both of us to just send me
the raw file as I outlined above.
Other pieces of information
The Monopoly Challenge Final, if and when completed, will be looked
at to see if the final meets the spirit of this challenge and is
needed or not.
The BUGZ challenge will be within the Island Blackout as
follows. You need only worry about #s 1 through 16 (or B and U in
the water).
There are 2 caches right on the border of Camano Island and
Stanwood called Leque Farm Heritage Cache and Safety Zone. The
county filter does not consider them Island County so for the
purpose of Island County Blackout, they are not included. I am not
an expert in the boundaries of Snohomish vs Island, but if the
county filter says they are not in Island County, that's good
enough for me, with the few exceptions I have mentioned earlier.
FYI, the Hunter and his Gun is in Island County. Strangely enough,
Camano Art is not considering Island County in GSAK so you need not
worry about that one either.
The final coordinates are listed on this page but no finds will
be allowed until you have received verification from the CO that
you are good to go. Will give a cushion of a day or two when you
submit your GSAK file of any new caches that were just listed. If
there is anyone who qualifies and is one active cache short which
obviously seems like it should be inactive, we can discuss that
difficulty should it arise
The terrain of the challenge is partially reflected on all the
other caches you need to require, the actual terrain for the final
itself is about a 2.5.
Was hoping someone else would be willing to list this blackout
so I can log a find myself but ah well. Also, I feel having more
than 2 challenges is pushing the envelope for me, so this will be
my last one. To give you an idea of time, I would say Camano Island
would take 6 complete days to do from scratch and Whidbey would
take a little more than that. You do not have to have a boat for
any of these caches but a boat would certainly be of us for a
number of them on either island. I had originally planned to do
this as a Whidbey Island only challenge but both ideas had
merit.
FYI: Hunting season is allowed in this area, September
1-December 31. It is suggested that users wear orange during that
period. Good luck! I hope this will help give at least a few people
out there some motivation to see more of these 2 lovely islands of
ours.
Cachers who
have completed the requirements and found the final
|
No.
|
Cacher |
Date |
| 1 |
Brewman65 |
October 4, 2009 |
| 2 |
Lamoracke |
October 4, 2009 |
| 3 |
Cachedin |
October 18, 2009 |
| 4 |
Crouchcrew |
October 20, 2009 |
| 5 |
Rey del Roble |
October 25, 2009 |
| 6 |
Johnny Boy and DB Cooper |
November 11, 2009 |
| 7 |
OhJoy! |
August 26, 2010 |