Early Winter Caching

On By GeoKsIn Geocaching

Despite last weekend’s snowfall, which resulted in accumulations of about 15 cm (6 inches) in our part of Calgary, I’ve been out geocaching 5 days over the past week. I’m motivated by my desire to finally complete our “366 days of the year” grid. In other words, the goal is to find at least one geocache on each of the 366 days of the year (doesn’t matter what year). If we manage to fill in all the blanks between now and Feb 6, we will have taken about 7 1/2 years to meet the requirements to find and log GC2THDD The “Cache Every Day of the Year” Challenge cache – not unexpected given our long run of geocaching burnout!

One of the benefits of a bad case of geocaching burnout is that there are more than 50 geocaches we haven’t found within a 5 km radius of our house, which means it’s possible to walk to find a cache on those days when the roads are especially slippery. Such was the case this past Tuesday. And the bonus – the nearest cache to our house was a custom-built container, placed in a winter-friendly spot!

Custom Cache Container
This custom cache container is a cut above the typical urban micro or lock ‘n’ lock geocache container. Plus – it’s winter friendly!

I’ve been sure to take along our smallest camera – a Sony Cybershot that just happens to be waterproof. It’s hard to come away with decent photos on gloomy winter days, but here are a few of the better results from this week…

Waiting for kidlets
Searching for a nearby micro-sized geocache, I noticed the undisturbed snow on all the playground equipment. The slide waited patiently for a kidlet to come out to play!
Leaves and snow
Autumn leaves in and on the snow – a perfect metaphor for this time of year, when fall and winter are in juxtaposition.
Urban forest
Searching for a Huntsman in a patch of urban forest was particularly challenging. Mother Nature provided all sorts of extra cover, so it was a good 10 or 15 minutes before I had the custom cache container in hand.
Waiting for blue sky
Frost-coated branches create a black and white background for one small splash of colour.

Our geocaching statistics page shows we’ve got a couple of days off before our next “find a cache day” rolls around on Halloween. With five days completed this week, there are 38 more caching days in store for us in 2012 and another 14 in early 2013 before we can shout “job done”! I hope I’m up for the challenge. What about you? Are you working on a particular geocaching challenge right now?

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