Night Caching in SoCal: Bears vs. Zombies

One of the very first caches my family ever tried was a night cache in North Carolina called 'Lost in the Dark', by rldill (link). It was a lot of fun, but unfortunately, we DNF'd it because we still really didn't know what we were doing at that point. Since that time, I have come to find that night caches are really pretty rare. Recently, I had the great fortune to do TWO night caches.

The first one was near Big Bear Lake. We had spent the night for a day or two of skiing, but the conditions were too warm and one of my daughters was sick, so we decided to leave early. As I often do, I had a list of caches that I wanted to get on this trip and one of them was the night cache 'A Night Smiley for Big Bear' by Mama Bear and 2 Cubs (link). I talked my wife into coming with me, although she's not a big cacher, but I really wanted a spotter since I would be hiking at night in an unfamiliar place (safety first, people!). GZ puts you at a trailhead near one of the ski resorts and the idea is to use a flashlight to follow a series of fire tacks.

Although it was warm, there was still snow on the trails, and the path was very icy. In the darkness, the drop offs on the right hand side of the trail seemed much more dangerous than they probably were. The trail ventured uphill and downhill, and every slip on the ice was like we were going to fall off Everest! We missed the final marker, so we went quite awhile without seeing anything before turning back and regrouping. Then we heard something in the bushes. That was about it for my wife, and since she had the flashlight, I had to plead with her to give me a few more minutes. We found the last known tack and she said she saw something strange nailed to a tree. It wasn't the cache, so I ignored it. Then she shined the light on something that looked suspicious, but she couldn't find it again by the time I got over there. I still couldn't find the final marker, and since the rustling was getting louder, we (she) decided to bail. After we got back to the cabin, I pulled up the cache listing and looked at some additional information. "Hey, that's what I saw on the tree!" she said. D'oh!! So, the next morning, I returned to where we were and the suspicious item I saw briefly in her light turned out to be the cache! It was really cool to return here in the daylight and see how things looked. Trail wasn't so bad, drop offs weren't so steep, and no wild animals near GZ. This was exactly what it was designed to be, a slightly scary but very cool adventure. Caching is SO much more interesting at night!

The hidden Zombie Meter

The TOTT in action!

Two nights ago, I teamed up with local San Diego legend BlondHiLites, a couple of new cachers, sjjjhall(s), plus my wife and daughter to find a very special night cache in La Jolla. The DAK Girls, also local legends for the truly fantastic hides they create (the Wizard's Chess series, the Indiana Jones series, etc) had a new cache publish this week. 'Night of the Zombie Apocalypse' (link) is a multicache on the UCSD campus that can only be done at night. A couple of groups found it when it first published, but it was still new enough that we didn't know what to expect. We met near GZ to find the most critical component for our search: The Zombie Meter. This device was, without question, the best TOTT I have ever used to find a cache! We boldly followed the directions on the screen, dodging zombies as they approached and making u-turns when the device mocked our poor directional choices. The goal was to find the secret zombie headquarters, and two places of zombie worship. These had to be found quickly, or else the zombies would get you and you had to return to the last found waypoint. What pressure! Our brave little group battled the zombies and found the waypoints without too much trouble. Well, that's not true. Right in the middle of our zombie apocalypse, I had to go pee, so I broke one of the cardinal rules of horror movies... never leave your group to have sex or go pee. You will surely get killed. I managed to survive and we eventually got the final coordinates. The cache description had this cute narrative about the zombies jamming the GPS signal and as we closed in on the final, we found that part was true, too! The campus buildings made our GPSr go wonky and we wandered around trying to get a good read on GZ. There was one spot I kept returning to, and while the others searched on, my family thoroughly searched this area. Finally, I found the cache! We were the third group to find it, and it was my 1500th find. After hearing all the hype about DAK Girls caches, it was nice to see they lived up to the hype! It was really awesome! Both of these night caches were definitely among the most enjoyable I have done, and offered a very unique caching experience.