Our first find of 2010 - and it was a FTF!

With the start of 2010 comes a new geocaching season and with it the excitement and anticipation of the adventures that will undoubtedly follow.

Only 10 days into the new year and we received our first opportunity for a FTF. We received the notification that a new cache Shuswap - Sicamous Multi/Puzzle(GC22P24 had been published. Our log summarizes the adventure:

This cache was an unusual experience for us. We received the notification about this cache being published on January 10th, and went about solving the puzzle. With the coordinates in hand, we jumped into the car and made the 20 minute dash from Salmon Arm to Sicamous hoping to be the FTF. We found stage 1 without too much difficulty, but there wasn't any information in it about how to find stage 2. Puzzled, we signed our name on a slip of paper, and returned to the car.

After deciphering the hint and thinking like a geocacher, we formulated an idea. A few minutes of searching (and slipping on ice) paid off for us and we struck paydirt. With the cache finally in hand we signed the log and set off for home - hungry and a bit puzzled.

But the story gets stranger. Upon returning home we discovered this cache was no longer published, and thus we were unable to log our find. A quick email to the C/O revealed that the reviewer had made a mistake and prematurely published this cache, and a short while later had "un-published" it.

So here we are logging this find long after actually physically finding it. Fortunately this is January and we haven't been doing much caching; we postponed logging any of our recent finds until this cache was officially published so we can log them in the correct sequence.

Without the coordinates to the final stage, this cache proved to be a bit more challenging than we had expected. It was, however, a good exercise in thinking outside of the box. TNLN. TFTH!

Looking back on 2009

With Christmas past we are now counting down the final days of the year, and with it we have posted our 9th and final cache of 2009 - A Mighty Wind (GC229XY) - named for it's close proximity to a "certain" building. Although this geocache isn't the one we had planned to put out for our 9th and final 9/09 cache, with the year nearly over and the temperatures low enough to frighten most Canadians off to a warm beach somewhere in the tropics we decided we had no choice but to resort to Plan B and put out our backup cache before we ran out of time.

2009 In Review

The year started off fairly well, an extensive geocaching adventure during November/December in Australia had left us full of ideas and it was tough sitting out the winter waiting for spring to finally come around. With snow still on the ground we spent an evening setting up Twilight Trails - Salmon Arm's first (and currently only) night cache - to kick off the geocaching season.

We put out one cache during April, May and June respectively. My favourite so far was Brain Drain (GC1QV50), which was put out to compete in the BCGA 2009 Cache Blitz. This gem was built for us by Jo's dad (Fred6603) during our visit with them in Australia and has caused a great deal of exasperation to those who have dared to go find it!

As the summer hit we found ourselves embarking on a number of geocaching adventures to various destinations, including Revelstoke, Golden, Vernon, Lumby, Kelowna, Kamloops, Summerland, Penticton, Nakusp and Calgary. In amongst all of our travelling we also somehow managed to put out three more geocaches during the month of July: Gardom Lake (GC1W1RZ) (Salmon Arm's first Letterbox Hybrid geocache), Sudoku Style (GC1W33E), and Salmon Arm Challenge (GC1W4YD).

Our next cache, Bluesky - Park Hill (GC1XYPX) was put out on August 29th as part of the Blue Sky initiative (Project BlueSky), which also provided us with a Project BlueSky geocoin, which you can discover if you bump into us at an event. Putting out this particular cache left us with some interesting memories - Salmon Arm had one of its more severe fire seasons this year, and I will never forget covering our faces to block out the thick smoke while we hiked up the trail enroute to put out this cache. Due to the heavy smoke we didn't end up putting it as far down the trail as we would have liked, but I still think the cache is hidden in a decent spot nonetheless.

After this we slipped into a bit of a geocaching lull; and with only one 9/09 cache remaining to put out for the year we opted to devote our time to reaching our milestone of 600 finds which we achieved on November 7th at Alphabet Soup - BC Style (GC1YBVV) during a geocaching trip to Kelowna.

Milestones for 2009

First webcam cache! (GC8760)

First CITO event! (GC1XTF8)

Oldest cache so far - Treehugger (GC1DD)

19 FTF's

308 finds (giving us a grand total of 629)


What's Cooking for 2010

I have been working hard for the past three months on a cache series which I am hoping to put out during the first part of 2010. It takes a lot of work and time to plan and put out a series, but I'm hoping that the first couple of caches will be ready sometime in January (fingers crossed...)

Jo's parents will be visiting from Australia in May which will undoubtedly lead to some pretty exciting geocaching adventures; there's really no plans yet but we have some ideas of course.

We are thinking about attending Geowoodstock VIII (GC1QM7K) Mega Event in Washington state next Summer. Normally travelling to the US is a bit of an ordeal, so we try and avoid it. But with a Geowoodstock right on our doorstep, we'll never have another opportunity to attempt to attend one so easily, so we have been putting some serious thought into attending that event.

We should easily reach 750 caches next year, but most traditional caches are starting to lose their appeal so we are going to prefer non-traditional caches during 2010. After all, geocaching is about the adventure and not a number.

Happy new year, and Cache On!

Winter is just around the corner....

As the year counts down to a close, and with the weather on a rapid decline, the opportunities for geocaching become fewer and more challenging. Road conditions, inclimate weather and limited daylight severely impact any geocaching opportunities.

On November 11th, we realized that the weather was particularly nice and being a holiday, we decided to step out for the afternoon and grab a few caches. We were finding caches at a remarkable rate and in under two hours we had collected 12 geocaches. With daylight all but gone, we reluctantly wrapped up our trip, but the next week we stepped out and picked up a few more caches.. Unfortunately, with the nearest unfound geocaches a good distance away, a considerable drive is in order, so we have been concentrating on picking up the "stragglers" - the caches which take some degree of effort to get to, and no others nearby.

On our latest geocaching trip, we pulled into a church in Armstrong, and after looking for the cache for a good while, gave up and went back to the car for a hint... only to discover that we had left our lights on. While we were waiting for BCAA to give us a jump, we had ample time to find the cache. Sadly the delay seriously cut into our remaining daylight, cutting our excursion short.

With snow expected very soon, we aren't planning any more geocaching trips this year. It's time to stay indoors, and start planning out some new geocaches for next year. Oh and I guess the 9th of our '09 series...

Cache 600!

With winter rapidly approaching, we decided to plan one last geocaching trip of the year to try and meet our goal of reaching 600 caches this year. And we succeeded! We selected Alphabet Soup.. BC Style (GC1YBVV) as our 600th cache, having already compiled a bookmark list of the geocaches meeting the criteria.

Although we'll likely pick up quite a few more caches this year, geocaching generally grinds to a halt around here once the snow flies and doesn't pick up again until the spring so we wanted to be sure to cross this milestone now when there's no snow around.

Since we've basically found just about every geocache within a hundred kilometer radius of Salmon Arm, next year we'll have to spread out and try really hard to explore new places.

GC1W4YD - Salmon Arm Challenge

GC1W4YD - Salmon Arm Challenge
Published: October 19th, 2009
Type: Mystery
Cache #8 of 9 for 2009

I had the idea for this cache back in July, but a string of events (yes, mostly geocaching) kept me preoccupied and I didn't get around to releasing this cache until now.

The idea is a pretty simple one actually - collect a series of codes from caches around Salmon Arm, and then type them into a web form to retrieve the final cache's coordinates. Originally this cache was going to include all of my favourite caches here in Salmon Arm, but unfortunately, many of those are micros and the cards I had made up won't fit. So instead I changed the cache's theme to be a quick tour of Salmon Arm, since it literally takes you from one end of Salmon Arm to the other.

This cache is intentionally very easy. However, the final cache is hidden in a location where the accuracy of the GPS is heavily degraded due to tree cover. I did add a hint after the FTF was taken, but if folks have trouble locating the final cache, I will add a better hint.

I'm still working on the next cache of the 9/09 series... but nothing is finalized yet =)

Cache on!