I got an e-mail this past weekend from burchil (aka-Charles) asking me if I wanted to go caching. Charles noted that I had been leading a very busy life lately and thought he would invite me out to walk around with him in the snow and de-stress a bit. Nice.
Some background on Charles: He has the superhuman ability to ride his bicycle in any weather, to any destination, at any time. He can snowshoe at a brisk 5KM/h through knee-deep powder, against the wind for at least 40 mins without pausing. He has canoed in all but one month of the year, I believe. And in Manitoba, that's saying something.
I have been out with Charles on a couple of other occasions and have had a fantastic time. I have never had concerns as to whether or not I would be at risk. I always felt that if there was ever an issue with fatigue, or if I was ever injured, Charles would simply load my body on his back and jog back to the car, or perhaps to the nearest hospital.
The cache my good buddy had chosen as the subject of our adventure is MuStash's Elk Island Cache.
Some background on Charles: He has the superhuman ability to ride his bicycle in any weather, to any destination, at any time. He can snowshoe at a brisk 5KM/h through knee-deep powder, against the wind for at least 40 mins without pausing. He has canoed in all but one month of the year, I believe. And in Manitoba, that's saying something.
I have been out with Charles on a couple of other occasions and have had a fantastic time. I have never had concerns as to whether or not I would be at risk. I always felt that if there was ever an issue with fatigue, or if I was ever injured, Charles would simply load my body on his back and jog back to the car, or perhaps to the nearest hospital.
The cache my good buddy had chosen as the subject of our adventure is MuStash's Elk Island Cache.
4/5 Difficulty - 5/5 Terrain
20 (!) KM round trip
Cliff climbing involved
And the map on the cache page shows the starting point for our journey is some 200m off the shore in the icy waters of Lake Winnipeg. Yes, I realize that that is just a Google map, and the actual location is likely bone dry. But consider it an omen. One more tick in the "cons" list of whether or not I shoud attempt this cache, or perhaps advise my friend Charles that I have come down with some rare illness that prevents me from walking any farther than 5 km without going indoors for a while.
Well, as luck would have it, we are going to be busy for the next few weekends anyhow, so it looks like my geocaching adventures will be a bit more urban. At least for the time being.
