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April 26, 2005
Hikers in the mist
I ache, but I am smiling. Over the weekend I took up a new sport, geocaching. Geocaching is a type of high-tech. treasure hunt. People hide a small box, containing trinkets and a log book, somewhere, and publish the GPS coordinates of its location on the geocaching website. Other people, like me and my friends, then go looking for it.
I went geocaching with three friends: Al, Jim and Min. Al was our party leader for the day. He is the most experienced hill walker, of the group, and also the guy who got us all into the sport. He planned our trip and advised us of what we needed: waterproof boots, good socks, a good waterproof coat, gaiters, and probably waterproof leggings.
We were glad we had all that stuff on the day is the weather was a bit damp. We went looking for two caches. The first was at the top of Luggala, a hill whose peak is just under 600m above sea level. The walk from the carpark was an easy one, over boggy terrain. We found the first cache but unfortunately we didn't get the great view of Lough Tay, that we would have on a fine day. Mist and rain saw to that. Jim, who found the cache, signed the log book, while the rest of us started our lunch.
The low visibility meant that we had to use either GPS units or map and compass to stop ourselves getting lost. This was the highlight of the day for me. Al taught me how to navigate properly using a map and compass, and set me the task of getting us to the second cache - the one on top of Knocknacloghoge. He was such a good teacher that I managed to find the trail down to the valley towards our second hill. Not an easy thing in a mist.
The bottom of the valley held the only real surprise of the day, a rain swollen Cloghoge Brook. Al, who had intended wading through it anyway for the practice, got all the practice he wanted assisting us newbies across. Nobody fell in, and two of us even kept our feet dry.
The trip up the hill nearly killed me. Bonny heather? Ptah! Bloody knackering heather, more like. A trek of 850m, climbing 234m, with heather forcing us to really pick up our feet. I found out just how unfit I was, then.
At the top we found the second cache, had a bite to eat, and rested.
I got us slightly lost on the way back to the car. While trying to follow a spur, I drifted south by 200m into boggy ground. Al soon corrected that, and after about 1km of walking we were back on the road, and shortly after that, back at the car. It was tiring but heaps of fun, and something I will hopefully be doing over the summer. As a means of getting fit, it sure beats a treadmill.
Posted by JohnC at April 26, 2005 10:53 PM