Boy, was that a dumb thing to do Poll

These are great stories, and Im in awe of a 71 y/o climbing a tree! WOW and way to go!

I was very new with maybe 10 caches under my belt. Was going to try to clear the caches in a park. Being so green I didnt know about diff ratings, marking car waypoints, or checking for trails. I get to the park at about 9am, excited to start caching, headed for the first trail head I saw and started walking. Did well the first couple hrs. Then headed to this one cache that sounded fun. Well I walked, and I walked, and I walked some more. Finally decided to bushwack it as a shortcut. FINALLY, scraped, cut, dehydrated, and bug bitten I emerged into a clearing of picnic tables, and GPSr showed cache about 100 ft away!

I head off and come to a cliff thats a shear drop off to the river about 75 ft down. After some looking I see the cache way out on a very small limb out over the cliff. I see no way to retrieve it except to climb over edge and hang on with one hand while grabbing the cache. As I did this my foot slipped, I started to slide and grabbed the tree. It was only about the size of my wrist, and I could see its roots on the cliff. The tree started to come out of the ground. My life did flash before my eyes. (LOL I can laugh now) To this day I believe it was only devine intervention that allowed that little tiny tree to hold me long enough to scramble back up over the cliff edge.
What was hilarious, was that when I sat up, I still had that cache in my hand! I signed the log and replaced it within much closer reach.
Still shaken and with a pounding heart I turn around and notice a parking area near a paved park road. I felt like such an idiot! I walked and bushwacked for hrs, when I could have driven & parked 25 ft away. Then to top it all off I still had to walk back to my car. I did find a shorter route back, but it was almost dark (about 8:30pm) when I got to my car. A park ranger was there, and said he was about to send for a quad so he could go search the trails for me. YIKES!
What makes this even worse, is that I was ex active Army, and had just went back into the Air Nat Guard, had excellent outdoor & survival skills, and should have known better. I also didnt tell my live in girlfriend where I was going. Needless to say, it was a hot, nasty, painful, and embarrassing day! But I did get those smilies! I learned a lot from that experience.
ALWAYS tell someone where you plan to cache, or leave a list/query behind or even visible on the car dash.

1MANKNEY - So here I am up in a tree, balanced on two branches unscrewing a bison tube over my head, when it dawns on me. When I fall out of this tree and break something, how will I explain to the doctor just what I was doing up in a tree at my age (71).

I literally snorted when I read that! I can't tell you how many times that has crossed my mind....what am I gonna tell the ppl in the ER about what I was doing?!

Locating the cache was a snap. We could see the bird nest where the cache was hidden way up there in the tree (about 12 feet I guess). The first branch was about 2 feet off the ground, and I am only 5 feet tall, but with a little boost from my husband I made it up into the tree and carefully climbed up into the scratchy old pine tree to retrieve the cache and sign it. The bison tube it was in was secured to the tree and I needed both hands to unscrew it and sign the log. So here I am up in a tree, balanced on two branches unscrewing a bison tube over my head, when it dawns on me. When I fall out of this tree and break something, how will I explain to the doctor just what I was doing up in a tree at my age (71).
Got our highest terrain and for me a great feeling of accomplishment!

I climbed onto a bathroom roof the other day for an ammo can. Climbing up was a chore, but bracing myself for the 8-9 foot jump down was a bit unnerving. LOL. Got myself a difficulty and terrain box on my grid filled in though


Edited by: LISSUS at: 3/5/2011 (15:20)

oh god i could totally see myself doing that - i have a TERRIBLE sense of direction. there have definitely been other days of wandering around lost in the forest, which i totally dont mind - i enjoy the challenge of finding my way back out (i dont live in an area where i could get in deep enough to be in real danger), our forested areas are relatively small). it was just doing it in the dark that was so terrible! and yes, i think that marking waypoints is a very, VERY important thing to do - the fun of caching doesnt measure up to putting yourself in harms way by being careless.

Glad you're alright but really glad you thought to mark your car location.

One of the first things I tell new cachers is if you leave your car mark it as a waypoint. A friend had been following another cacher playing leap frog passing each other at a series of caches. They finally decided to just ride together and park one car in a small roadside pull off. After several hours of driving back roads, they had no idea where the second car was parked. They started the series over and had to retrace their route.

Wow, that sounds scary - I'm glad you're alright!

Wow that sounds exhausting. Bet you slept good that night!

i will never forget the cache i tried to get, in which i didnt check the map closely enough. the cache was near a bike path that i knew very well, but what i could have figured out if i had taken some time, was that theres actually a hiking trail that runs mostly parallel to the bike trail in the beginning, then winds up much closer to where the cache was. so in order to get the cache, i biked down the trail, locked up my bike against a tree, and bushwhacked all the way from the bike trail to the hike trail, and then AGAIN, from the hike trail to the cache itself.

the cache was at the top of a very high ridge which, im sure, had an access point of its own that i was again too careless to notice. that in itself was pretty dangerous - i made it uphill, found the cache, and noticed that the sun was starting to set. no big deal, i thought - ill make it out.

um, wrong. i got back to the bottom of the ridge (i had to go VERY slowly so that i didnt fall), and almost to the hike path, by the time the sun had set completely. it was now pitch black, and my gps was having a hard time getting a signal.

did i mention that this area is widely known for coyote dens, as even evidenced in the name of the cache itself?

so theres me wandering around in the dark, no clue where im going, while coyotes start to howl around me. i was TERRIFIED. i had my cell phone, but i couldnt think what good it was going to do, because how was i going to tell anyone where i was? no one else i know owns gps equipment and i wasnt wasting 911 resources just because im an idiot. all i can say is THANK GOD i thought to mark a waypoint where i had left my bike - even though it took me ages to find it again. so then when i finally made it back to my bike, still scared, exhausted, and covered in plant life, i had another mile to bike back to my car, awkwardly balancing my flashlight so that i could see in front of me.

and after all this, when i returned to my car, i had gotten a parking ticket for being in the lot after sunset.

that was a pretty good wake-up call to plan ahead, know the best way to and from a cache, and always be aware of your surroundings.

Ouch! Thank goodness you got your GPS back!

Well, I actually had more than one incident to choose from, but this one I'll never forget...
I was doing a multi cache that was rather hard, uphill, downhill, uphill...backtrack etc etc. I decided at one point to take a shortcut. Sigh. Dummy. Down a scree field. I slid down this field half on my heels half on my butt, scraped up multiple body parts, put holes in my pants, scared the you know what out of myself and worst of all...lost my gps on the way down somewhere! So I was scraped up, exhausted and now lost. I had to ask someone for directions back to the parking area.
**the good news** I came back a week later with friends we retraced my route, amazingly found my gps, and finished the cache.

Yep - got the cache! Luckily had an ice pack in my cooler cuz I brought some Diet Coke along.... kept my arm from swelling too bad.

But did you get the cache?

Just kidding....that must have been scary!

I recently was going after an easy cache... some big boulders on the side of a hill... a cigar tube hidden in the boulders... reach across the top of a boulder and *boom* the boulder breaks loose and heads for my foot. I jumped out of the way but it hit my arm and scraped my knee on the way to the ground. My arm and wrist were bruised up and scratched, but thankfully my foot didn't get shattered.

True cachers would never abandon the cache just because of some bad luck! After all, you'd hate to have to come back and do it again... and you know you can't just leave it unfound!

Yikes....but still LOL. Have you noticed that when geocachers tell about tales of near disaster, they still end up going for the cache? Now thst's an addict!

Yikes....but still LOL. Have you noticed that when geocachers tell about tales of near disaster, they still end up going for the cache? Now thst's an addict!

It was late in the fall. The cache I was going after was on a slope. At the bottom of the slope was a 20 foot drop off into the local river. The cache was 1/2 way between me & the river's edge down the slope. The grass looked like it was wet. No Problem, I thought. Just take it slow. I took 3 steps. My legs went out from under me. I fell on my A** & slid down the slope. I had stepped onto a sheet of ice. When I stopped sliding, my feet were dangling over the river. Very gingerly, I inched my way away from the edge. Got the ice cleats out of my backpack & put them on my hiking boots.

I did manage to claim the cache on the way back up the hill.

What's the dumbest thing you've ever done while geocaching?

Mine was walking alone into a dense forest where there was clear evidence of bears (could those paw prints have been any bigger?!) Or maybe they were mountain lion tracks. After about a half hour of stumbling around, I got the oddest feeling that something or someone was watching me. I decided to abandon that hunt until I could bring other people with me.

How about you? Done any really nutty things?

Nui