The Ellerbe Creek headwaters form within a small sliver of undeveloped land between the Durham Freeway and a newly constructed neighborhood, which only recently replaced woods. So goes the story of this creek, the namesake for the dissolved Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association. Walk, bike, or drive if you must and park at the end of Shoccoree Drive to explore this partially protected riparian area as you hunt for the final stage, which is a small camoflauged container.
Plan to spend over an hour and walk over a mile, much of it off-trail. This multi-cache will challenge you to ditch your GPS. Instead, you must use an orienteering map with unique 4-digit coordinate system, which will narrow your search for each stage to a 10 m (33 ft) radius. Print the following PDF of this map (w/ legend) beforehand on US letter size paper (8.5x11"), preferably in color: https://shorturl.at/BT4AQ
Note the map's scale (1:2000) and portrait orientation using a 50 m grid oriented to magnetic north with numbers and letters in the margins. The numbers (latitude) and letters (longitude) give the 50 m squares unique addresses. Each square can then be subdivided into twenty-five 10 m squares in an identical fashion using imaginary lines (see schematic in upper right corner of map) . Each stage location for this multicache is given as a 4-digit address (letter, number, letter, number) to be found using this map.
At all but the final stage, you are looking for a metal dog tag hanging in plain sight with the 4-digit address for the next stage etched onto it. The first two digits of this address (letter, number) tell you the correct 50 m square to go to on the map. The last two digits (letter, number) tell you the correct imaginary 10 m square within this 50 m square to narrow your search. Here are two examples: the parking at the end of Shoccoree Drive (circle in bottom right corner of map) is H1B5 and stage 1 is located at H2A3.
It's important to be familiar with the symbols used on the map, which loosely conform with those of the International Orienteering Federation. In addition to the brown contours (at 2.5 m interval), one of the most prominent symbols is the magenta hashmark pattern denoting areas that are out-of-bounds. Yellow is open land, white is forest, green is dense forest/vegetation etc. Each stage is purposely placed near a mapped feature. You may need to refer to the legend of orienteering symbols (second page of map PDF linked above).
Take in the bittersweet view at the final. You may feel like you're standing where the Lorax once stood before he lifted himself by the seat of his pants and took leave of this place. Depending on the time of year, you may have enjoyed a handful of natural sweets along the way.
Congrats to blaubok for FTF!