Some areas have legendary locations. Some have legendary cachers. Some have legendary caches. If you happen to be in the market for a legendary set of caches placed by a legendary cacher, then The Good, The Bad & The Ugly might be for you. Or you might be an idiot. If you are a really big idiot or a really nice person (guess which one I might be) then you might go after the wvcoalcat trio twice, just so you can drive your own jeep down to the river so that your fellow idiot-friend-cachers don’t have to undertake terrain that “varies from mild to strenuous” that would otherwise be required to hunt down and kill find the caches.
So on Saturday loyal sidekick and I (idiot-jeep-owning-cacher) found ourselves at Snake Hill WMA awaiting the arrival of wvhunter (idiot-friend-cacher #1), Gentleman-Carpenter (idiot-friend-cacher #2) and Aquacache (idiot-jeep-owning-friend-cacher who, much like yours truly , had already found these caches). Once the gang arrived, we headed out for the relatively easy The Good. Or at least most of us did, Aquacache had other caches to DNF at the time.
Loyal sidekick did the honors of cache retrieval, mostly because no one else was willing to go into the shrubbery after the ammo can.
Although wvhunter was plenty happy to give advice from his perch.
And Gentleman-Carpenter had was all over the signing and recording the first set of the coords for The Ugly. As usual, with this group, it’s all about teamwork. Roughly defined teamwork, but teamwork none the less. And so back to the parking area we went to rendezvous with Aquacache.
That accomplished (Score: 1 Find, 1 DNF, 1 I got nothing ’cause I’ve already done this) we took Gentleman-Carpenter & gave Aquacache the pleasure of having wvhunter in his Jeep as we headed down to the Cheat River. Now last time I was out this way the road was crazy overgrown with vines and small trees and other such non-sense. So much so that it took us 2 hours to get down to the river because we had to clear the road as we went. I was pretty much expecting the same thing today. But no! As luck would have it the road was free and clear! Not that it was a walk in the park, but as jeepin’ roads go, it wasn’t too bad. Then again I wasn’t sitting in the back seat getting flung all over the place while rhody tried to smack me in the face. After all, sidekick and I had our windows rolled up. Sorry G-C!
No wonder he decided to get out and walk!
We were happily able to get past the previous parking area thanks to some heavy duty ATV use and trudge onward a bit. Oh sure it was slow going and the jeeps were getting one heck of a pin striping, but really, why walk that extra .25 of a mile if you can drive it? We were doing pretty well when lo and behold, a tree lay between us and another precious .25 of a mile of trail. The tree, which was quite dead, lay at an angle that just prevented Aquacache’s Rubicon from passing under. Or so it seemed. But wait! He had a chainsaw for just such occasions.
Oh sure, it sounded like the electric carving knife my parents used to use on Thanksgiving. And sure it was not the longest chainsaw you’ve ever seen, but eventually it got the job done.
So while Aquacache chainsawed, the rest of us just watched and waited and hoped that when the tree fell, it didn’t land on us or the lead jeep. (My jeep was safely out of tree’s way.)
As I said, the baby chainsaw eventually got the job done, after a fashion. What it really did was drop the tree, now shorter, back down in the road. But with much might G-C, Aquacache & my loyal sidekick Little Wooden Boy manhandled the tree trunk into submission. Take that, Mother Nature!
Sadly, we finally hit an impasse that was…impassable. And so had to set out on foot to reach The Bad and The Ugly. It mostly went like this: Trudge, trudge, trudge. Look a boat! Trudge, trudge. Rest. Look a Boat! Trudge. Are we there yet? Trudge. You get the picture.
Even the GPS agreed that perhaps we’d not thought our plan through very well.
Eventually we got The Bad. Which was about the time some folks started questioning their decision to go after these caches. What were they thinking? Too late now, gentlemen. Too late now.
Actually what loyal sidekick was thinking was, “What’s going on in college football right now?” instead of “Why did I decide to undertake this horrific walk in the woods?”
And so onward to The Ugly, which wasn’t really all that horrific. However, we didn’t have to wait too long for it to reach UGLY as we started back towards the main trail. Yeah, I had the track log from April 2010. Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to do us an awful lot of good because: Mother Nature. Oh she is such a witch. Seems there had been an awful lot of nature growing between us and the main trail. An awful, horrible, ugly amount of nature. So we did the best we could, used the dry but slippery stream bed as our trail until we could reach the trail and trudged onward. It went like this: Trudge. Slip. DAMNIT. Trudge. Slip. Grumble. Trudge. This sucks. Grumble. Slip. Trudge. After an eternity we made it back to the main trail and only had….a scant 2 or so miles to hike back to the jeeps. Yes. 2 or so miles or more hiking. De-freakin’-lightful!
At long last, the jeeps appeared on the horizon. Oh glorious, cushioned seats! Oh the luxury! I offered up the keys to loyal sidekick and told G-C he could have the front seat. I would pay my penance and sit in the back and deal with the attacking shrubbery.
The ride up was about as smooth as the ride down and a lot quieter because we were hungry. I spent most of my time trying to decide what I was going to order at BW3 when we finally got back to civilization.