What: an orienteering course utilizing geocaches as concealed control points. Attackpoint thread.
When: first attempted Sunday, 11/16. Take caution with hunters, wear blaze orange.
Where: S/F off of Old Oxford Rd. (36.08642, -78.84733) on Butner-Falls of Neuse Game Land.
Who: open to self-sufficient navigators.
Why: the idea here is to find these caches
without GPS assist. Navigation with map and compass to each "ground zero" is the easy part. What follows is much harder.
How: Course notes
available here. Print these along with a course map
available here. Bring a writing utensil. There are 9+ caches; recommended time limit: 4 hours.
Please be respectful of each cache, leave it as you found it. A report from my first attempt on this course is posted below plus
Caltopo track map [possible spoilers].
 |
| Trestle over Little River |
11/16 report: my first attempt with this "cache-o" took me 2.5 hours to cover 7 miles in a clockwise direction. I found 4 out of 8 geocaches (I ran out of time and did not attempt the 9th). As frustratingly slow and unsuccessful as this sounds, I consider it a success and plan to repeat this and/or other cache-o courses in the future.
I hadn't explored the game land much beyond the MST, so this was an exciting opportunity. Attacking from the north, I quickly found cache 1. But as I approached the steep thorny banks of the Little River, my beginner's luck ran out. I tested the depth of the river across from cache 2. It was going to be a swim. No thanks.
Opting to retreat through the briars to the Eno, I found a knee-high crossing of that river and crossed over to the steep south bank opposite the confluence to search in vain for 10+ minutes for cache 3. Empty-handed, I set out upstream until a shoal caught my eye. I decided to attack cache 2 again, this time from the south.
It wasn't exactly easy to find this Earth-tone "12-inch long PVC tube hanging in plain sight," but I did eventually locate it. Feeling better, I now returned to the South of the river to make my way to cache 4. I attacked from the river and dug through the leaves of many a "small cave" AKA cliff band overhangs with no luck. Sheesh!
Okay, two for four. Let's do better: onto cache 5. Once at the obvious feature, I spent another 10+ minutes peeking around every cedar tree I could find. No luck again! My budgeted time on this course was running out, so I quickly made my way to the first of two impressive RR trestles that I'd use to get back across the rivers.
Compared to the others, cache 6 was a breeze to find. I thought I just might tip the scales to better than 50%. But then cache 7 happened. The clue here didn't help me, perhaps fallen leaves and trees were partly to blame. Now I was in overtime headed to cache 8. This would be my last for the day. I wasn't feeling super confident.
But as luck would have it, I fairly quickly located this hidden cache and now could cross the trestle and make my way as quickly as possible across game land to the car and back home. This was a good, humbling experience. I look forward to trying again!
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