Caching, Abseiling and River Crossing (23rd Feb 2008)

Brilliant sunny day, but alas, this is on too short a notice to get someone to join me on a little biking and caching trip. Nae bother! Time for a solo trip!
I'm starting in Winterthur and after a first warm-up cache, bike up a hill towards a big tower, sporting some antennae of some sort. Looking for the cache first and then noting two dudes setting up ropes on the tower!




























Awesome! I wanted to see some action, but there was none, as one dude showed the other how to abseil (about 3 metres of the ground). Boring!
I was having a closer look anyway, saying "Hey, this looks pretty good ..... erm, pity I haven't got my harness with me!", trying to sound a bit disappointed.

'No problem, you can have mine!', the instructing bloke said, adding
'Know how to work it?'

"Sure! That's great!"

I put on the harness, got up the tower, inspected the fastening of the rope and then clipped in and swung over the railing! Good stuff!
I was down pretty quickly, beaming: "Hey, thanks guys, that was way cool!!!"

'You wanna have another go?'

"Why, yes of course! I'll take a picture this time!"






Great! But now I had to bugger off, more caches were on my list.
I was just getting out of the forest when a police car crossed me, traveling uphill!
"Poor buggers!", I muttered, as I just could not shake off the feeling that they were going to the tower! Makes you wonder what people call the police, just because someone is ab'ing off some building in the middle of a forest! Honestly .....

A few more uneventful caches followed, hardly worth mentioning.
The last one was, however, a wee bit more adventurous. It was down in a gorge and I had descended on the wrong spot, leaving me 400 metres short of the cache. No way I was to bike up and around! Only one other option: travel upstream! I followed a gravel spit first, but then eventually had to cross the stream. I took off my running shoes (didn't fancy riding a bike with wet shoes and sit in the train afterwards ....) and waded across. Water wasn't too warm really, well, what can you expect at the end of Feb in the Northern hemisphere! Near the next crossing I came upon a dude doing some gold washing!

"Hey, you're getting anything out of here?"

'Haven't checked yet, there might be some', he replied a bit evasively.

"Uh, right ...."

Three or four crossings later I got to the cache, couldn't resist to take a timer shot of me fording the last stretch, meaning I had to set up the camera and then hurry back into the stream!

"Bugger this! That picture better be good!!!"




Brilliant afternoon with unexpected adventures!