Hercules, Hercules!

The title probably only makes sense if you've seen Disney's "Hercules." If you have, picture someone clapping their hands together as they say that. About a week ago, I finished The 12 Labors of Hercules series. There are 12 "labors," caches put on peaks in the area. These peaks are all challenging to get to. Some have trails, some don't. Many have portions of trail that offer false hope that they'll actually continue to the top. In each of the 12 caches, there's a code. When you have all 12 codes, you can find the 13th bonus cache.

So far, only four people have actually completed the series. I was the fourth. I had, at some point, thought I might actually be the first or second to finish. In 2007, I found nine of the caches in the series. I got caught up on the three tough ones: 9 - Anthony's Nose, 11 - Organ Needle, and especially 6 - Florida Peak (technically, I think it's an unnamed peak, but it's much easier to refer to it with a name).

I wrote up a brief summary in my 13th cache log of the entire series. I had to be very limited in what I wrote. I think it'd be kind of fun to re-examine the series a bit more in detail over the next few weeks (slowly, I'll add it over a few entries). That's my plan. I'm not sure if I'll remember to do it or not.

It was a very fun and challenging series that really opened my eyes up to hiking in more difficult terrain. I honestly hadn't put much thought into hiking up some of the peaks I did, or even doing much off trail stuff. With the encouragement that there was a cache on top of the peaks, however, I forced myself to go through some brutal stuff (especially on Anthony's Nose- yikes!).

Yet another event?

It seems there's some pressure (insert mysterious eyes) for another event in Las Cruces sometime soon. I had been discussing with a few people about scheduling one for January. I had almost forgotten about it, until I saw I <3 Events, an Albuquerque event scheduled for February. It just hit me. A February event is already in the planning processes. It's even listed up at geocaching.com. I think it's time to finally start making the plans for an event down here.

I've hosted four events in the past (along with one CITO):

• Pillage the Village... Inn was a "simple" restaurant meet and greet (okay, didn't quite turn out that way). I also included a little "quiz" for a contest to win coins and ammo cans. For my first event, I think it went very well.
  

• The Pride of Geocaching was held at a park at NMSU. It turned out great. The campus was empty (summer vacation), leaving the area ready to hide some caches.

• F is for Friends Having Fun was part of my on-going ABC's of Geocaching series (which I will finish one day). It was held on a BLM facility on A Mountain, and was a noon pot luck. I also ended up hiding nine caches specifically for the event.
  

• Another Aardvark Adventure Around the A was held at the same location as the last one, but was a slightly less organized potluck. It was more of a breakfast get together, with only a few caches. It still worked out great.

I'm thinking this time, it might be fun to try something a bit different. I'm not quite sure what I want to do yet, though. I've gotten suggestions that it should be later in the day so those from out of town can come. I also had a suggestion of having it not quite an all day thing, but a few hours with plenty of time to mingle and cache. I could also just have it a pure meet and greet without any new caches. I like the idea of having games, though. This is going to take some thinking. It'll be a fun event, and it'll be different. I'm going to try for the latter, only if the former holds true. Then again, I might not even throw this event- someone else was interested in hosting one. Eh, something will be worked out.

Invasion of Roswell

I don't believe any aliens invaded Roswell, but I did! My dad and I visited last week for the Roswell That Ends Well event. It was a very fun event that had a slight twist on it. Most events tend to focus on finding caches. There are often games involved with finding the most, poker runs (where cards are placed at various caches- so you have to find more caches to get more cards, typically), etc. This event, however, focused more on the hiding aspect of geocaching. There were no prizes for those only finding caches. In that sense, finding the caches were the prizes. There were prizes for the best cache hide, however. There were some very good hides. Some were tricky, while others were simply hilarious and/or creative (but not necessarily difficult). The creativity of these hides really made the day fun. It was also pleasant not to worry about any contests. Sure, getting prizes at events is fun, but sometimes competition can make things stressful ("If we had only gone to that cache, we would have had another card..."). It can also be fun, though. This was a welcome change, though. I think hiders should be rewarded for their efforts.

Overall, the trip was very fun. It was a mixture of finding new caches (placed for the event) and existing caches. Altogether, my dad and I found 34 caches (18 on Saturday, 16 on Sunday as we drove home). We didn't see any aliens on this trip, however; I'm not sure if that's a good thing or something to be disappointed at.

Got GPS?

I don't. Anymore. I managed to lose my GPS while attempting to find Big Windy Canyon. After a bit of hiking, I started feeling not so great. My nose was runny. I was moving at an incredibly slow rate. It was slow enough of a pace that I had doubts about getting up there and back before nightfall. It just wasn't a good hiking day. I did the sensible thing and turned around. Before I did that, I decided to climb up to the nearby hill for a scenic break. I could get lunch, call up a friend to hangout with after I got done, and just relax. It was relaxing. No, this isn't where I lost my GPS unit- I just really enjoyed the break.

I continued my hike down. I checked on my GPS unit once in a while. Soon, my friend calls me back. I tell her I found a good-ish path down avoiding a lot of the vegetation, and am actually making good time down (considering how long it took me to get to that point). I whipped out my GPS unit. 0.28 miles from the last cache I found (which was on my way back to the trail). I continued hiking.

About 10 minutes later, I wanted to get another reading, since I knew I was going at a nice pace. "I'll just turn on me GPS unit and--- Ah! I don't have my GPS unit!" I had no idea what happened to it. I followed my path back as best I could. For one part, that wasn't too bad- small canyon with only a few places to walk. I saw nothing. Then I get up out of the canyon. Oh. I have NO idea how I came down from the hill through this area about 2-3 acres that's full of boulders and dense vegetation in spots. I looked around in the smaller canyon for about an hour, but my nose was bothering me too much.

The next day, I hike out there again. I spend 4 hours looking around. It's not an easy thing, considering I'm not sure of the path I took. I can't do a thorough grid search because of the vegetation. The only way to find it is to walk around, going through areas that are more likely to have been used by me to walk through the day before. Oh, and my GPS unit is gray and black.

This will make geocaching a bit difficult until I can get a new one, but Christmas is coming soon. I wonder what will be at the top of my list?

Calendar of Events

This is a calendar I update regularly with Google Calendar showing the events in New Mexico, since the main Geocaching event calendar makes it difficult to find the New Mexico caches. This also really helps in my personal planning because I can see that in two weeks on my calendar is an event. Sorry it's so small, but the layout of this blog doesn't allow much space. If you use Google Calendar, you can click the +GoogleCalendar button at the bottom to add it to your own calendar to watch- and it'll show up bigger. It will automatically update when I make changes to the calendar.



Alternatively, you can click here for a full-screen version of this calendar.

42nd Cache Hide

At the beginning of September, I hid my 42nd cache. When I realized what number cache hide it'd be, I thought I should do something special. What better than to have a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy themed cache? Originally, my plan was to have every question in the puzzle be 42 (hence, the "Part A"). I also had thought about getting the coordinates to match up with 42 as much as I could. Those didn't fully work out like I had wanted, so I settled for asking questions you'd need the book in order to answer. You might be able to find the answers by searching online. Actually, that'd probably be easier than looking through the book. I hope I rated the difficulty/terrain of the cache right.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a great book series (most of my questions only come from the first two, I believe). I've read slightly more than 3 of the five. I might have actually gotten most of the way through the 4th, but stopped reading for some reason. The other series in the puzzle (question 12) is also good, but a bit more off (and with an ending in the first book that almost ruined everything leading up to that point). Either series would be good to take if you find yourself stuck in a car for a few hours en route to a caching event.

Someone's watching me

As if dropping myself off into a cache isn't strange enough, to allow for people to "discover" me, now someone is watching me. I guess that's what happens when you make yourself a travel bug. So far, no one has tried to "grab" me or stuff me into a cache. Even though I'm a small person, I don't know how many caches I'd fit into.

The Matrix

There are a few challenge caches in the area that, should I choose to attempt the challenge, might impact what caches I look for. The two big culprits are the New Mexico Fizzy Challenge and 100,000 Foot Challenge.

The Fizzy Challenge requires me to fill out the caching matrix: find one of every difficulty/terrain combination. As it turns out, there are 81 possible combinations (leading to a name I prefer: Tequila: 81 Proof [note: the owner's username is Tequila]). I still have quite a bit of work in the matrix to do. In the right is my current matrix (accurate at 668 caches - around August 8, 2009). Everything in red is what I still need to complete. The thing I'm really lacking in is the 4.5 and 5 terrain (of almost any difficulty). This does make me want to go on some longer, tougher hikes (especially to finish up the 12 Labors of Hercules cache series. The last one in the series for me would fulfill another requirement (3 difficulty, 5 terrain). Plus, it would allow me to find the final cache, a 5/5 rating. It's just a little added encouragement for me to try that cache again, although doing that cache alone is worthy enough.

The 100,000 Foot Challenge also encourages doing harder terrain caches, particularly ones where I'd gain a lot of elevation. The whole point of this challenge is to get 100,000 feet of net elevation gain while hiking on cache finds. Sadly, from what I've added so far, I'm not even quite at half. I still have quite a few caches I'm sure I could add in, but I probably have most of my "big hikes" listed. This really does encourage me to find hikes that I'd gain multiple thousands of feet in. Of course, most of these hikes already are very enjoyable and are usually in great spots to begin with. This is just a little nudge reminding me I haven't done as many as I'd like. I'll keep adding to it, though.

Caching without a car

...or truck, motorcycle, or any kind of auto-mobile.

I ended up selling my truck a few months ago. With that money, instead of trading it in for a new (or new-to-me) vehicle, I invested in a new bike. It's become my main source of transportation. I would not call it my "only" source, as I have feet and a unicycle. Having no car to cache with does make it things interesting sometimes, and frustrating at others.

While most of the time, city caches are easy to get to with a bike. I can ride anywhere within the city. Getting out on the dirt roads is also possible, but my bike is a hybrid (more of a mountain bike frame with tires similar to road tires- except a bit wider, but no traction). That hasn't stopped me completely, although it probably isn't the greatest on my tires (or me, since I'm bumping up and down, trying to control my bike while its attempting to skid around). Urban caches and some down dirt roads just outside the city. Easy. It'd work great if I was living in a bigger metro area, like Denver (unicycling worked great there).

In Las Cruces, at least since I've found many of the urban caches, it's not the greatest situation. If I want to go to one of the caches in the mountains, it'd require at least 20-25 miles of riding just to get to mountains and back. This doesn't include going on any trails, hiking. That'd be a tiring day, especially since there area few new caches on biking trails (biking to get to the head of the biking trial, plus biking down that, would be an exhausting day).

I don't want to complain about this- it's just a slight problem to overcome when geocaching. I think the best way to overcome it is to find more friends active in the outdoors who can do my level of activity. This includes mountain biking clubs (although I'd probably turn into a mountain cycling club- by being a unicyclist in a bicyclist-dominated area), search and rescue or hiking groups, etc. This way, when I want to go hiking or down a biking trail, I can plan a trip with others who want to do the same thing (and hopefully get a ride in the process).

In this sense, getting rid of my truck also gets rid of a lot of my solo adventures. Instead of going out and hiking, biking, unicycling, whatever, by myself, I'll be a little bit limited in what I can do alone and forced to interact with friends. At least that's what is planned for now.

First post of 2009

Whoops. Did I forget I had a caching blog? I suppose I did. This year started out a bit slow for caching, as I found myself with little free time. It's amazing what a full-time job will do for a caching career. With what little time I did have, I was also busy with various other groups, doing this or that. It seemed like every weekend, something came up. I do have more free time now, though. Last month, I took a trip to Denver. Since that trip, I've been doing quite a bit of caching. In fact, if I hadn't taken one day off of caching during that trip, I could have probably beat my record of most days cached in a row.

Also on that trip, I successfully started uni-caching: caching by unicycle. I knew my bike wouldn't be able to fit in the truck alongside everything else, but my unicycle managed to find a nice spot. It worked out to be a fun investment, and probably quicker than trying to walk around Denver between caching. Hopefully I'll try it out on some mountain cycling trails to see how it does off-road.

Besides that, I've also completed one more Labor of Hercules: The Organ Needle (Labor Eleven). That brings my total up to 11 of the 12 (plus the bonus cache). The only one I still need in the series is Labor Six: Florida Peak. I've tried that one before, but the group I was with decided against attempting the final ascent. I think I'd be nervous trying that one again, just because I know I turned around last time.