Been a bit

Well, its been a bit since I've blogged my outdoor stuff. Lets see, I've acquired new gear over the holiday season, mostly stuff I've bought. I picked up some ultralight raingear, a Golite Virga jacket, Golite Reed pants. I also picked up a new pair of ultralight boots, a pair on North Face lightweight boots, with goretex linings. Lastly, I picked up a lumbar pack, made by Mountainsmith.
I have also been refining my survival gear that I carry with me everywhere. I have a few more items to add, then I'll post some more pics up. I am teaching my nephew outdoor skills as well. I went for a dayhike yesterday, up a local mountain. It was the first significant snowfall we've had in a while. I wanted to test my new gear out, & try firemaking in less than ideal conditions. The gear worked great-the firemaking, well, I havent mastered using vaseline soaked cotton balls yet, but I'll get there. I did get one started using a spark lite & tinder-quik though. IN less than ideal conditions. On top of the mountain, the wind was about 25 mph constant, snow was blowing around, and it was about 25* without windchill. It took about 20 attempts with the tinder quik; about a mintue. But, it caught.
I will post more later. I am currently teaching myself all of this stuff so, in the event I NEED to use it, I already have the skillset. And, I get to teach my nephew as well.

caching Sunday

Well, I took my nephew out on Sunday, to try & get a few more caches. We started off OK, hitting a couple real quick ones, no problems finding them. Then, as we were heading to another local one, I saw 2 pop up on my GPS. I asked if he wanted to grab them on the way. "Sure" he answered. Thus, it begins....
So, I am circling the woods where these caches are located, and we settle on parking in a clearcut area. Seeing no trail (we are used to this, by now), we just follow the arrow. Much to our surprise, the is a nice, open field to cross. No tripping, crawling through underbrush, pickers, nothing! So, we cut across, do a little bushwhacking, and find a trail. We head down the trail, get to ground zero, and begin our hunt. After about 10 minutes, we find the cache. We are at the top of these cliffs, about 100 feet up or so. I ask my nephew if he wants to try this cache, about 1/2 mile away, looking like its down the trail. Again, he responds positively. So, we begin walking. Following the trail. The trail cuts down the cliff. Slowly, slowly, we get close. A fifteenth of a mile. A tenth. Five hundred feet. Now, mind you, we are at the bottom of the cliff. I stop, take a reading, look at the map. "Bad news", I say. Without saying another word, I simply look up, at the cliffs. "are you serious" my nephew asks. I tell him, simply, "hey, you give elevation, you gain elevation". So, instead of doing the SMART thing, and head back the way we came, we decide to scramble up the cliffs. We begin half climbing, half clawing our way up. Josh, my nephew, grabs a stump to pull himself up, which promptly separates itself from the ground. "Don't grab that dead tree" he says to me. Like there was much left to hold onto after it was ripped out of the ground.
Finally, after a few more hairy moments, we get to the top of the cliffs. "Hey", I say; "the cache is only like 50 feet that way", I point to my left. Sure enough, there it was, under a rock.
And, sure as the sun rises in the east, we find the REAL trail as soon as we replace the cache.

Caching items part III

Ok, so, here is the third installment of what I carry. We are going to touch on clothing items. Here, you'll notice I have three articles of clothing. These are a fleece jacket, and wet weather tops and bottoms.
These items I have with me ALL the time. I figure that, should I get caught out somewhere, these will get me through a rough night. Also, come fall (like it is now), I will throw in a knit cap. I also add thicker socks as backup (they can double as mittens). You have to draw a fine line between lightweight and comfort. I figure, worst case, I'll be stuck overnight. It may be a miserable night, but it would be surviveable. And, I just may need to, or, WANT to, stay dry; and I always know where my gear is!

Part II

Ok, here is part 2 of the essentials. Now, an integral part of geocaching, and a main attraction to the sport, is, of course, the GPS. There are MANY options on the market today; the two frontrunners are garmin and magellan. Although there ARE other handhelds out there (please, make sure that the one you get is weather proof), these two are the ones you will run into the most. I, personally, have always used garmin products. Others swear by magellans. Its kinda like the coke/pepsi thing. Each one has its ups & downs. I currently own a GPSMAP60Cx, which is their premier GPS at this moment. It is capable of storing maps, has a removeable memory card, has autorouting (more on that later), and even has a geocaching feature, which allows you to log the geocache, and go to the next closest one. Its a feature I really like. There is also a calendar feature, which logs all your finds each day, so you dont have to actually remember them.
The next thing I carry for electronics is a camera. I use a Nikon Coolpix L3. Camera choice is yours. I keep mine in a plastic bag, inside a case, to keep moisture from getting to it. It takes AA batts, same as all my other electronic stuff, so I dont need to carry different types of batteries. For me, a digital camera is best, as I can download my pictures to the net. Again, the choice is yours.
Next up is a walkie talkie. I honestly have never used mine caching; some do, some dont. I carry it simply because. IT also takes AAs.
LAst one for now, my PDA. My PDA is a Garmin Iqueue 3600. IT serves several purposes; first, its a PDA (duh). Second, this model is also a GPS, and, with a car kit and external antenna, it is my car navigation system. This has autorouting (plug in an address, and it routes from where you are to where you want to be), voice turn by turn directions, and works reasonably well. Third, I use my PDA for paperless caching. You can read more on that there. But, it beats the heck out of carrying tons of paper with you. One word on caching with PDA's; get a good case for it. There are several weatherproof cases on the market today. The one I use allows me to write through the heavy plastic front of it, and, it floats. You want to protect your investment.
speaking of investment, you can get a good used pda off of ebay for a song. All you need is one that is capable of hotsyncing, and has palm os 3.0 or later, for uploading files to it. More on that later.
Well, thats all for now. Hope you found this all informative!

Part I, as promised

Ok, as promised, here is one of several installments as to what I normally carry when out caching. Here is a picture of the pack I carry:
This pack is one that has been with me for several years. Almost any type of daypack will do, so long as it can hold your essentials. Mine is a 3 day pack, and can swallow enough gear to support me for several days. Mine is manufactured by Blackhawk, and is pretty bombproof. It has a hydration sleeve, side compression straps, a sternum strap, & a waist strap. I have run several miles with this, and find it fairly comfortable.
Well, thats all I have for it right now. Next, I will go over some of my electronic gear.

I hit 100 today!

Well, despite the weather, I decided to go out & finish up my first 100 caches. I had pre-planned a route last night, and chose a few caches in the area. I also planned on leaving my current green jeep TB. I hit my one hundredth cache on its miller time. I went on & did one more, before calling it a day. I wanted to do a decent one to drop off my green jeep, as the 100th cache was a small one, and could be muggled. Well, finally finished up, with doing 8, in the pouring rain, in about three hours. Overall, a good day for geocaching. Even with the rain. It kept away the bugs AND the muggles!

night cache!!!

Well, I did my first night time cache tonight. This brings a whole different aspect to this game. Let me explain; for a cache to be a good night time cache, there has to be some way of identifying the area when you get to it. Some people use different types of markers; I tiny strobe, powered by a solar cell, that only goes off at a certain time; a pressure-sensitive light, that, when hit, turns on; or these, which marked the way to the cache I did tonight;firetacks. These things are near impossible to see during the daytime, as they are bark-colored. But, at night, they reflect light like a stop sign! So, I follow the trail in, about .3 miles. The hint states that there will be an arrow point offtrail to where the cache is. at .29 miles, I see the arrow. I turn off the trail, walk in a straight line about 100', and, viola! The cache! I didnt take anything, as all I took to find the cache was a flashlight & a pencil. Tonight, the hunt was enough. 7 more to go!

Last note for the night; tomorrow, I'll post up pics of the gear I typically take with me, and some of the uses for each piece.

Ok, here is the latest; I am currently 8 caches away from hitting my first 100. I currently plan on hitting it this weekend. I originally picked up a GPS in 2002, and promptly joined www.geocaching.com. My first few attempts were failures at finding caches. The first one I tried, I have the power, was a failure. I had looked for the better part of an hour. As this was quite a few years ago, was it was cold, snowing, & getting dark. My DNF log was originally on 5 january 2003. I was shortly thereafter re-deployed, courtesy of the US Army. Thus ended my brief attempt at geocaching.
My first find was at this cache; keys to the forest. I was in the area, searching for another cache that I didnt find, and attempted this one, as it was fairly close to my hunting area. I bushwhacked the whole way in, which, apparently, has become quite common for me. I found the trail that led right to it, as soon as I found the cache.
From there, over the course of roughly the next year, I went periodically. Then, beginning in roughly May of this year, I pretty much went berserk. I started going almost every weekend I could. I made my 50th find on this cache; sheeps rock cache, on 2 september this year. Since that day to this, I found an additional 42. I made my first FTF on august 15th of this year at this cache; north central pathway, where I also found my first green jeep. My largest run of caches in one day is 16, completed on 2 september. We hit the Athol area, and cleaned it out.
My most recent exploit was while looking for rebels treat. I was out in the middle of Leominster state forest, and, no sooner had I discovered this cache, that the thunder clouds rolled in. I was almost 2 miles from my jeep, and didnt really feel like getting rained on. So, I ran. Now, mind you, I havent run in a couple of years; also, I had my backpack on. So, off I trotted, desperately racing against mother nature. I alternated jogging & walking, catching my breath. No sooner did I make it to my jeep, that the rain started in earnest. Talk about the nick of time!
Well, thats about all I have for tonight. I plan on doing a couple of night caches, maybe tomorrow night. I'll post those, should I do them. Until then, stay safe!

Well, I decided that I wanted to start blogging. Mainly, to keep track of my currently favorite pasttime, geocaching. I keep an actual journal of my exploits, so I figurted I'd share it online. I will add more over the next few days, as I update it from my journal. Stay tuned!