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LIFE SAVER Multi-cache

Hidden : 2/22/2003
Difficulty:
3.5 out of 5
Terrain:
1.5 out of 5

Size: Size:   regular (regular)

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Geocache Description:


LIFE SAVER




LISTEN UP!

This cache is not about those colourful candies with a hole! This is about a life and death situation!


You are out in a high grass, sparsely-treed, level wilderness, on an overcast summer's day, on a very important quest looking for a bucket of trinkets of little value. Suddenly you startle a momma bear with cubs!!! HOLY MOLEY!!! She immediately attacks you! WHAM!!! WHAM!!!WHAM!!! Using current wisdom, you play dead, praying that it's not a rehearsal for the real thing. After an eternity of her beating and mauling you, she and her cubs disappear.

When you come to, all is quiet except your heart which is pounding like a mad drummer's tattoo. Bleeding profusely, you decide to clear out of there in a HURRY! You check your GPSr and find that it too has taken a beating. It works, but all your waypoints are gone and so is your tracklog. The only thing you are certain of, is that just before you were attacked, you were beside that tree right there which is EXACTLY 1 kilometer from a perfectly STRAIGHT trail which will lead you to safety. You have no idea in which direction to start off. Fighting the very strong temptation to head off in all directions at once, you force yourself to calm down. You realize that you must get out as soon as possible, or bleed to death. The adrenelin coursing through your body makes your brain work at the speed of light and your thoughts become crystal clear.

You immediately devise an OPTIMAL geometric plan that will guarantee that you find the trail in the SHORTEST travelling distance from that tree compared to ANY other plan, even if you start off using the WORST possible choice of heading. There is no sun, or anything else, to guide you as to direction. You also know you won't see the trail until you are right on top of it.

As it happens, you DO choose the worst initial heading in following the optimal strategy, but your plan works and you manage to get to help just in time to save your life.


I certainly don't want to put you through that experience again! So after hearing this story, I have devised a simple geocache. It is based on your travel distance (D) in meters from the tree to the straight trail when you randomly chose the worst possible heading to start off from the tree. The following instructions will lead you to the cache:

Go to Waypoint 1 (N45 20.886 W075 36.578). There you will find a yellow and black sign with a checkerboard pattern. Count the total number (N) of complete squares (of ALL sizes) on the sign. (The corners of the checkerboard are rounded but you must consider the corner squares to be square just like the rest of the small squares.) The cache is at a distance of (D minus 5278) meters from the sign. The bearing from the sign to the cache (relative to true north) is (17 times N) mils.

The cache container, which is findable in winter, is a camouflage painted plastic container about 6 inches in diameter by about 6 inches high.

Estimated hiking time to the cache and return is about 2 hours.

Go find the cache. If you do it in winter, the bears will be asleep.

NOTE: Yes, I know, the picture above is of a Grizzly bear.

This website is Another Life Saver: The Black Bear in Gatineau Park

Please do not include spoilers in your logs. Logs with spoilers will be deleted immediately. If you believe there are any problems with the cache setup, please advise me privately by e-mail so that I may fix them if necessary.

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

Gur trbzrgel bs gur bcgvzny cngu gb sbyybj vf abg na boivbhf bar. Gur bcgvzny cngu bayl erdhverf lbh gb geniry nybat fgenvtug yvarf naq nybat n cbegvba bs n pvepyr. Sbe nal bgure cyna, vs lbhe vavgny urnqvat vf gur jbefg cbffvoyr pubvpr, gura gur geniry qvfgnapr gb gur genvy jvyy or terngre guna sbe gur bcgvzny cyna. Pyvpx ba gur cvpgher orybj gb frr fbzr rknzcyrf bs fgengrtvrf juvpu jbhyq riraghnyyl trg lbh gb gur cngu, ohg juvpu ner aba bcgvzny. Va rnpu pnfr, ol hfvat gur jbefg cbffvoyr fgnegvat urnqvat lbh whfg snvy gb ernpu gur cngu nf lbh fgneg bhg ba gur svefg yrt sebz gur pragre.

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)