It’s not always your feet that do the work of taking you to a geocache. Sometimes geocachers paddle a kayak or canoe through pristine waters to hunt down a cache. Follow geocacher Claire Delavigne, known by the geocaching name Planet. She navigates through a Connecticut nature preserve and combines kayaking and geocaching. True to the world of geocaching, her adventure doesn’t go as planned.
Explore even more geocaching adventures in the Geocaching.com Lost & Found video gallery. You can go along on a heart racing five terrain/five difficulty geocache, see the geocache on the International Space Station or find out why a U.S. Army bomb disposal technician says geocaching kept him safer in Iraq.
A five terrain, difficulty five geocache tops the extreme scale. They’re dangerous, by their very nature. This is a Lost & Found video of an attempt to log a 5/5 outside of Chehalis, WA USA. “* rivers and lakes” (GC6982) is rated 5/5. The rating on GC6982 is perhaps more than precautionary. Any hiker faces the real possibility of serious injury on this geocache.
View from near "* river and lakes"
A five terrain geocache traditionally requires specialized equipment. This cache requires study hiking gear, including tear-resistant gloves. Geocachers BrewerMD, DubyaDee and Towtrkdug, along with cache owner Slinger91 signed up for the adventure. See their hunt for treasure and the waterfall waiting at the end their journey.
Explore even more adventures of geocachers in the Geocaching.com Lost & Found gallery.
Believe me, I’m not trying to talk you out of attempting a five terrain, five difficulty geocache. I’m just trying to keep you from acquiring any scars or a metal plate in your neck. Geocaches are ranked from one to five based on difficulty and terrain. Five is the most imposing. Let’s be clear — preparation is key. You should known the geocache rating before attempting the cache. The ratings exist for your safety. But, say you’re part of the “Lost & Found” documentary video crew? And it’s your job to produce a video on completing a 5/5?
This is one (tall/uncoordinated) Lost & Found video producer’s perspective on one particular 5/5 named “* river and lakes” (GC6982). Completing this 5/5 only really requires three attributes. They are endurance, balance and agility.
Lost & Found videographer Reid
I sorely lacked two out of the three. I’m a teetering 6’4” with the balancing skills of an unmanned bicycle. My default while falling is to land on my forehead. It’s a precarious landscape for anyone who’s crowning athletic achievement sits atop his refrigerator even now. (It’s a bowling trophy from when I was 11.)
The cache owner and three geocachers were all bush-whacking to the cache ahead of us. Lost & Found videographer Reid was capturing the zigzagging footfalls of the geocachers. The terrain we faced for “* rivers and lakes” is a Paul Bunyan-scale crisscross carpet of fallen trees, inches thick ecosystems of green wiggling moss and glossy boulders with the traction of ice.
The cache sits inside a U-shaped canyon at the base of a waterfall. It’s a near vertical descent through thorns and an inviting thorn-ridden shrub aptly called “Devil’s Club.” After a half hour, I’ve already realized waterproof boots are waterproof… unless your foot slips three feet into a stream and then the boots become sloshing bags of water.
A banana slug named, "Signal"
It’s about this time that I think a thorn catches my ear. Suddenly my ear is wet and it’s cold. I think I’m simply in a wonderful form of shock and that I’m bleeding. I reach back to feel the blood. I think, “This can’t be worse.” It is worse.
My fingers curl around “something” attached to my ear. I pulled it forward and stared eye-to-antenna with a giant banana slug.
I named the slug “Signal.”
This Signal was placed gently back into his or her habitat. It’s a relationship I won’t forget though.
The geocachers and Reid reached the cache moments later (relatively) unscathed. Then we had to hike back out, the same way. Signal didn’t make a repeat performance. I was left with just a few scratches and memories of a wet and cold kiss from a banana slug.
Most geocachers have similar stories. And like the Lost & found documentary crew, they’ll do it again. Why? You tell me. What keeps geocachers going back to the trail?
Soon, you can watch the adventures of the hardy geocachers who attempted this 5/5. The Lost & Found video is scheduled to post on Tuesday, September 14th.
FBZ A.P.E. 51; Stone of the Lost ValleyNear a FBZ cache
The geocaching spectrum runs from the ease of drive-up light pole caches all the way into the dark world of mind-bending themed Multi-Caches. The geocaches like the “Forbidden Zone Geocaches” (FBZ) around San Diego, California push geocachers to their mental and physical extremes.
It took two years for Jim Epler (SGTF) to create the complex and conspiracy-laden series of seven geocaches.
Seven caches are hidden in and around San Diego. The story line for the FBZ geocaches has players assume the role of an agent investigating a link between extraterrestrials and primates, and possibly uncovering plans for an alien invasion.
FBZ Clue/Prop (No animals were harmed in the making of this cache)
Clues and passwords at each cache advance players through the game. The players must register through the Forbidden Zone Geocache website. The registration is only to keep score. All the geocaches are available through Geocaching.com. The first six geocaches do not have to be found in any particular order to uncover coordinates for the final cache.
When asked why he created such an involved geocache, Jim jokingly says, “because I didn’t know any better!”
But he says creating the Multi-Cache was two years well spent: “For me, the fun was in the creative process, not necessarily the end result. I looked at it as an enjoyable hobby which comprises a number of things I like to do including web site development, photography and graphics design, research, prop building, science fiction, storytelling, urban exploration, and hiking.”
The caches were hidden in 2008. More than a dozen geocachers have attempted the series and many completed all seven caches.
FBZ Clue
Jim hopes that people finish the cache without absorbing too much of the conspiracy. He says, “I hope visitors are able to appreciate the ‘tongue and cheek’ humor which was my foundation for the entire project. I wrote the ‘top secret’ documents from the perspective of a paranoid conspiracy theorist, and all the stuff used to support this ridiculous storyline is just one long outrageous spoof.”
What do you think, would you ever attempt a themed Multi-Cache? Have you encountered other caches like this?
The adventure of geocaching goes four-wheeling. Geocachers with four-wheel drive vehicles seem resolved not to let little things like mountains and deserts and large expanses of razor-sharp shrubs deter them from finding caches.
Off-roading and geocaching
The roots of 4×4 geocaching run deep into the decade long history of geocaching. Thousands of geocaches with “off-road” attributes now span the globe from Albania to Zambia and almost everywhere in between.
Watch geocachers from Team Red Rubicon explore the wilds of Colorado, USA in search of geocaches.
Explore all the Lost & Found videos, including a geocache in space, here.
