Current at 11/6/2011 (Online waypoint URL) You have already found this cache! Master Index    Nearest Caches Periodically Insane by Tromelin (adopted by ertyu) (1/2) N49° 51.095  W97° 14.919 (WGS84) UTM  14U   E 625897  N 5523600 Use waypoint: GC1KHMN Size: Regular    Hidden on 1/22/2009 In Manitoba, Canada Difficulty:     Terrain:                       Some puzzles are just too crazy and don't work. Logging Etiquette: Geocache hiders sometimes go through a great deal of planning to place their caches. As a result, they'd like to hear your feedback on whether you liked or disliked any aspect of the hide, or if you feel that some cache maintenance is required. Blank, single word, acronym, or emoticon logs may be easier when you have a lot of caches to log, but it doesn't tell the hider or other finders anything about your adventure (or lack thereof) in finding the cache. Please keep this in mind when entering your log.

Additional Hints (There are no hints for this cache)

1/3/2011 by Kabuthunk
I think I can take a pretty good swing at the 'insane' category, given the conditions outside during which I went after this geocache. Well, it could have been a lot more insane, had it been blizzarding or something, but hey... snowshoeing out in -28 weather isn't all that shabby. And it appears that much like the last cache I found today, it looks like I'm not only the first one to have found this one in 2011, but also the only finder in over a month. Through the middle of winter, of course.

Now, what makes that last find more unexpected (to me, at least) was that it wasn't particularly winter-friendly, yet I was still able to stumble across it. And in actuality, after I had come across this cache, it wasn't all that winter-friendly either, but that looks more like it fell victim to wind or animal action to knock it from it's slightly higher perch. But I'll get to that.

As I said, I was spending the day snowshoeing around in Assiniboine Forest... not something I would recommend to others, since your choices for snowshoe locations are either extremely-hard-packed-paths, or bushwhacking. Well, I didn't really have to whack any bush per-se (heh heh heh), but I did have to do a whole lot of bobbing and weaving, which slowed me down significantly. You can't snowshoe for distance, at the bare minimum. After that earlier find, I again continued just a fairly random wandering, but generally trending Southwards. I was planning on at least working my way over towards the lake/marsh thing in the middle of the forest and see what it was like in winter. Well, as expected it was frozen... that much is obvious. I was however surprised that the hard-packed paths of Assiniboine Forest had found their way onto the ice as well, and a circular path ran over the ice. I was fairly disappointed, as I had hoped that the lake/marsh surface would be flat enough that I could get some nice, easy snowshoeing in, in a straight line. Oh well.

After working my way away from there, I started working my way a bit more West, at which point I decided to check my GPS again. It seems as though at this point, I was sitting about a hundred or so meters away from THIS geocache. Sweet, time to adjust my direction.

I must have given a few dog-walkers a bit of a surprise. I don't imagine they often see during their walks someone with snowshoes, ski poles, goggles, and a Russian cossack hat appear from out of the forest on one side of the trail, and then suddenly disappear as fast as they showed up into the forest on the other side of the trail.

But eventually, I worked my way over to the geocache. Once I had found myself within eyesight of it, much like the last cache I happened to spot the corner sticking out of the snow. Upon dusting off a log to sit on while I poke through the contents, I realized that there was actually a method by which to attach it to that log... but the cache was instead just sitting on the ground when I found it. Needless to say, I re-attached it after I was done with it. I didn't spot any travelbugs or coins in there unfortunately, otherwise I'd have grabbed them. Could be I just missed them however, since I wasn't looking through the contents that closely. One signing and chainmail ball later however, and the cache found itself slightly more winter-friendly .

Thanks for giving me something to snowshoe after in the forest today. Having a location to snowshoe too always makes things more fun for me .

Took: Nothing
Left: Logbook entry and chainmail ball