Mar 16/2010
|
Geocache Activity 604 |
DNF |
IDENTIFICATION
GCPR8Q "Burmis Bonus" N 49° 33.141 W 114° 17.961Difficulty 2; Terrain 1.5; size regular Creator: Twisty Date First Hidden: 7/15/2005 Date Last Found: 2/19/2010 ruralDescription A two stage multi in the Burmis area of The Crowsnest Pass. Access to the cache sites is only by foot. (short walk) Look for trail across the bridge which leads to final. First stage container is a large pill bottle type with the coordinates to the main cache. If there are no clues left it is also on the underside of the cap. Main cache is an ammo box. It is a fairly well stocked cache. Please obey all signs. Rehide caches as found. Bring a fishing rod and a pail for berries when in season Have fun, See Ya' out there.. Hint First stage near the highest point on the hill. Under a small berry bush. At the main the tree is wearing a black tie Comments
PLANNING
I was eager to begin today's activities. Yesterday I learned how to use geocaching.com's "Create Pocket Query" to obtain all the caches along a route (in this case Highway 3 between Pincher Creek and Sparwood). This gave me a total of 49 caches to search. This was a .loc file. (The geocaching.com website says that I should be able to obtain this as a .gpx file but I have not been able to figure out how to do this yet.) I then had to convert this to a .gpx file using a program called GPSBabel. I then used a program called Garmin Road Trip to see these caches located on a map on my Mac. This is the same map that my Garmin nuvi uses for its display. This gave me a clear picture of the location of each cache along the highway before I set out. I then downloaded these caches as a .gpx file to a file folder on the Mac desktop and I dragged this folder to the Garmin nuvi (in the folder called GPX) which was hooked up to the Mac. This may seem like a lot of work, and it is, but it is still much better than having to load each of the 49 web sites individually into the nuvi.
I took along my BT-335 data logger, my Garmin nuvi, my camera and my iPhone. I did not make any notes as I assumed I would be able to use my iPhone to obtain the cache descriptions and details. I also did not make any notes about the sequence of searching as I assumed the nuvi would always indicate which cache was the next nearest and that would work satisfactorily as I was basically following a linear route.
OUTCOME
This was my 6th search of the morning. At this point I became confused about the information I was obtaining from the iPhone. I was aware the battery was getting low and so I was only glancing at the information and then shutting it down. In the process I began mixing up the information from the previous search with this and assumed that the previous search was the first part of this multi-cache. It wasn't until I was home and phoned TeamDJM for advice that I learned the two caches were independent. Nonetheless I didn't see anything on the top of the hill that I had climbed. Here is my posting to the geocaching.com website:
I was on top of the hill, but the first cache eluded me today. I will return.
Here is one photo:
view of Crowsnest River from top of hill (Frank slide in distance)I am now 4/6 for today.