Walk on the Wild Side (EXTREME CACHE) Mystery Cache

There is nothing hidden at the listed coordinates: solve the puzzle to get the location of the cache.

This is an extreme cache that was placed using climbing equipment. You must not attempt it without the appropriate gear, experience and safety precautions.

Remember: climbing is dangerous. Just because the cache is there doesn't mean you have to do it.

The Cache

A tree climb that is intended to be done as a moderately straightforward limb walk. I've set it to encourage more cachers to understand and use this technique.

Limb walking is what arborists do when they ascend close to the trunk and then work their way out sideways along a limb while supported by a line from a high anchor point at a secure fork.

A cache some distance out from the trunk can be reached much more safely by limb walking than by tossing over a line and ascending directly. When you take the direct route your weight acts on the branch like a colossal lever and creates huge stresses. Most of the time you'll get away with it, but even strong branches that have been climbed many times before occasionally fail suddenly and without warning. This was recently the cause of a very serious caching accident.

As my arborist friend said to me: "There's nothing wrong with anchoring to branches but you don't want them for life support. Branches can fail - trunk's not going to fail is it... Get your life support over the trunk."

The container is a 10cm clear plastic preform (aka 'Petling') with a red top. To encourage you to do the cache in the intended way I've placed it so as to be hard to spot from the ground. You should see it fairly easily when you've ascended up the trunk though.

The Track

Lou Reed's Walk on the Wild Side, produced by David Bowie, is the fifth track on his seminal album Transformer. It's undoubtedly one of my all-time favourites - the irresistibly smooth double bass line (actually recorded on two separate instruments) combining flawlessly with Reed's matter-of-fact vocals and culminating in Ronnie Ross' transcendently beautiful baritone sax solo.

Each verse introduces us to a different character from Andy Warhol's New York studio The Factory. The song covers topics considered seriously taboo at the time of its release, leading to varying degrees of censorship in some countries.

Despite the song's subsequent elevation to cult classic status, its performance in the charts at the time varied considerably - ranging from a high spot of no. 10 in the UK, to only no. 67 in Germany.

You can read more about the song here.

The Puzzle

I like to make my extreme caches puzzles in order to make sure that people have read the information and warnings on the cache page! I've had a bit of fun with this one - it's based on the song.

You can validate your puzzle solution with certitude.