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.
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Reminds me of my trip to the Tully Mountain cache last year. As soon as we got on the trail, the GPSr said 500 feet up the hill. So, we bushwhacked uphill on hands and knees. What a mistake. 500 feet straightline is a long way uphillo. LOL
Interesting story. My rule of thumb now is, "Always stick to the trail as long as possible."
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