I'm going to try to keep this story short.
Although we've always disliked high-difficulty hides, we decided we were going to place one. High terrain too. We secured a nano cache, and walked into this nice area, and found a tree. The plan was simple, climb the tree, hide the nano, get the cache published, and watch everyone suffer as they attempted to find it, that is if they were able to get the coordinates to start with. The hide was going to be a "5" difficulty and "5" terrain, and the puzzle behind it was brilliant, a "5" on it's own! A 5/5/5 cache!
Now, we're not the greatest tree-climbers in the world. The higher we went, the tougher it got. I placed the nano in my mouth so that I could use my hands to climb.
As I placed my foot on a branch about 35 feet up, there was a shift under my left foot. I compensated with my right foot, the branch snapped, and I fell.
I hit the ground hard. Had Susan not been alert, I would have landed on top of her. I could taste the metal of the nano as it traveled down my throat, and as I lay there on my back we discussed the stupidity of this endeavour. Grrrrr.
Dejected, I limped back to the car, dug another cache container out of the back, and limped back into the woods. It's not what I had in mind initially, but whatever, at least I still had the puzzle.
The Volunteer Reviewer pointed out to me that the puzzle was based on "a flawed premise", and could only be solved if the cacher made the same mistakes in logic that I did. Even if the errors could be resolved (which seemed unlikely), the Reviewer was certain that it was bound to not meet guidelines as it was offensive, bordering on profane.
So, in the end, the 5/5 puzzle-cache-nano-way-up-a-tree evolved into this. The whole thing was a
%$%(@$^ *)@##(# mess, but we're happy with the cache.
But the good news is that the next day I was able to retrieve the nano cache, which I did a fairly decent job of cleaning up. Can't wait to find a place for it!
Congrats to canmoose for the fast FTF.