For your reference please see our tracklog. But also, you’ll be needing to reference THAT against the zoom-in that will be featured later.

Things started out pretty well. And we were very happy to have Ally along with us since she is just the right size for cache retrieval as she aptly demonstrated early on in our adventure. I suppose this is sort of a spoiler since you can see that the cache is in a stump. But since we are in the woods, there are a lot of stumps. And because I’m super sneaky, I’m not saying which cache this happens to be.

At any rate, we were moving along and doing pretty well despite the crazy town amounts of mud. I’m talking suck your shoe off mud. Fall in and never see the light of day again mud. Splash up and cover your clothing from head to toe mud.  Where was I? Oh right, doing pretty well. Right. Loyal sidekick was doing more of a meander than a hike and had stopped to pick up a handout. He’s so considerate since he knows how I love me some handouts.

We were all enjoying a lovely walk in the woods. The temperature had climbed far above the project 45 degrees promised by the weather prognosticators. The sun came out and the wind was even warm, which was extremely odd. It felt like Spring. So much so that those of us who had over dressed (everyone) were attempting to mash their giant parkas into backpacks of insufficient size.

In fact things were going so well that we felt perhaps we had in fact managed to circumvent the MAGPI Curse of always choosing poorly. There was much merriment and story swapping, cache comparison and mud avoidance.

We crossed a lovely bridge that was most definitely not a swinging bridge of doom and sidekick had to have a spotter in order to retrieve the cache. It was there that we saw a sign that was going to be our undoing. It indicated that the Weston Gauley Bridge Turnpike was UP.  Yes, that is right the one sign we say indicated we should go UP. And since the next cache was called something crazy like On the Ridge Again our merry (but not for much longer) group went up. but not without complaint of course.

After climbing a wicked arse hill and collapsing in the lovely field, some of us enjoyed the view, some just lay on the ground, flopping like fish out of water and gasping for breathe. (No photos of that, that would just have been mean.)

Brilliantly we decided to continue up, despite the cache not getting any closer. Sidekick, jbgrug and I had pulled ahead of the group and I had finally handed sidekick the GPSr (I was using his Garmin as mine has gone missing) when he looked at me, looked at the cache and indicated I was an idiot. Ok, he didn’t really do that, but probably because jbgrug was right there.  It seems that our blind faith in a sign was our undoing as we were not climbing the proper ridge. Yeah, you read that right. MAGPI takes a long walk and makes a bad decision. Game on!

And so after a brief discussion, we bushwhacked (sort of) down to the proper trail and then we were then back on track.Which meant we then had to start back up a different hill. It was much kinder than our wrong hill sidetrack.

The sun was starting to sink low and the warm was retreating so it was time to kick it up a notch and finish this trail off. Also, the idea of re-layering was not high on my agenda. We kicked it up and made a last push for glory….and a car. Because this walking thing, it was getting pretty old.

And so, before I sign off, let me leave you with this warning. Once you have crossed the non-swinging bridge of complete stability, keep low. Do not go UP immediately. You’ll be glad. Just look at the track log of our unnecessary hill climb of doom. See that red stuff? Yeah that was us not focusing. See that space between where there is no track log? You’ll want to walk there.

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As always, there are other photos which you may see by checking out the galleries. And I’ll go ahead right now and give you my disclaimer that the photos here are totally out of order. I’m such a slacker.

A still as yet unfound cache was sitting in White Park by the time I was done with work and judging from the satellite image I was pretty certain I could make quite work of it.

The weather was wretched, a solid rain had been beating the city to death since early morning. I decided to stop home and grab my wellies and my parka just in case I couldn’t make quite work of the find.

With my dress pants jammed down in my pink wellies with palomino ponies and my black parka I headed out to the park. As I navigated the speed humps (no fun in a Jeep) I noticed an unusual sign (not quite verbatim, but close enough).

 WVU ARMY ROTC

Maneuvers Today

No Live Rounds

Thank You

Did that mean the park was off limits? It sure didn’t say so. I was confused. (I was also relieved they weren’t using live ammo in White Park.) So I decided to approach the cache from a different angle. I tried a parallel street and was happy to see no signs indicating A) the Army was around or B) the park was off limits.

I popped out of the Jeep and headed onto a nearby trail. I was following the arrow and the trail and was closing in on 75 feet to the cache when I noticed the Army. One squad (unit, troop, platoon?) was holding a small embankment which was really very close to Ground Zero. Another was approaching. Crud.

I wasn’t exactly invisible, what with my pink wellies, and I had clearly attracted the attention of at least one person. It occurred to me that the guys lying in the mud would most likely NOT appreciate me giving their position away while searching for the cache.

Not really willing to give up, but also not wanting to interfere with the Army I developed a secondary plan. I would go home, work out and then come back and hope the Army would be redeployed by then.

By the time I got home I had developed a third plan. I would change clothes and walk to the park, hopefully killing two birds with one stone. It was uncomfortably warm out so I shed the parka’s liner, suited up and headed out into the driving rain storm.

When I arrived at the park I was not happy to see the WVU ARMY ROTC signs still standing. Crud. Like last time I circled the park and approached the cache from the back. I was feeling pretty confident that the Army was close to being done (they were wearing blaze yellow vests at this point) so I headed to Ground Zero.

I was elated to find the cache and see an empty log. Sweet FTF victory!  I unzipped my parka, reached into my inside pocket and found…nothing. Right. My pencil was in the liner pocket. Which was in the foyer hanging on the coat rack.

There I stood, in the driving rain, parka unzipped, hunched over trying to keep the log dry  and no writing implement in hand.

I just did what I always do in these situations. I signed my name with mud. There was plenty to go around.

We picked up Gentleman-Carpenter at OUCH!!! (yes, as sidekick pointed out, I refer to places by cache names quite a lot) then headed to BW3 in Bridgeport to meet up with the Bumps. And, as it turned out, Aquacache.

Arriving at Mountwood Park we sorted out the car situation and finally rendezvousing with both of AG349 and headed out on the trail…EARLY. Yeah, you read that right. Early, as in ahead of schedule. Unbelievable. Unheard of. Also shocking. Very shocking.

But anyway, we hit the red reflector for #1 with way too much daylight and then realized that…we kind of needed a tiny bit more darkness. Not that we didn’t try. We walked around, using our awesome flashlights to check out all the nearby trees. Gentleman-Carpenter (it turns out) even went in the correct direction but didn’t see anything.

This clearly didn’t concern sidekick much, since he still had data. That makes sidekick a happy camper.

When finally, around 6:23 (that’s about 30 minutes that we’d been hanging out waiting) Aquacache sees a bright eye and notices it happens to be in the direction in which G-C had looked. So of course we immediately begin to blame G-C’s lack of spotting the fire tacks (that’s how this MAGPI thing works you know). Until we noticed some reflective tape and Aquacache said that he’d seen some of that near the trail – you know while we waited 30 minutes because no one saw anything – because he thought it was funky bark. Which of course meant we all then began to blame Aquacache for his lack of focus  (what do you expect from someone with lumpy corneas?).

Eventually the darkness descended and we had an easier time spotting the fire tacks.

We managed, thanks to the hard work of sidekick and yours truly, to stay on trail and even – believe it or not – shave off some time by cutting off a slew of switchbacks.

I feel that at this point in the narrative I should begin to explain that I fell in the creek, not once but several times, we scared up a bear and then got lost. But none of that happened because for once, MAGPI had no mishaps, no poor decisions and everything went better than could have been wished.  I figure that this particular series of night caches will have used up all the good karma I had left.

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Since I had failed to tackle Cannon Hill back in the Spring (it wasn’t my fault, Aquacache had pretty much tried to die before we made much headway) I figured this would be as good an opportunity as any to head back.  And so wvhunter, wvcoalcat, Gentleman-Carpenter, loyal sidekick Little Wooden Boy and I headed to the fine village of Rowlesburg for a nice little hike.

It turned out to be a nice little stroll to the top if you actually follow the (gated) road and don’t try to cheater it by foolishly following an ATV trail to nowhere.

The wind was pretty wicked, but we were not to be daunted. Also, we were working up a little bit of a sweat so a little bit of a breeze felt good – so long as we held on to our hats and kept all our stuff tethered.

We found the cache handily, took in the historic marker and then marched off the crest of the hill (and out of the incredible wind) to take in the view of Rowlesburg.  (For more info on the Battle for Cannon hill clickity HERE.)

From our hilltop perch Rowlesburg looked remarkably like model train town. All neatly ordered, with lawns trimmed and flags flying. It was pretty cool and a fine reward to our day’s labor.

Before heading back down we stopped for a quick group photo (before the wind tried to blow the tripod over) and then headed back down, down, down.

And now…on to the pumpkin pie blizzard.

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1. Without both textual and visual evidence I suspect many people would doubt this happened.

2. When things come back to bite me in the arse this coming Saturday, I can refer to this post and say, “I put more thought and preparation into this debacle than most things I undertake.”

So I love Halloween. Love it.  It’s spooky. It’s creepy. It’s a legitimate reason to dress up in outlandish costumes. And best of all, it does not involve me running all over trying to find the prefect present for what seems to be 300 people.  Usually we end up going to a Halloween party where one of us has to be the designated driver. So this year I thought…hey why don’t we do something different and terribly scary – NIGHT CACHE!

Actually let me clarify that - SIX night caches. In the woods.

In order to undertake The Magic of Mountwood (Nocturnal) #1 (GC2QNZJ) – #6 (yeah I have no idea what GC# the rest are and I’m too lazy to look them up.) I did some preliminary work – at least that’s what I like to call it. Mostly it was me grilling Allysmom24 and wvmikiepar about their trip to tackle the series. I elicited some very useful information.

1. Ignore the bizarre coords. All you need is the trailhead for cache #1.

2. The trail is not a loop.

3. You’ll want to park one car at the start and one at the end (they pointed out the end).

4. There’s a place called “Bailout” on the trail(s) that is mid-way. Just in case.

5. There are a lot of switchbacks that could be cut out, if you knew where the trail was.

Armed with this info, Chad and I headed out to Mountwood Park to walk MAP the trails, locate the six red beacons and see how long of a hike we were in for. Also, we were really hoping that knowing what the area looked like during daylight would come in handy later.

Two-and-a-half hours later we emerged from the trail pretty happy with ourselves.

Proof is in the pudding:

After cramming (and boy do I mean cramming) Gentleman-Carpenter & Rock_Rat into the back seat of the Jeep (did I mention my hi-lift jack is still on the floor?) we set out to meet up with 3_Dogs and Russ of ruannwv in Parsons.

Our first target was Coalcat Knob (which sidekick and I had tackled, along with Aquacache, the old fashioned way – by hiking it.  We may or may not have been quite useless in helping determine the best way at one of the many trail splits. After all, if one is inclined to hike the cache, one comes in from a different approach.

The remaining bit of hike was pretty much uneventful. No critters, no scares, no scarring experience. And an intact (and clean) cache container awaited us – of  the ammo can variety.

Missing Part One accomplished we headed back to the Jeeps, crammed back into the Little Black Jeep (I mashed myself into the back this time) and headed off to rendezvous with CL Combat & Aquacache who were (somewhat) patiently waiting for us at Sheetz.

Thus assembled we headed out to Cheat View South.  (Getting a find on this cache would bring me to within TWO caches of completing all the wvcoalcat caches.  So I was seriously hoping that this cache was 1. Findable 2. had the paper log in it.

We didn’t quite get as close as we thought we would. Oh sure I love to hike, but come on,  I have a Jeep and today I was all about cheating the hike.  Someone in this group is  gonna have to learn how to pick a lock.

Shockingly this hike was also uneventful. I know, I know. Two ‘coalcat caches and nothing really in the way of serious bad decisions. What’s up with that?

And as the sun started to go down we headed back to the Jeeps.

Having successfully completed our targets, we headed back to Parsons for delicious dinner. After cramming ourselves with delicious dinner we then crammed ourselves back into the Jeep.

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I can’t say too much about this cache for two reasons:

1. It’s a puzzle – so you have to figure out what tool to use (there goes about half our photos)

2. Both stages are tricky – so I had to seriously edit photos

My recap of the days adventure in question form.

1. How did you guys find the location for stage one and not die in the process?

2. How in the heck did you place stage one and not die in the process.

3. Do you seriously think we’re going to make a geotrail through those rhody? You know, the ones that I could not even see the people that were five feet in front of me through?

4. Why do you hate us so?

5. Why are you trying to kill wvhunter? (no wait, that’s a rhetorical quesiton.)

6. Ok. Did you feel ridiculous carrying the final through the woods?

At any rate we had an EXCELLENT time! We did not die. We did not get injured. And we got it in one try. Rock on!

I can’t share more. I wish I could. But that would spoil every one else’s fun!

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After some last minute nagging cajoling, Gentleman-Carpenter said sure he’d join Loyal Sidekick LWB, Aquacache & yours truly for a trip into the woods (provided of course we didn’t break him). And so we rendezvoused at Rendezvous Here around 9:30 and headed on to our first destination: Fools Run (I Walked) GC1AKD1 by the illustrious wvcoalcat.  The previous week while cleaning up some nasty stuff (see previous post about us being nice or something), wvcoalcat had mentioned that we may be able to driver darn near his cache. A lot darn nearer than the posted parking coords. And all on the up and up. He furnished the coords to the Forest Road and followed with the standard disclaimer of “if the gate is open”.

We were in luck because the gate was open. WIDE open. Score!  We took the jeeps (so labeled on our track log) up to as close as .45 of a mile from ground zero and parked.  Well that was after we had a minor bit of confusion about which road to take (please see the point labeled B on our tracklog) – five way intersections get a little confusing in the woods.

After getting falling out of the jeeps (the drivers) and climbing out (the passengers) we geared up, which took longer than usual since we were parked on the side of a mountain.

(Aquacache took the above pic, for the record.)

Taking one last look at the jeeps and hoping they were still on the side of the hill when we returned, we headed out. At which point, of course, we realized we could have driven even closer to the cache. But by the time we realized THAT we didn’t see the benefit of walking back to the jeeps to move them forward. Ok, perhaps only the drivers didn’t see the benefit, the passengers were all for that plan of action.

A brief 30  minutes later we found ourselves at ground zero and shortly thereafter Gentleman-Carpenter hit plastic. Easy peasy lemon squeezy my friends. (This should have been the tip off that things might not go so well later on in the day.) Cache having been found we settled in for a celebratory snack.

Our merry crew rolled back to the jeeps and headed off to tackle Coalcat’s Blunder GC1AM7M which was touted as the closest thing to a ‘coalcat PnG as one could come. After heading back to Rt. 72 and then Rt. 291 we pulled up onto FR933. We had some hopes of finding the gates opened (or unlocked) but upon inspection – and trust me, Gentleman-Carpenter check it out thoroughly – we had to leave the jeeps behind.  None-the-less, buoyed by  our earlier success we headed upward.

It wasn’t long until we realized that the road we were on and the trails that seemed to be suddenly appearing were not on any of the topo maps with which we were equipped. It was either that or….no that was pretty much it. Arriving at our first major decision point – a fork in the road where we could have gone right and up or left and down we were in a quandary. Which is when Loyal Sidekick took the lead, scouted out the UP route and declared it to be “the right way.” Since he usually has pretty good instincts and has chosen wisely in the past we followed.

Thing were going pretty well until we ran out of trail. But somewhere, someone had mentioned a bushwhack and so off we went. It wasn’t much of a whack, to be honest. There were no walls of impenetrable mountain laurel or stands of fir trees so thick one couldn’t move. Mostly it was just a bit annoying. Trusting the topos on my GPS (dumb idea as usual) I started around the side of the hill gaining elevation as I went (I have mad mountain goat skills) because my topo maps said the cache was NOT on the top but on the side. It lied. Liked like the dog it is.

At any rate I hit ground zero ahead of the men folks and was settling down to do some serious searching when I came upon…..DA…DA….DA!!!! A very mauled lock-n-lock lid. Oh CARP. I turned and DA….DA….DA……found something even more troubling. It was the bottom of the lock-n-lock which was also mauled. But that wasn’t the disturbing part. The Disturbing part (yes, disturbing with a big D) was that some PERSON had left a log of his own. Right. In. The. Container. ERK.

Having made that discovery I started looking for other bits of the cache and located some gnawed upon zip lock bags. By this time the gents had hit ground zero.  We searched in vain for the real cache log but came up empty although Aquacache did locate the stash note way down over the hill.

Moving away from the scene we had a snack and pondered our next step. After all, you gotta sign the log to claim your find. The paper log you know. Aquacache produced a nano and a log book, but with no metal at hand (although he kept claiming there had to be a nail in his geocaching backpack) that wasn’t going to work. But what’s this? A pill bottle?  I had forgotten I was actually prepared! Sweet. So we signed the temporary cache replacement log, stuffed it in the pill bottle and Gentleman-Carpenter placed it where we surmised the hiding spot to be.  We were quite sure that wvcoalcat would be thrilled with us for fixing his cache with a micro. It’s hard to find such a conscientious group of cachers as us.

And so, our good deed for the day done, we headed back to the jeeps.

And so wvhunter, wvcoalcat, Aquacache and yours truly showed up to gather some garbage left behind by….well left behind by people who clearly have no concept of common decency, that’s who.

We arrived at this perfectly nice little roadside park,  complete with grills and pic nic shelters…

To find a nicely manicured lawn and one hell of a mess behind a steel door that had clearly been busted open.

And trust me when I say while the photo shows a certain degree of nastiness, it does not touch the mess that was to the left of the doorway. Nor can it in any way shape or form communicate the stench emanating from the area once things were stirred up. Thankfully CL Combat had stopped at this park on Monday in order to find the geocache (fear not, located away from this nasty pit of disgustingness) and so had alerted us that we should bring a shovel.

And so shovel in hand,  boxes of gloves and garbage bags provided by WV REAP our trusty crew set about doing some Trash Out (we did the Cache In portion of CITO afterwards) as swiftly as possible. After all, one may only hold one’s breath so long before passing out.

We tag teamed the shoveling gross substances into the garbage bags, thus virtually eliminating the possibility that anyone would actually end up touching – or (which is possibly worse all things considered) getting touched by – something. Because honestly, if any of my clothes touched this mess of HAZMAT, they were being burnt on the spot. There’s a reason I keep a change of clothes in the jeep.

We were very, very happy to have the shovel in hand and almost equally as thrilled to find an abandoned push broom made out of, what we finally decided, was elk tail. (Yes, it too went into the giant red garbage dumpster when all things were said and done.)

Although stirring up (and then breathing) all the dust and particles that had accumulated in that area probably took quite a few years off Aquacache’s life. I know as soon as the air started wafting over the stuff in there, the rest of us started backing up, ready to take off at a full run if the moment required it. I wish we had a HAZMAT sticker to adhere to the door, and the dumpster for that matter.

Unfortunately not only was the area a trash dump, it was a storage area for some signs which had to be removed so we could clean around them. EEEEEEEEW. Just when we were pondering how this could get any more disgusting, the guys realized that the signs were stuck together and had stuff stuck on them.  Anyway need a Handicap Parking Sign?

I really had to work hard to hold the bag and yet stay as far away as possible from the stuff wvcoalcat was cleaning up. It’s harder than you might imagine considering I have really short little arms. I was hoping that by making a horrible face and stopping all air intake that it would make the situation slightly less gross. It did not.

We double bagged, just in case.

wvcoalcat even improvised a litter stick…because some things you don’t want to touch, even through rubberized blue man group gloves.

And so being the overachievers that we are, we  CITO’d that building but good. And then wished we had some plywood and screws in order to secure the door shut so there would not have to be a repeat performance.

From there…

it’s just best not to ask what wvhuter, Aquacache & wvcoalcat were up to.

Because I’m pretty sure it was illegal, immoral or fattening. Maybe all three at once.

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I bring the awesome, you guys bring the rest. Fun guaranteed. Pony’s Promise! (Sometimes I think of it as more of a threat than a promise.)

And so things got underway. Thanks to soldofsolitude (and his Dad) for bringing the most awesome grill ever. Seriously, a grill of that nature adds some level of sophistication to what was (and trust me here) a rather haphazardly thrown together event.

We did have a moment of trepidation when I had to draft grill masters. Although to be honest, it was more like assign or harangue. It just so happened to be the two guys loitering near the grill. I figured they must have been admiring the grill and thus showed some interest in using the darn thing.

After feeding the mass of humanity that had gathered we moved on to some games. OK. So the only activity really was the ammo can toss. And the tragedy of it all was I Spotty Spotty Pony Girl only had one ammo can laying in my basement that was ammo can toss worthy. Yep. ONE. And it was a .30 Cal at that. Oh the shame.

For those of you unsure why this would be shameful, please allow me to elaborate. 1. I’m a geocacher. I should have several toss worthy ammo cans stashed safely in my basement. 2. The men’s ammo can toss has traditionally been a fully laden .50 cal ammo can while the ladies’ ammo can toss has been a fully laden .30 cal ammo can. 3. The winner gets the can. UH OH.

But I’m wily and adaptive. So both ladies and men threw the same can. The men’s winner – wvhunter74 – got the can and the ladies’ winner – Allysmom got a finely crafted t-shirt. Problem solved kids.

While the ammo can toss was being played out (and yours truly was taking photos and trying to keep one eye on the can) who should drop anchor but local legend CaptJackSparrow! Avast mateys…’tis a pirates life fer we scallywags. Alas the Cap’n escaped portraiture.

And so with bellies full and prizes distributed….and after a bit o’ excitement that nearly remodeled the place….we went jeepin’

Yeah, we did. Two three Jeeps and one pick up truck hauling: pbump, mrs. pbump, SSPG, CL Combat, Knight Who Says Ni, wvhunter, Rock_Rat, Gentleman-Carpenter, AllysMom, Ally, Nuggie99 and wvmikiepar. And thank goodness for those last four folks since they were our leaders. Thus ensuring we actually arrived at Rt. 60 Connector Ridge #1 – Briarwood.

It was a mighty fine day.

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