Here's a tale about stupidity, hilarity, and some just 'shake your head in pity'.  For quite a while now I had been eying a cache that was somewhat near to where a recent find had been (a cache called 'Pollock Island').  It had however been across the river from said recent find.  Back when I found that one I was standing pretty much right on the edge of the river, seeing that the 'Where Rivers Still Collide' cache was like... 50 meters away, on the other side. At the other time, if I had a ton of nerves or guts or stupidity... and also didn't have to go to work immediately after that cache, I probably would have been more tempted to either attempt to cross on that long fallen tree crossing the river, or swim it. But that's just brutal insanity, and I would have folded regardless .

Nonetheless... cache... hankering... this one... yeah. I wasn't sure if I could get close by car from the other side of the river, or if I would have, like, a kilometer hike or something stupid from the nearest parking. Never been there, had no clue. What I DID know was that 'Pollock Island' cache was close to this one, so I decided I would tackle it in winter when the river was frozen solid. At this time it was both warm enough out and yet I was confident in the river's solidity.  Thus, me and my friend Night-Red went after this cache shortly after tackling the 'Highway 61' cache a little ways North.

Allow me to break from the story for a moment to give some background here. I don't own winter boots. Nor can I buy winter boots at the moment, as I'm dirt poor . I also don't have snowshoes, but I'm planning on buying some relatively soon... because I love showshoing, and having them would mostly negate me needing winter boots to begin with... but that's besides the point. At this moment I had neither. I DO have old running shoes, loosely tied at that (which I realized later could have been better concieved ). Several layers of clothing and yonder old shoes and I deemed myself 'good enough' for this snowy hike.  Unfortunately, this was prior to me inventing my current invention of 'instant winter boots'... AKA: putting your foot in a plastic shopping bag and tying it tightly around the ankle.

But... back to the story. So we parked on that street leading towards Pollock Island and hiked in. The snowmobile tracks made it packed enough to be able to walk with no problems for the most part. Once we got in to where the tracks kinda wander off from each other... it was aaaaaall soft at that point. So a trudging through the snow we went. By the time we got close to the river bank I had stopped to take off my shoes and knock the snow out of them twice.

Mental note... snow is cold.  Being from Winnipeg Manitoba you'd think I should know this.  Apparently life decided I needed another lesson.

Ahh, ice-cold, soaking feet... so many memories of growing up. We quickly found the first stage of the multi (or at least I did... Night-Red was off looking in the wrong place), and popped the coords into the GPS. Off we went! To my surprise, stage 2 wasn't on the first side of the river. I'd have SO done that, just to make it more difficult (well... except in winter).
A little bit of a trek later and we were at stage 2. Nice hide. The GPS was off at first, so we ended up wandering down an incline and needing to climb back up it again... naturally having to go through several feet deep snowdrifts both ways. Shortly thereafter I dropped my signature item... a homemade chainmail orb-type thing (which I just call a 'chainmail ball' for ease) and signed the logbook . Truly an interesting, albeit cold, adventure. Then came the trip back.
We decided it would be smartest to walk ON the river for most of the way, and come up again as close to the car as we could while staying off private property. Worked out INFINITELY better. I wish we had thought of that way first. I think I must have dumped snow out of my shoes about 10 times during this cache.

It made for a hell of an adventure to say the least, and one that won't be soon forgotten. Only after kicking back at home and warming up my feet can I now say that if I had to do it again, I wouldn't have changed how I did this cache for the world...  It was just too much fun!

By Kabuthunk

I've grown up in the Canadian countryside my entire childhood.  This may well be the main reason I enjoy the outdoor adventure of geocaching so much.  Then again, I've never been accused of being 'normal'.  I write an online webcomic (Planet Zebeth), make chainmail, have various unusual hobbies or collections, and geocache (obviously).  Obviously this could go on, but let's keep this succinct... my geocaching logs as of late are averaging over 500 words as is. I like geocaching, I like storytelling, and so here I am.