OK, so now I have done it......
I am always talking about extreme caches. Now I am obligated to do one of the most difficult caches ever. Psycho Urban Cache #13. Look it up. It is in the middle of the Potomac River on a 70 foot pylon from an old railroad bridge. It was placed by helicopter. A few teams have gotten it and it is legendary.
So the story is that Groundspeak contacted the CO, Vinny. The want to do a TV special on extreme geocaching and use PUC13 as one of the featured caches. So Vinny, knowing our interest in getting this cache, contacted me and my friend Dutch (Linuxxpert) and asked if we would be team leaders on this mission. So we began an interview process and chose 12 team members. Me and Chuck and Dutch and DJ were givens and we wound up interviewing a lot of people and came up with 8 others. There is one other female on the team, an army medic. We have two people that have done the cache before, one a climbing teacher. And six newbies. All have a ton of experience though. We have soldiers, firemen, cops, even a magician (not sure how that fits in, but it is very cool).
So yesterday Dutch and I decided to meet up with one of the people that had done it before at the cache site. I left my house at 4:30 AM and made the long haul to West Virginia to meet up with everyone. We got there and scoped out the area (those pillars are IMPOSING!) and get some kind of plan in our heads. Couple of hours later we decided that, being in the area, we would grab a couple other PUCs. Numbers 3 and 14 to be exact.
Number 3 took us through storm drains in Frederick, MD. 3stages crawling through water filled storn drain tunnels that went under the roads (did I mention it was raining?) Interesting but not nearly Psycho enough!
Number 14 was definitely Psycho! The first stage was in a cave of sorts. DJ, the skinniest of our trio went in first and wound up making the find. Dutch and I made it in as far as we could, with DJ bringing out the coords to the next stage. Funny thing, DJ went the farthest and came out the cleanest...go figure....
Stage two was a hole in a cliff that was only accesible by rappelling. It was the dirtiest rappel I have ever seen or thought about attempting. "Dirty" meaning not only muddy and nasty but just a nasty rappel. Loose rocks and slippery slope. Dutch went down and made the find, and after watching him slip and slide and not want to climb back up, I decided to be the rescuer and carry down the gear, so he wouldn't have to come back up.
Regardless, another PUC completed....
I am always talking about extreme caches. Now I am obligated to do one of the most difficult caches ever. Psycho Urban Cache #13. Look it up. It is in the middle of the Potomac River on a 70 foot pylon from an old railroad bridge. It was placed by helicopter. A few teams have gotten it and it is legendary.
So the story is that Groundspeak contacted the CO, Vinny. The want to do a TV special on extreme geocaching and use PUC13 as one of the featured caches. So Vinny, knowing our interest in getting this cache, contacted me and my friend Dutch (Linuxxpert) and asked if we would be team leaders on this mission. So we began an interview process and chose 12 team members. Me and Chuck and Dutch and DJ were givens and we wound up interviewing a lot of people and came up with 8 others. There is one other female on the team, an army medic. We have two people that have done the cache before, one a climbing teacher. And six newbies. All have a ton of experience though. We have soldiers, firemen, cops, even a magician (not sure how that fits in, but it is very cool).
So yesterday Dutch and I decided to meet up with one of the people that had done it before at the cache site. I left my house at 4:30 AM and made the long haul to West Virginia to meet up with everyone. We got there and scoped out the area (those pillars are IMPOSING!) and get some kind of plan in our heads. Couple of hours later we decided that, being in the area, we would grab a couple other PUCs. Numbers 3 and 14 to be exact.
Number 3 took us through storm drains in Frederick, MD. 3stages crawling through water filled storn drain tunnels that went under the roads (did I mention it was raining?) Interesting but not nearly Psycho enough!
Number 14 was definitely Psycho! The first stage was in a cave of sorts. DJ, the skinniest of our trio went in first and wound up making the find. Dutch and I made it in as far as we could, with DJ bringing out the coords to the next stage. Funny thing, DJ went the farthest and came out the cleanest...go figure....
Stage two was a hole in a cliff that was only accesible by rappelling. It was the dirtiest rappel I have ever seen or thought about attempting. "Dirty" meaning not only muddy and nasty but just a nasty rappel. Loose rocks and slippery slope. Dutch went down and made the find, and after watching him slip and slide and not want to climb back up, I decided to be the rescuer and carry down the gear, so he wouldn't have to come back up.
Regardless, another PUC completed....
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I love GeoCaching, and would love to see the special, don't know if I would like to do the extreme version though, my enjoyment comes from the fact that even though i am older, i can still do my favorite activity I had as a kid, treasure hunting.
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