Stampcoin Geocaching

Silver Star ~ FTF!

2011-03-05T19:27:00.000-08:00

Went skiing at Silver Star today, and after seeing the new multi cache listed, couldn't resist going for the First-to-Find.

Since I wrote a lot for the log, and I'm tired I thought I'd just paste my log instead of rewriting it all again.

FTF
WOOT!!!

Today was the last day skiing with the school and, by chance, I checked Geocaching thinking that if there were any new caches since last I checked, I wouldn't want to miss them.
Good thing I did. This was definitely a more enjoyable way to spend a day, skiing around, on easy trails, answering questions, before finally heading to the final.

Upon getting my ski's I immediately went off for the first stage, the paw prints. Headed off, counted, and then down to the chair lift. Then I realized I had forgotten to grab my lift ticket from my teacher. Ooops. Thankfully I managed to make it up that time without getting checked.

Once I had the lift ticket, I headed down to the comet again, off to do stage 2. While not necessary and not having a cellphone, I just took a picture of myself there. (Hopefully I'll remember to post it later)

Then off for the long ski to Stage 3. Just to realize I can't seem to reach it from the top of the comet. Headed down under the Attridge chair, and then up it. By the way, the Attridge chair has got to be the sketchiest and slowest chair around (aside from the green)
On top, I soon found the pole I was looking for, hiked up to it and got the number.

Then I had to race back to make it to my lesson in time. Thankfully I did make it.
After the lesson ended, I was stuck going all the way up the comet, across the top, down under Attridge, across the road and up Silver Queen, before I made it to Stage 4. There I did some quick counting. During which the Lift Attendant came out and asked what I was doing. I told him and he said I must be part of some scavenger hunt going on the day. :p

Now down to the Silver Woods side to grab the next info, up to the top, and writing down the number. Made it to the backside after some time involving cross country, uphill and restricted area. Saw the large structure, then raced back to the main building to report in for lunch and figure out final destination.

Plugged in the co-ords and was racing all the way around back again. Came around the area of stage 7 and thought something must be wrong, as there was nowhere there to hide anything. Checking my GPS i realized I had only changed the waypoint name, but not the co-ords, so plugged in proper co-ords and was off.

Had a little bit of time wandering around with skis, in the deep snow before finding the string. Pulled it up and YESSS!!!

Got my FTF. Lots of travelbugs and items in here. Took the FTF prize, thanks, and a bunch of trackables to move along.

Overall good multi. Fun way to spend a day during the ski season, easy for beginner ski/boarders also.
Thanks for the Cache!

Glad to finally have the chance to cache again. Winter is far to cold and miserable for very much fun caching opportunities.

A Quick Trip to Kelowna

2010-09-02T23:10:00.000-07:00

Went on a very quick trip to Kelowna for a Doctors appointment today.

While this was a very quick trip, and I only got 4 geocaches, i thought it was worth the blog post for the one picture.

When I first was reading the previous found logs on this one, someone said,

Nice hide, we have lots of them in The Netherlands.

I automatically knew it had to be a birdhouse. So that's the one I went to next.
Had to wade across a creek to get to it, but it was worth it. My Guess was correct.

I always love seeing these birdhouses because everyone is so unique and different.

This one actually had a bird nesting in the top!

Then i went to another interesting cache. A Decoy and Regular container. In the same Container!
Thankfully i got the real cache first. That one could really confuse you if you got decoy first and didn't clue in.

A Geocaching Holiday - Day 4 & 5

2010-08-29T22:22:00.000-07:00

Day 4:
My final day of Geocaching in the Chilliwack area.
After spending most of the morning before church trying to solve a puzzle cache, I was glad to be able to do that one first thing after church ended. Then biked back to house to go with my Uncle for the rest of the Give R Take series.

After parking the truck at the end, we went to the beginning, (with their 2nd vehicle) and were dropped off there.
Almost immediately after being dropped off I was doing two things.
Enjoying the abundant blackberries, and searching for the first cache, which was really close.
Found the next three relatively quickly also.
Then we were on the actual trail. This side was quite different from the other. Yes it was still steep, but it was much more entertaining, because it was a mountain bike trail. Made me wish all over again that i had a nice mountain bike.

This Guy Didn't wipe out. The following Did.

As it got further we went into more of the technical stuff, like bridges, jumps, ramps and such.

The First of Many to Come

Another Bridge

A Really High One

A Long One

In case you're getting bored of the jumps, enjoy a Christmas Tree!

Yes there's a Cache right behind it!

And back to the jumps...

Another Long One!

A Cache and Trackable I Dropped

A Big Jump

Anyway, sorry for those who may be getting bored of the bike trail pics. That ended then, and we were back on a different FSR road. Hiked along that until turning off onto a dirtbike trail.

Onto a Different Trail

From there we followed a bunch of different dirt-bike trails getting a cache every 700m or so.
All in all we got 15 caches along this trail. Came out near the truck and got to see these neat stone statues.

Interesting Statue. There was 2 of these

After that my Mom picked me up not long later. And we headed to Maple Ridge, where we were staying at friends.

Day 5:
Day 5 started with me having to have a doctors appointment at 3pm in Vancouver. However, that still meant I had 4 hours to go and get some caches before we had to leave. Off on their bike which they lent me.
Managed to grab 9 caches in Maple Ridge and saw this very unique tree

The tree on the right grew sideways and joined up with the left tree. Completely joined, this is just 1 tree!

Also managed to snag a letterbox, private property cache, and a few small caches in Vancouver.

Then it was time to finally head home. Well, that is after a quick stop in Vernon. (and 1 more cache!)

And so my Geocaching Holiday came to an end. But i did get 100+ caches and lots of biking!
Was it worth it? Totally!

A Geocaching Holiday - Day 3

2010-08-28T20:11:00.000-07:00

Saturday brought on my third day of Geocaching
Sardis two and I, drove out to Langley, first thing, to see the Geo-Race 2 start.

If there is one thing I so want to do next year, or anytime, it's that event.
Unfortunately I never ended up registering in time so, I couldn't participate aside from seeing off the starters and waiting at the finish.
However from what i did hear, it sounds like it would have been awesome.
Pretty much you start off racing to the ammo can, which has a bunch of envelopes, with the first puzzle's info in it.

The First Race to get info

Once your team has solved that puzzle, you go to the coordinates it gives you. Once there you have to do some activity or other before getting the next coordinates

These activities range from, rock climbing, downing 1L of slushie, Racing down Cultus Waterslides, Corn mazes, puzzles, swimming, driving like crazy, eating hot buffalo wings, golf, the zoo and other such creative fun ideas.

Team Gearhedd, at Slushies

Tubes

Working Through a Corn Maze

Solving Puzzles or Various Types

Colour By Number for Coordinates

Going to the Zoo

Rock Climbing

Throughout the race there are also caches placed, as FTF temptations. You can possibly get a FTF getting them, but you'll loose time. And the hole race is based of time. Whoever was the quickest overall. Each station records how long you took to complete it.

The race finally ended out at Harrison Lake. More on that later though.

Anyway, after seeing off the groups at the beginning, we went and talked to geo_canuck77, who gave us the coordinates of the end location. However since it was expected that they wouldn't get there for a good 4 - 5 hours, we had some time in Langley to cache.

Our first stop was to a Traditional Micro Cache, but we never did find it.

The next stop was to another tree climber cache. I like these ones, and might duplicate one or two. The coast also has some really great climbing trees for them to be in though.

Me Up in Langley Tree Climber #1

After that one we walked out to look for a multi but got another DNF. :(

We also snagged a bolt cache, some small lock'n'locks and another one of those spare key caches. Got that one 2nd guess.

Then we headed back for lunch.

After lunch we headed out to Harrison Lake, where the Geo-Race was ending.

Once there i got another 3 caches while the teams slowly came in.

The first one i did, was also my first 5/5 Cache.

You had to swim out to it. Then dive underwater about 5-6ft, to unhook the cache, and bring it back up.

So while i can swim just fine. I can't hold my breath whatsoever. So getting this one was going to be a little challenging. At least i thought so.

Saved myself alot of time and trouble however, by just swimming out there with a log (dead tree, not logbook). Once out there i managed to pull up the cache, which was attached to a 20-30lb weight to keep it down,. by using the log to keep me afloat. Even then I nearly couldn't get the thing up.

Once it was out however, I had to swim back to shore to open and sign the logbook.

That's Me out by the Buoy

After replacing it, i couldn't feel my toes for the next 10 minutes. That lake is freezing cold!! Like 5x colder than Shuswap Lake has ever been.

Then i got two other nearby caches...

A Quick Photo

Once I had done those caches, I headed back to wait for the teams to come in. Setting up there was WorldCaching also. Perfect opportunity to meet the new owners, and see what they had to sell.
All sorts of sweet stuff it turned out. Ended up buying 2 new caches, which i plan on releasing by October, some geocoins, and A Trackable Patch. Since i don't have a vehicle for people to track, i thought the patch was perfect. (Now it's on my backpack, if you see me ask me for the code) It has a unique icon and everything!

No, that's not my code...

After that we left. Was really pleased with it though. That was my 500th find, I attended the event, got a 5/5 cache, and a bunch of geo-goodies without having to pay shipping.

Once we got back to the house, we had a quick supper. Than it was back on the road, for me at least.
Took their bike out to go and cache North Chilliwack area. Got a couple interesting finds while out there on that run.

A Rather Unique Container

Another one of the caches was one of those private property ones, where it's right on the cacher's property.
Got to meet family extremes on that one. A few more finds and DNF's and that's it for the day.

All in all a great day. Tree Climbing, Road Trips, Biking, Geo-goodies, 5/5 cache, 500th find and so on

A Geocaching Holiday - Day 2

2010-08-27T22:48:00.000-07:00

My Second day starts and the first thing on the list to do is a hike around Hicks Lake.
So we take about a 45 minute drive up past Harrison Lake and over to Hicks Lake.

This little trail is quite nice, just a round the lake thing.
We started off and it went pretty well. Only 1 DNF the entire time.
Once we got half way round, the trail got alot better (in my opinion).

Now we get cool bridges...

Also got to use sardis two's GPS, which is a lot nicer than mine. Has all the cache info right on the GPS.

An interesting find along that trail was a cache called Thogards Secret Burnination Cache.

This one was a traditional on the site, but it had the makings of a letterbox.

You had to draw a dragon.

And then we quickly grabbed a few nearby ones before heading home.

So after having lunch, i was off to go and bike the one side of the trail that circles Cultus Lake.

There is a series of caches along this route called, Give R Take, with a total of 26 once you do the whole around the lake trail.

For this part i did the last 13 of them.

Most of them looked like this.

No problem. The only problem is that this side of the trail goes like straight up and then straight down and then staright up and then straight down and then... well you get the idea.

These people had obviously never heard of switchbacks. Or just staying at the same elevation.

Despite all the hills, this trail was a fun bike. There were also a few short side trips you could make for nearby caches too:

Teapot Hill

Taking a quick break

Buttermilk Cache

The Bejeweled Cache was a quick jog into a seriously mossy spot!

--->

And finally the letterbox at the end

Now that I finished the trail, I'm off to cache in Cultus until nightfall, when we'll do another Night Cache.

So I managed to do a few more finds before dark, although i also had about 4 DNF's in here too.

Of course I couldn't resist doing a cache with this nearby!

And so here's the found cache

This Nightcache was way simpler than the other one, although it was no less fun.

Love the ending!

Feel Watched?!?

It was rather creepy. All the trees had eyes

All in all a great day. Set a new GeoFrenzy record, of 38 caches in one day! W00T!
Now to get some sleep before tomorrow's caching

A Geocaching Holiday - Day 1

2010-08-26T21:30:00.000-07:00

Well it looks like my long Geoslump is over.

For most of this year since the March event I've been pretty slack. Doing caches here and there, but otherwise not much.

That changed this past weekend.

It all started about 3 weeks ago when my Uncle and Aunt came for a visit. They are also geocachers, sardis two, and they offered a place for me to stay if i came down.

Well of course i said yes. The time for me to go down however didn't come until the last week of August however.

Then just after family got back from Telkwa, the next morning, August 26th I took the Greyhound down to Chilliwack, where I was to be picked up.

Upon arriving at their place, barely 10 minutes from arriving sardis two got a new cache notification. And off we went. After searching around at GZ for a few moments, we spotted a possible spot. Nope. It was a decoy cache.

About another minute later sardis two made the find. Since I won't be naming the cache, (Though it isn't to hard to find out) You can see the picture below.

So I've barely gotten there and I've already got a co-FTF. Not bad for the first half hour.

After lunch, I'm off on their bike to go and find some of the nearby caches before supper.

If there's one thing i can proudly say here. Despite the huge number of cachers, almost all the caches are of really good quality. No light skirts. No film canisters. Almost all in great shape.

That afternoons bike ride brought me another 13 caches to add to my 1 i had already gotten.

Here's a cartoon me. The cache was in the ivy.

This one above, had the little wire tucked into the trees grove. Took a little bit of searching

This was the only film canister found during my trip. It was sitting in a hole in the side of a tree

After heading back for supper, i actually got another chance to go out again after supper, and get picked up to do a Night cache come dark. So off i went. Managed to sneak in another 9 finds before dark.

These ones were a pain to get to as there is construction all over this area and it gets quite windy.

However the blackberries are quite good, and ripe.

Found a blackberry tunnel in one spot along the route to a cache.

The iPod touch Geocaching App, is so nice for paperless Geocaching. Used to have to print off a binder...

Spare Key Cache: Chilliwack

That's a really neat idea, and i'm planning on putting on out like it by winter.

And of course there has to be a chinese puzzle box.

Now that it's night though it's off to do the Night Cache. We start by following the reflector trail into the park down some trail. You're supposed to count the number of reflectors at each point and use that for the co-ords for the final.

Came across this old tree fort along the way. The black beneath it is water.

Of course we missed them the first time round. Geocanuck77, the owner, had the reflectors everywhere from the looking spots. Across the small creek. Way up trees. Took the second trip in to find them.

Even then we didn't get them all. It was just pure luck, that on the way back, we glimpsed some relfectors.

Since we were still going through counting, we decided to check it out.

To find that we were at the final! The Cache itself is in a box hung way up in a tree with a pulley.

Then you had to open a cypher. Thankfully we'd gotten all but two correct, so we were close enough to guestimate the other two.

All in all a very fun one and my 450th!

Geostomp 2010

2010-03-21T21:21:00.000-07:00

Been a long time since my last real caching adventure or trip. In fact I've only got two caches from December till March. So this trip was a nice jump back into geocaching.

Started out by getting picked up near my place by Rhondle and Knightorc and then driving to Kamloops. The event started at 9am, so we drove straight there. Made it just in time and also snagged 2 travel bugs on the vehicles.
The building was packed solid when we got there. We were stuck standing near the door, as you can possibly see in the photo below:

After a quick introduction, we headed out caching. Our first stop, was Tim Horton's which also had a cache beside it. After grabbing some food, we headed across the parking lot to the cache. There was already some people looking, but i managed to grab a FTF. Also got a FTF on the next cache after that.
We then headed to south kamloops and ended up caching there for a while.

Grabbed alot from the Sahali Parks and such.

We grabbed lunch at McDonalds and then went back to caching until ending in North Kamloops at 3:30, in order to go to the wrap up part of the event.

Rhondle and Knightorc both got prizes from the draw, but I didn't, though i got 2 FTF's that morning so everything's OK.

After that we spent the evening on the trip home grabbing some more. In all we got 29 Caches (including the Event)

Kamloops Caching

2009-12-20T19:19:00.000-08:00

We went out to Kamloops this weekend for a nice break. Had a chance to relax, spend money, wait in a vehicle and go geocaching. Probably the last trip for me this year.

Got to Kamloops Friday Evening after school, and went to the hotel, for a swim, watch TV and get ready for bed. Also managed to get Beacon at the Point Cache, which has been disabled for a very long time.

Day 2 was interesting between Daniel, Dad and I going caching between Mom and sisters shopping stops.
Managed to find a bunch that day. Got some pics from them. Some of the caches were definitely cool. Some sweet ideas out there.

Not exactly the greatest pic, but hey. It's a pic. Cache in my hand.

Daniel at the next cache site. This one must have required some work to hide. It sits in plain site, yet is unnoticed. Some nice welding, painting and magnetic work. Well Done!

Another one of me, at a nano. Took a bit searching that fence but i got it eventually.

There were also a few that we couldn't find. This is one of them. Nice view though. Got some pics and 3 panoramas. Will post two below.

This is #1

And This is #2. you will probably have to click on them to view the actual entire thing.

That night i watched Avatar. Sweet movie, and when it ended at 1:00am, Sunday, and it was snowing liek crazy out, it made the perfect ending for a good day.

Sunday i also managed to snag a couple more before heading back home.

Winter Caching

2009-12-06T18:20:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time since i was actually out caching! Today, i managed to get a chance to do 2 close by caches left in the Salmon Arm area.

I drove out, (yes drove! Got my license on the 17th...) and we got cache #1, EZ Cache, first. Glad to get this one as it's been around a long time and i don't get out here very often, aside from XC skiing.

Below is me and Cache:

After this cache, we drove up to the chalet, so i could go run 1km straight into the snowy woods after the next one.

Found between a Camel and Ermine next. Then for a very long snowy trek back.

All in all it was a great trip. Nice to finally get out caching again.

Mega Event Meeting #1

2009-10-26T21:08:00.000-07:00

Today I and KnightOrc met at Rhondle's place to discuss the beginning plans of the Mega Event.
We covered various topics that need to be covered. Our next meeting is yet unknown though we will be discussing the possible locations and getting them and the date finalized.

IF you wanto help with the organizing or the Mega, or want more info feel free to contact one of us.

Also managed to grab 3 more trackable codes, including beating KnightOrc to the FTL on Rhondle's Geomobile by about 5 seconds. ;)

Night Caching With Rhondle

2009-10-01T21:14:00.000-07:00

Got a phone call from one of team Rhondle tonight. Looks like we're going out caching!

Headed out towards Turtle Valley, to get some of Geek & Sweet's new caches. Made the first find, just after it starting getting dark.

Next one took a little while, as we were looking in the wrong spot. After that we found one out near some old ball field. (Not that you could tell anything from how dark it was)

It was decided to go a little farther. Made the find, though disturbed a group of deer. Watched them go bounding off. Made the find, and then returned to the vehicle.

Also found one on a bridge tonight.

These country people are nice drivers. Had 3 slow down / stop to see if we were alright, (and not planting explosives under the bridge...)

Fun night talking the rest of the time.

Free Nano Cache

2009-09-26T21:22:00.000-07:00

I just got a free Nano cache in the mail, thanks to Caching Containers

All you have to do is have their image on your blog and you'll get a free nano.

Now just to decide what to do with it...

Geocaching Events make the News!

2009-09-26T21:19:00.000-07:00

Just thought i'd show off the two newspaper articles that mine & Rhondles CITO got.
This one:

The above was to let people know about the event ahead of time. It was in the newspaper Sept 12.

The below image was on the Sun Country TV, thanks to Rhondle.

This final one was after the event. I am not in the pic because i took it. Glad to see it made the paper though, and gave credit to some of the local sponsors also. It came out Sept 25, in the Lakeshore News

All in all it was a great time. Thanks to all who attended as well as our sponsors!

Must get Bluesky FTF!

2009-09-23T08:00:00.001-07:00

Last night we found out there were new caches in town. The BlueSky cache had finally come out!

Early in the morning, just before school, we were allowed to go out hunting for one. And possibly get a FTF!

Well, we set out after BlueSky - Park Hill (GC1XYPX), hidden by rhondle, after solving the puzzle the previous night. It was cold out, and after parking the vehicle we started to run up the hill, our dad waiting in the vehicle. There was about 1 km till the cache, and most of it looked to be uphill. Still we ran till we couldn't go any further.

Once we reached the top of the hill, we waited for some more sattelites. Once we had the signal, we started running again. Slowly we got closer and closer. And the tension grew! Would we get the FTF? Would there be anything cool worth trading in the cache?

Soon, though it seemed like forever, we reached ground zero. The two of us split, looking all over both sides of the trail for the cache. In a few moments, my brother, Daniel, said, "Watermelon!" (That is our code word for caches. Watermelon trail, watermelon! Watermelon spot?! )

We were not dissapointed. We got to pick one cool BlueSky coin as a prize, and made a trade for a rubber braclet thing.

Then after putting the cache back, we ran back to the vehicle.

And we still made it to school on time!

Salmon Arm CITO Success!

2009-09-19T18:24:00.000-07:00

The CITO event happened today, and it was great!

Started off looking as it was going to pour all day, but aside from some rain, while eating, it was sunny.
Ate a quick lunch before starting, and got to meet some other geocachers i had not met before, such as auto tech, erinf31 & lwong. Also got to talk to KnightOrc and chase bc.
Rhondle drove me up there, so i obviously got to talk to them.
Lunch Time:

Looking at Trackables:

Started clean up, splitting into two groups. I was with chase_bc, lwong and auto tech. We got two truckloads full of stuff. Came across two real big messes. One of broken glass and ceramics, and the other of alot of insulation type stuff.
Ceramics Mess:

Glass Cleaned up:

Insulation Mess:

Insulation Stuff Cleaned up:

We finished cleaning up about an hour earlier, and didn't feel like going back out again.
Handed out the prizes, which we had plenty of, and took a group picture.
Me and Chase BC drawing:

Looking at Prizes:

Everything went over and auto tech, lwong and KnightOrc, offered to take out the garbage for me, so i didn't even have to get that done.
Group Picture:

Thanks to all the sponsors and attendees, as well as the help of Rhondle, K.O. and a few others.

Cache Listing Found Here

Geocaching With Rhondle

2009-09-05T13:52:00.000-07:00

Went out Geocaching with Rhondle yesterday.
We had a good time, doing some caches out in White Lake, Blind Bay and Eagle Bay.

Some of the caches we did were, Johns's Park, which i must go biking at sometime.
White Lake Lookout, which we spent alot of time trying to find the way in.
White Lake Treasures and Take a Bug Leave a Bug, which Rhondle had done previously, were quickly located.

Then, after driving done some puddle covered, bumpy Forest Service Road and finding a dead end, we turned around and headed out to Blind Bay. Rhondle picked up a cache, they hadn't yet gotten. They were foiled by someone selling corn, while looking for Snail Mail.

Then we headed out to two new caches out Northeast of Eagle Bay. Geek & Sweet beat us on the FTF by a long shot, but at least we found the caches.

All in all it was a fun day.

One Year Geocaching

2009-09-05T13:33:00.001-07:00

Well it's a little late, but at least i finally got around to making the blog. It will be interesting to see if i actually commit enough time to keep it alive, but at least it's here.

Almost a month ago now, i reached my first year of caching. With 165 finds in my first year i think i did pretty good. I had planned on only reaching 100 finds if i was lucky, and with another 90 finds just in August through Sept. i really blasted through that month.