Well, it's been a while since my last blog entry, but I just had to blog about the latest Terracache I logged. The cache was fairly easy to find, but rather difficult to get to. The obstacle this time was not the hike and finding it, but rather getting up to it.The cache was located about 50 foot up an abandoned silo. We received a request from a fellow cacher for assistance. We met him over at the site where he was preparing for the climb. He had scoped out the site ahead of time and had come back better prepared. The silo had several windows on one side about 4 feet apart. There were bolts, that a ladder had once been attached to, above each window on each side.
Our first plan of attack was to throw a ball attached to a string through a window or over the top, allowing us to attach a rope. Multiple attempts were made, but the golf ball we were using was just too light to aim accurately. Failing this, he started up the side of the silo carrying rope. He made it up about 4 windows high, but the next one up did not have anything for a handhold.
We had thought to bring a long a pole with a hook, and we passed this up to him. He tied himself off using the rope and a carabener, then he used the pole to throw the rope up to a higher window, and eventually managed to pull himself up. We assisted from the ground by keeping the rope pulled tight and untangled. We also passed up items he needed or dropped.
Once he was able to reach the cache, he stashed the log in his pocket and climbed back down to the window below to log it; however, he was having difficulty getting the log and pen out of his pocket. Finally retrieving it, it fell to the ground. This gave me a chance to log it! I logged it and we sent the log and a pen back up in a glove he had dropped by using the rope.
All in all, this was definitely a challenging cache, and fairly unique. It's definitely not a park and grab! Come prepared for this one, and bring someone to assist from the ground.
