Always Wear Safety Glasses When Caching Letterbox Hybrid
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Always Wear Safety Glasses When Caching
A cache by [DELETED_USER]
Hidden
:
1/24/2013
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(regular)
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Public Safety Anouncement #2:
In the fall of 2012 I went on a little excursion. I was chasing down the “Quad Fizzy” Challenge [ http://coord.info/GC3FJ6M ] and going after high terrain caches. I rented a kayak for a day of 5 terrain caches across water. The day was going well, but on my ninth stop of the day everything changed.
I pulled in to the parking lot at George Watch Lake expecting a challenge. I had read the logs and knew that the “lake” was shallow in parts and that I might be bottoming out from time to time. I was a half mile from “Got Carp?” [ http://coord.info/GC3VVK1 ]. Even if it is challenging, I knew it would only be a few minutes in and out and I would be on my way to the next few caches before it got dark.
I took the kayak off of the car and set it in the water. I bundled up a bit as the wind was picking up and the afternoon sun was diving fast. I knew it was only going to get colder and darker. I had no idea how “dark” it was going to get.
A few feet after shoving off from “shore” I hit bottom and couldn’t paddle anymore. No problem, I just got out and walked the kayak along the sandy bottom from the dam area to the bridge. The water then got deeper again, I climbed in and paddled for a ways. Shortly after the bridge my paddle started to hit bottom, then the kayak bottomed out again. This time it wasn’t sand below the water but mud and muck. I could easily stick my paddle into the mud several feet. I had visions of mammoths walking through tar pits to their deaths and I knew I couldn’t get out of the kayak and walk any more. I thought that surely the water would get deeper further out! I pressed on. The water got so shallow at points that when I “paddled”, I would leave little mounds of pushed-up muck behind the boat. I was moving a painful 2’ at a time at the best spots.
I put the gps away one last time and pushed in to an especially ugly looking muddy area. A few feet in I realized that this area close to “shore” was not water at all, but about a foot of muck over the top of deeper water. The muck was the consistency of thick brownie batter. It supported my kayak, but as you can imagine, “paddling” on this stuff was excruciating. It would have been easier to kayak in the parking lot. I reached out ahead with the paddle and pulled as hard as I could. With each stroke I pulled myself forward an inch or two.
I pushed on through 30 to 40 feet of muck one inch at a time. FINALLY I reached the edge of the muck and was able to step out into some cattails. Thoroughly exhausted from the effort and extremely pissed at the situation I had put myself in, I headed deeper into the cattails. On the second or third step, I turned toward the cache and started walking faster. As soon as I turned, the end of a cattail plunged straight into my open right eye. After a few choice words and a few tears, I continued on. There was no way I was going through this to DNF.
I made it through the cattails only to find that I had gone past the cache! Somehow in all of this I had lost sight of the prize! After checking the gps and walking back through the reeds in a different direction, I saw that the cache was in a location on the far end of the brownie batter muck. “$#@!^&#!. That means two things...the inching across the muck was totally not needed AND I had to do it again. I climbed back into the kayak and repeated the entire saga, this time signing a log along the way.
My eye hurt and it was beyond dark by the time I made it back to the car. The kayak and everything else was dripping glue-like muck all over the car, but I didn’t care enough to clean it off. Once home, Carrieme44 graciously checked my eye over and over for residue that I was sure was still in there. A sleepless night followed and in the morning we headed to the hospital. The doctor did a few tests and explained that the eye was clear of debris, but I had left a significant portion of my cornea on that cattail out on George Watch Lake. A month of eye drops, ointment at night, looking like I was crying, and extreme discomfort followed.
So, please listen when I say “Always Wear Safety Glasses When Caching”! And think twice about kayaking without water. And even when you think you aren’t strong enough…you are.
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