The Triathlon Challenge

By Mr. RT (one half of Rib Ticklers)

As I have said more than once in my ‘Found It’ logs, geocaching is a pleasure we inflict upon ourselves. The more of it we do, the more we realize that not everything is Ammo Cans and Bird Houses.  Not all caches are clean and dry.  Nor is every cache to be found in obvious places along well-trodden paths, free of poisonous plants and blood-sucking vermin.  And so, as the number of un-found caches within our ten-mile circle dwindled from hundreds to dozens, we found ourselves facing a combination of mental and physical challenges that occasionally made us question the sanity, lineage and sociopathy of the Cache Owners.  OK, not seriously, but for some of these caches, especially some of those placed ‘back in the day’, we have found that signing the log becomes an arduous exercise with very little to show for it beyond wet feet, scratched limbs, and bug bites.

And yet…  we go.

There is no one telling us we have to do this.  No one pays us to walk through the swamp.  We get very little in the way of thanks when we locate the tattered remains of some old, forgotten cache in the woods and photo-sign the cache page because the sodden lump of wet pulp acting as a log won’t even accept ink from a gel pen.  Which begs the question – why do we do this to ourselves?

Why, when the temperature outside is five degrees and the wind is howling, would we opt for digging through snowbanks with gardening tools, or wading through not-quite-frozen marshlands, instead of curling up in front of the fire with a nice book?  Why walk two miles through clouds of mosquitoes over tick-infested ground just to be the 27^th person in eight years to sign a piece of paper in a Tupperware container back on some old logging road?  I think it’s because sometimes, in pursuing these hard-to-find or hard-to-access caches, we discover something extraordinary or just plain fun.

Let’s face it.  Some caches are awesome.  Some are average.  Some start out bad and get worse with every passing month of neglect.  But even the best of caches will degrade over time without a little TLC now and again, and I think we all need to pitch in a little bit to keep awesome caches in excellent condition.  Which brings me to one of our winter adventures, the Triathlon Series in Wausau.  (See GC1Q3W3, GC1TVKH and GC1Q3VJ)

To begin with, we don’t have access to a boat.  Therefore, finding and claiming the first two caches in the series would definitely become a hard-water activity.  We waited until the water was good and frozen to begin our adventure, a multi-cache on the Wisconsin River.  The cache container at the first waypoint was high and dry, and utilized a container-within-a-container approach to make sure the coordinates for the second stage would remain intact.  <Note to cache owners: If you’re putting caches out in places that are really, really hard to get to, putting the clues or the log sheet inside a small waterproof container, then placing that inside a larger waterproof container works GREAT and is much better than relying on a Ziploc baggie.>  We made our way to the second stage, and after some precarious work around the suspended ice sheets (you’ll just have to read the logs) we were able to make the find, although in the process of extricating the cache container, we ended up damaging it and putting a hole in it.

Of course, because we are very responsible cachers, we immediately contacted the CO to let them know that the cache container had been damaged, and that it needed maintenance.  That’s when we discovered that this particular CO had long since left the game.  This is a moment we all face.  We have gone through difficult circumstances, only to find that the cache container has been compromised, and the contents destroyed or at risk.  The best prepared of us will reach into our cache packs and produce a roll of duct tape, or a replacement container, and do an on-site repair job.  But that’s not always going to be the case.  So whose job is it to fix the cache?

In this case, of course, I felt it was my responsibility, since I was the one who damaged the container, but even if I wasn’t, I felt a desire to make this one whole again.  Why?  Well – it was the first leg of a three-part series.  Without it, the final would crash, too.  That, and because this was a nice cache along a nice stretch of river, and it was placed in a way to make it available summer and winter.  It just needed a little TLC, and the CO couldn’t do it anymore.

So we replaced the container with a return visit the next day and went on to the second cache in the series.  The thing we really liked about this one is that it was designed to be a night cache along the river.  How cool is that?  This time we set off at night (again, on the Wisconsin River) in search of the other half of the coordinates for the Final. This time, we were thwarted.  This was another multi-cache, and the container at WP1 was missing.  There was no way to locate the container at WP2, and get the coordinates.  We gave it a mighty effort anyway, though, and searched what we though was a likely spot about a quarter mile away.  We didn’t come up with the cache, but we same some really interesting tracks from where a river otter was playing in the snow.  (As it turns out, we were only about 100 feet away from where the cache was hidden.  Dang!)

Long story short, we contacted several people who had found the cache in the past, and one of them was able to come up with the coordinates for WP2.  (Note to self – take good notes on multi-caches.  Someone may need that information in the future – like, years from now.)  We went back the next night to locate the container and claim the smiley, but here we were again.  This was a really cool cache, but it was utterly crashed because of a missing container.  Also, MANY of the original reflector tacks were missing, making it really difficult to locate WP1.  What to do?  We keep asking ourselves, is this cache worth saving?  In the end, we decided that it was, because – well – because we were having fun.  And in the end, that’s really our criteria.  If we’re having fun finding a cache, and we find that it needs a little maintenance, then we go the extra mile (sometimes literally) and fix it, especially for cache owners who are unlikely to do it themselves.  On the other hand, if we’re not enjoying the hunt, we’re far more likely to just request that the cache be archived.  And clearly, we’re not doing it for our own benefit.  After all – we’ve already found the thing.  But as a part of giving back to the activity, we feel a need to do our part to make the caching experience as pleasant as possible for the next cacher.  We don’t ALWAYS fix the cache, but we make an extra effort for those close to home.  After getting the appropriate supplies, we went back another night and replaced the reflector tacks, replaced the container at WP1, and made sure WP2 was secure in its hidey-hole.

The Triathlon challenge is more than just the challenge of finding the three caches  It’s about the challenge we all face with what to do about caches that need to be fixed, or archived.  How much responsibility to we all share for keeping fresh log sheets in a cache? What about fixing or even replacing caches for absentee cache owners?  Maybe the answer is to share in the responsibility for caring for the caches within a few miles of your home.  Then you can put them on your watch-list and get pleasure from reading the logs of those who find it, and give praise to a cache well-placed and well-maintained.

So then it was onto the Final.  Did we find it?  You’ll have to read our logs. Let’s just say that after putting in that much work on Parts I and II of the Triathlon, we were sure going to try.  By the way – we have all three of these caches on our Watch List, so if you decide to take the Triathlon Challenge in Wausau, we’ll know about it!

Happy Caching

Mr. RT (one half of Rib Ticklers)