Caching then TOT-ting

I have been on a tear geocaching lately. Last week, I had two 7-cache days, and have added a few nearly every day. My favorite caches to find are one hidden by M5. I have not met this person, but all of M5 caches are well hidden and finding one is a real accomplishment. I come up empty handed at least half of the time on these hunts, but I keep plugging away until I find them.

The one I found today was a real challenge--one that I made a lot harder than it had to be. I did not have a lot of power left in my iPhone, so I glanced at the direction I needed to go (on the far north side of Turkey Mountain) and then turned my phone off until I thought I was close. I had evidently looked at the screen upside down, so I ended up going away from the cache rather than closer. I had traveled about a half mile away from it, and I was running short on time in order to be back to the main parking lot for the TOT run. So, a feasible shortcut was right across this pipeline, which appeared to be about 30 feet above a creek!! I made it about a third of the way, and decided to take a picture. Mission accomplished, except sometime while re-pocketing my iPhone, I began to think about how stupid it was to walk across this pipe! I made it across, but was extremely uneasy about it after I had time to think about it. Had I not paused to take pic, I might have never wavered. The last bit of the crossing was a steep slant downward, and I managed to turn around and straddle it and slide down backwards into a thick patch of briers with hungry chiggers waiting for me. But I did it, and it saved me a good 3-4 minutes.

Back on track, I found the cache easily. It was hard to get to, but easy to find once there. M5 was very generous on this one with his hints. A slip descending to the cache would have sent you tumbling off a bluff into Mooser Creek.

But a M5 find is always worth the effort.

The TOT run was huge. I would guess we had over 70 runners--maybe 80. My group started out with close to 40, but a few splintered off. Still, 30 stayed with us for the entire run.

We got in a little over 3.5 miles on a hot afternoon/evening.