Current at 11/6/2011 (Online waypoint URL) You have already found this cache! Master Index    Nearest Caches Fife and NO Drum by spaceman_baz (1.5/1) (Archived) N49° 56.388  W97° 09.947 (WGS84) UTM  14U   E 631613  N 5533550 Use waypoint: GCX400 Size: Small    Hidden on 7/12/2006 In Manitoba, Canada Difficulty:     Terrain:           Short little walk, watch for muggles in the evening. Small Camo Tin. Contains: FTF, Log, writing stick, Coins, Star Wars Pin, puzzle, fishing lures, sail boat.

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3/28/2007 by Kabuthunk
Houston, we have enough melted snow to cache! Decided to take another swing at this one today. There was a little bit of rain, which should have melted some snow, combined with the generally warmish weather the past few days. So I wander over to the street (ie: Fife) and parked. Although, all during the drive, I kept running the name of the cache through my head trying to figure out what the "NO Drum" part means... but am still pulling a blank . Walking to the sidewalk, I discovered that this park appears to have attempted to set up a moat on this side of it. However, a little off to the side, I found an area that was dry enough to wander over.

Having recently been here, I didn't really need to look at the GPS at all. I did when I got to the previous area I had been before, just to get it such that I was at what my GPS considered ground zero. At which point... I hunted.

About 5 minutes of scrounging later, my eyes spotted something while searching various hiding spots. Off not far from where I currently had been, I spotted... the bottom of a container. There really wasn't all that much mistaking what it could be, really . Upon closer inspection, it was indeed a camouflaged container! Cracking it open confirmed that it was indeed the cache, and not some random container that happened to be camouflaged and lost in the same area .

Anyhoo... one chainmail ball and a log-signing later, I put it back. It was REALLY easy to spot (once I looked in the right direction) before though. I'm guessing the melting snow may have dragged whatever natural covering it once had off of it. Hence, I placed it a little bit more "settled in", so to speak, and gave it a nice coating of natural camouflage so that it blended in with it's surroundings significantly better. Hopefully a massive downpour won't uncover it again or something.

In either case... yet another DNF has been rectified, and Kabuthunk is a happy cacher .

Took: Nothing
Left: Logbook entry and chainmail ball

3/15/2007 by Kabuthunk
Looks like I either got there sometime just before or just after ChargerDad. Although, assuming I was after, that would probably explain the footprints and evidence of snow-digging I encountered at the coordinates .

Although, it would have been somewhat nice if he had found it, since that would have saved me a lot of trouble. Y'see... I encountered a bit of a problem prior to even leaving work for the day. I had forgotten both my toque and gloves at home. However, I rationalized it as such:

It's still really cold outside. Therefore, when my head gets cold, that will take my mind off of how cold my hands are. Since my hands are cold, odds are they'll quickly be too numb to feel the thorns or branches raking against them. Why, by that logic, it'd be downright silly NOT to go after this geocache! It's win-win !

On the plus side, I had "emergency gloves" in my geocaching kit. However, these are the really thin gloves that you can get for like... a buck at the dollar store. Their primary use is for sopping up water or reaching into things that are likely full of spider webs. They'll do next to nothing for the cold, but hey... they can't hurt, anyway.

In either case... my GPS zeroed out to pretty much right between two potential hiding spots... so I began what had to begin. I was actually smart about it, and looked around above and around . Doesn't look like I'd be getting lucky THIS time around on that one . At THAT point... I did what had to be done next. I dug.

And by "dug", I mean "chistled away at the surface of the concrete... I mean snow... with a stick"

Mental note: Freezing temperature after a thorough thaw equals surface of snow akin to granite .

BUT... I had found a decent diggin' stick, so off I went. I kinda scoured around where what I assume was ChargerDad had previously scoured, and found nothing. I saw that the other bush hadn't been dug up yet, so I began stabbing at the surface of the snow until I could pull up chunks of it. Digging around, I felt nothing there either.

Note: by "felt", I mean "nine out of ten fingers had gone completely numb by this point, and for some reason, only my right index-finger could still detect something touching it."

So... I pulled up chunks of snow, and used my remaining good finger to feel for anything solid or flat. Alas, the aformentioned finger felt nothing.

But hey... I had only been freezing my scalp and hands for 20 minutes... and I still had another 15 before I'd have to leave. To the other nearby bushes! I tackled another two bushes before I ran out of time, and the single remaining index-finger-with-feeling was starting to lose even that. Hence... I was forced to admit defeat and head back to the car.

I gotta say though... attempting to unlock the car was a tad interesting with trying to fiddle with the keys with those hands .

So yeah... if it's still there, I'm guessing either my GPS was putting me off a bit, or it's hiding under a different nearby bush (or just under the snow that I wasn't able to dig up of the nearby bushes). Methinks I'll attempt this fella after most, if not all, of the snow disappears.

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Muggles can be a thorn.