Beyond Hope!!

Geochallenge of the month

So the Geochallenge for September was an easy one. All you had to do is submit a pic of yourself wearing something geocaching related (a shirt, hat, pin, etc.) while out caching.

Here is my newest geocaching outfit.....Just kidding!!! This was taken in Hope, BC where much of the movie "RAMBO: First Blood" was filmed. I will be chatting about our caching day in Hope, a little later in this Blog.

First Blood is a 1982 American action film directed by Ted Kotcheff, and co-written by Sylvester Stallone, who also stars as Vietnam War veteran John Rambo. It co-stars Richard Crenna and Brian Dennehy, and is the first installment in the Rambo franchise, followed by Rambo: First Blood Part II.

The film is based on the 1972 novel of the same name by David Morrell. In the film, Rambo, a troubled and misunderstood veteran, must rely on his combat and survival senses against the abusive law enforcement of the small town of Hope, Washington. (Yet it was filmed in Hope, BC) (I assume they had to keep the name Hope, as in several shots you see signage that says Hope)

“In November of 1981, Hollywood film crews began to transform Hope, BC into a rural American town for the filming of the blockbuster hit Rambo First Blood. Over the next several months Hope and the Fraser Canyon experienced gas station explosions, gun fire and stunt men. The Success of Rambo First Blood led into a series of 4 films made from 1981-2007

Rambo fanatics from around the world travel to the small town of Hope, BC to get a glimpse of what people now call Rambo town.” 

Ok, so that is not me on the poster, as you can see below though, I have a shirt that says "The Geocaches are calling, and I must go!!" We were out caching in the Ladner area and I wore it. This is the photo that I used for the Geochallenge of the month. I also have a hat that was awarded to me from Groundspeak when I was voted to be the worldwide "Geocacher of the Month" in February 2012. But I don't normally wear hats...lol

We did several caches in Ladner including 2 Adventure Labs. We even ran into another cacher while doing one of the Adventure Labs (AL) 

NOTE: The highlighted or underlined words in my blog can be clicked on as they are links to other cool stuff!! Also if you click on any of the pictures they become bigger!!!

A cool boat for Search and Rescue for the City of Delta that was part of one of the Adventure Labs.

Caching in and around Hope, BC 

Bridal Veil Falls

Our first stop on Labour Day was at Bridal Veil Falls. After enjoying the beauty of the falls and getting several photo's, as well as info for the Earthcache, we headed down the road towards the town of Hope. We did a series of caches that had 13 in the series called the "PTA Caches". PTA stood for Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Surprisingly enough we saw all 3 of those including a plane taking off with a Glider in tow. Then once we had completed the series, we headed towards the Hope Slide about 10 minutes past Hope.

Beyond Hope

We were Beyond Hope, No, literally we were beyond Hope!! We went out to check out the Hope Slide which is about 10 minutes past Hope. Some history on the slide from the cache page:
Early Saturday morning, January 9, 1965, an enormous landslide descended into this valley of the Nicolum Creek, destroying about 3 km of the Hope-Princeton Highway.

Apparently triggered by a minor earthquake, the slide, consisting of more than 46 million cubic metres of earth, rock and snow, crashed down in seconds from the 2000 metre high mountain ridge forming the north side of the valley. It filled the valley bottom with debris 70 metres thick in places and completely buried Outram Lake at the foot of the slide.  Luckily, the slide occurred in an unpopulated area in the early morning hours and the disaster only resulted in four deaths, all of which were buried under the rubble. All four were stuck on Highway #3 at the time, waiting for a smaller initial slide to be cleared from the highway. Two of the bodies were never recovered by search crews and remain wherever they lie.

Hope Slide

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Susan with the cache "Hope Landslide"

I found it back in 2013 while passing thru on tour. I had also already found the other one in the parking lot as well as the Earthcahe, but wanted to show them to Susan. Realize where she is right now, was once a Lake.

Sign Board Info on the slide

Picture from January 1965

Happy Anniversary

I was answering a questionnaire on a FB geocaching page, which asked when did you find your first Geocache, so I looked on GSAK and noticed that 11 years ago on Sept 7th, 2009 I found my first geocache and I was hooked. So Happy Anniversary to me. Thank you Geocaching!!

Earthcache rises up like a phoenix!!

Recently I had archived one of my Earthcaches, as I talked about a couple of blogs ago as can be seen "Here"

I was a bit sad as this was the second Earthcache of the 4 I have created, that I had to archive, but then a caching friend contacted me after I had archived it and asked if he could go there and log it as it was a part of a loop of earthcaches. I said sure no problem. When they got there he took some photos and got some info and messaged me and suggested I resubmit the Earthcache. I took his info and was able to resubmit it as a new Eartchcache. It was published only a few short hours after submission. YAY, I now have 3 earthcaches again!! Looking for my next one to create!!

Ladner Waterway caching at Brunswick Point

Deva Vue!!!

A beautiful Sunday afternoon out caching with Susan. The Round trip of  6.6km, We got a total of 21 caches, and 16 of them we had found already....wait, what?? Yup, we did this series of caches just a few short months ago. Seems as if the caches were adopted by a different cacher as the original owner was going to archive them. The new cache owner archived them and resubmitted them as new caches. One that we found even still had some of my FTF trading cards in it, that I left the last time we did these. Here is their exact quote from one of the cache pages:

"It was exciting to adopt the PB series from mcwilli, but we noticed most of the regular cachers had found the caches and the number of finders was dropping. Add to that some of the locations were suffering from overgrowth. So we felt it was time to refresh the series. Some caches have moved slightly and a few have remained in place because the hide was too good to let go." 

I'm not sure I understand the value of archiving someones cache and resubmitting it with a different name?? Not much creativity or thought put into it. The only one that looked as if it changed was one that was inside a log. 

My thought is if you can make a cool cache like this, you should be able to make a bunch of quality caches, not just resubmit the same old micros. Just my opinion!!

Caching on Mars

NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover is on the way to the Red Planet. Perseverance, or "Percy," is one of three craft traveling to Mars and is slated to land in February of 2021. The Rover has a Geocaching Tracking number etched on it somewhere and that number will be revealed when it lands on Mars. Geocaching is a worldwide hobby that will officially  be out of this world in February of 2021.

Well that's it for this month,

Keep on caching!!

Chris Yuill

Magicman65