Current at 11/6/2011 (Online waypoint URL) You have already found this cache! Master Index    Nearest Caches Mayor's Grove by Tromelin (adopted by ertyu) (2.5/1.5) N49° 52.307  W97° 13.623 (WGS84) UTM  14U   E 627396  N 5525882 Use waypoint: GC21CHP Size: Micro    Hidden on 11/25/2009 In Manitoba, Canada Difficulty:     Terrain:                       The cache is located at the Mayor's Grove in Assiniboine Park. Plaque reads: The Grove is dedicated to the pioneers of Winnipeg who the foresight to secure this beautiful Assiniboine Park for future generations. It is hoped that distinguished visitors to the city might plant a tree to honour this heritage, to record their visit and to enhance our environment with beautiful trees. 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)

12/28/2009 by Kabuthunk
Like with the previous cache finders, this one is deceptively hard. You think it's going to be next to impossible to find... you can spend god knows how long hunting in every which way for it... but in the end, you wonder how in the hell you managed to not find it right off the hop .

Third and last cache of the day. Spending the afternoon giving my snowshoes a more thorough test run (today's hike ended up being about 3.2km's of snowdrift-trudging fun ), I circled around in Assiniboine park getting several geocaches, namely Lego Island and Assiniboine Park Duck Pond. At least during the hike, I got to test it on a variety of terrain... slopes, broken up ice, deepish (comparatively) drifts, and areas with like... an inch of snow on the ground . I tried to keep to deeper snow and avoid walking directly on concrete paths/roads, to avoid dulling the crampon spikes on the bottom of the snowshoes.

So after a bit of wandering, I ended up nearing the coordinates (after accidentally adjusting my direction the wrong way several times, adding a few hundred meters to my hike). I was a bit worried about going after this one, since it was a micro, and everything is covered in snow. However, I crossed my fingers, and gave 'er. After the past several successes today, I felt like luck was on my side. Course, it had to make me fight for it .

Once I got to the coordinates, my mind boggled at the sheer number of places the cache could be hiding. Circling around a bit, I noticed other tracks which were also circling the area as a whole. Well, at least I'm not alone in my inability to see it right away . And thankfully, the snow everywhere (except directly in front of the display... but I couldn't possibly see how it could be hidden there anyway... although I ended up checking anyway at one point ), so I didn't have to worry too much about the spikes. With my trusty hiking stick (aka: a dead branch I grabbed from wherever at the beginning of my hike), I poked and prodded at a good many places, brushing and knocking snow off of anywhere I thought might hide a micro cache. All to no avail. Thankfully it was Monday today, and a good number of people have gone back to work (I got it off at least, since the usual boxing-day-off for us was on a Saturday, bumping the day off to Monday). Very few people passed by, or even drove by, so I was quite uninterrupted during my search.

Much like Bevro however, I had a hunch as to how it was hidden, and spent 95% of my searching looking for it in a particular style. After a good several circlings, my hunch was proven correct, and it jumped into sight. Again... no clue how I could have missed it the first several times going over the area . Interesting camouflage by the way... quite creative . Signing the logbook (in pencil... it seems as though this cold... apparently -20 according to the radio earlier... was too much for my Fischer Space Pen), I placed a micromail ball on top of the logbook before closing the container. Replacing it as found, I headed back towards the car, happy to have gotten some good exercise, caching, and snowshoeing enjoyment all in one .

Took: Nothing
Left: Logbook entry and micromail ball