Power caching on the Dobson Trail ( 71 caches while walking through a swamp)

71 caches while walking through a swamp

Starting in the dark at the northern border of Fundy National Park

My biggest day weekend of geocaching was a huge drag – by the middle of the second day I was tried, wet, hungry, bored, lonely as hell and not really sure why I had done it to myself.

I was hiking alone along the Dawson Trail – 58km of swamp and marsh between Fundy National Park and Riverview New Brunswick. Along the way I picked up 120 caches, 71 of them in one day. It was pure hell.

In retrospect, I should have talked some sucker into coming along – they would have hated me for the rest of their life, but at least I would have had some company for the weekend.

It all started with statistics – instead of enjoying each cache, the search, the journey, the quest – I was focussed on numbers.

By the end of August 2010, I had 821 finds and I was really hungry to break the 1,000 mark. I had a couple of 40-cache days behind me – one with my son driving and me caching (after which i wrote these top ten tips for the power cacher); and another day alone and on foot on the trails around musquodoboit.

The Dobson Swamp

But this trip to New Brunswick was different – these caches on the Dawson Trail had all been laid out in a straight-ish line – one after the other every 300m only a few steps off the trail – this boys and girls, we call a “power trail”.*

A cacher with the game name of Hillybilly Bob (he’s from Hillsborough NB) laid out and maintains these caches along a trail he obviously loves. For me the trail has its water in all the wrong places – Id prefer sweeping views of oceans or wild rapids – rather than wading in swamps and splashing through the rivers.

More fotos from the Dobson 120 on flickr

But i didnt come here for scenery. My goal was to not only break my previous one-day record of 48 caches, but also to beat the record of a friend of mine who had found 83 – working in a team of three and a driver.

my “team” consisted of a good friend who agreed to drop me off in the middle of nowhere – the dawson trail starts at approxiamately N45° 41.730 W65° 00.500 on an old backroad some call the Old Sheppody Road but the maps call the New Ireland Road – whatever its called, the dirt road runs along the northern border of the Fundy National Park and while most of it is smooth gravel, parts of it are rough – big puddles and wash outs galore.

Meeting a fellow hiker on the Dobson Trail

my buddy dropped me off round 6.30 am, about 15 minutes before sunrise – i had my first cache at 6.40 and was underway – the weather turned warm and the trail for most of the first day was dry – strangely enough at one point walking down a stretch of road i ran into a beaver who was walking the other way down the road – he didnt seem the least bit bothered by me at all – he just kept on his way

i had my first real break – with water and sandwiches round 9.30 – 3 hours in, i had covered 6k of the trail and i had found 22 caches – a little better than 7 an hour – or a cache every 8 minutes – an exhilerating pace

it was a full day. a blur mostly.

the trail is not what you would call gorgeous when youre used to, as i am, to hiking along the shore – say around cape chignecto or in cape breton into pollets cove – this is a tromp through the woods – i saw a lot of trees – and yes, by times the woods are very beautiful and peaceful

Blackwood Lake; the first and only vista of day one on the Dobson

later that day the trail got considerably wetter – downright swampy even – i tried to keep my feet dry – a critical thing when hiking long distances – in the morning there had been occassional big puddles a couple hundred metres long, requiring short detours

but eventually i came to stretches where the trail led right through swamps – the trail was a swamp, right and left was a swamp – everything was a swamp – there were other bits where streams and rivers were flowing the length of the trail and the woods to either side were thick impenetrable spruce stands

around 11 ‘oclock i came to blackwood lake – the first view of any kind i had had all morning – and really the only view id have until 6 when i climbed up the top of Hayward’s Pinnacle – a pointy little peak in the middle of the woods

the trail up was extremely steep and led to a rocky little summit with views north all the way to moncton

i was exhausted, naturally, and it was the first place that looked like a campsite – where i might feel safe sleeping

The view from Hayward's Pinnacle. Camp on the first night.

i had another hour and a half of light but i didnt want to risk not finding another site so good for sleeping – i stuffed my face and wrote in my journal (which must be in canada because i cant find it here in germany)

my log account from that final cache of the day:

6.20 pm
exhausted. climbed up here to sleep. snoring by 7 pm.
great view of moncton. even greater when i woke at midnight – the long string of lights along the horizon.
first and only really good vista along the whole of the dobson

last of 71 on the first day of hiking the Dobson Swamp
parts of the trail are real nice and big parts of it are real swampy

T4TC

so early to bed meant of course i would wake early – i got up for a while at midnight – ate some more and watched the lights of moncton twinkling in the distance – my destination didnt seem that far away from way up here

stumbling around follwing blue trail markers in the pre-dawn dark

i was wide awake by 4.00 that morning and anxious for the sunlight that would allow me to start – i stuffed myself with food and waited in my bag til i couldnt stand it anymore

by 5.00 i had descended from the pinnacle and had found my first cache – in pitch darkness – by the light of a headlamp – i got thumped by a lot of branches and discovered that it can be very tricky getting back onto the main trail in the dark

after one cache i walked over the main trail twice without even seeing it – in the end i had to use the “track” function on my gps to get back on the trail – i learned then the importance of noting extra carefully how to get back to the trail when bushwhacking in the dark

Third cache of the morning (5:50am) looking in a stump with a headlamp

so everything was a bit slower in the dark naturally – i only found five caches before i put away my headlamp at 6.22am

at 7.30 that morning i found my 8th cache of the day, my 79th of the trip and therefore the magical 900th overall. only another 100 to break 1,000. at this point i was still believing it was possible to push hard and find more than a hundred that day

at 8.15 i passed by a great campsite – a cabin shelter where i could have slept safe and sound with a fire place and a bed platform – next time!

my hopes of breaking 100 on the day remained alive until a little after 10 when i started looking for the Prosser Brook Ridge Lookoff cache – i just couldnt find the silly thing – up to then i had found every cache – all 91, so i really wanted to keep my perfect streak alive – i looked way too long here – for an hour – and out of frustration i took a half-hour nap

the sun coming up on day 2 on the dobson

in retrospect i should have stuck to a 15 minute rule – i could have found six caches in that hour instead of none

a lot of the second day’s hiking was easier though – a short stretch was actually along paved highway and a few hot dry kilometres were along a wide gravel road – at one point on the gravel road a mother bear and two cubs appeared about 50m in front of me but disappeared back into the woods just as quickly

as the day continued the total of DNFs (did not find) started piling up – in some of the hilly areas i had big time satellite reception problems. finally at 5pm, with only 48 finds, i gave up caching entirely and started walking for moncton in earnest

i had covered 37k of the trail and had another 21 to go – a part of me thought i could do those 20k in the 3 hours before dark – the big problem was my feet were killing me – the constant swamps and rivers had completely wrecked my feet – they were covered in miserable blisters

i had to lather them in vaseline to make it leastways possible to walk – and the moleskin patches i applied all came came off because i just couldnt keep my feet dry

Stumped and Reflective on the Dobson Trail

i really have no idea about the rest of that day – i have few fotos, and no cache logs to help me remember – i know that i walked and walked and walked – a couple of likely campsites where i might have rested were already occupied

and i thought id find a decent campsite – i was ready to settle for anything that looked least ways comfy – at one point on a stretch of pavement i thought id call jamie and ask him to pick me up but i had no idea where i was

so i just kept walking until well after dark

i have no idea where it was – but it was late – going on an hour after sunset – when i settled into a small clearing – i made my bed under a big oak tree only about five feet off the trail – i slept fitfully until 11 or so – i was having such a time sleeping that i packed up and started walking – id figured id walk til i was tired and then rest again

I came over that bridge in the dark with no idea how rickety it was. I camped just this side of the bridge before the last push homeward.

once i started walking i immediately regretted it – i was so tired – but i was determined to find a suitable campsite – much of the way i was walking in swamp again – or thick brush – id just have to keep looking

in germany more than a year later, i can still remember much of that night march, by times under the bright glare of the moon, by other times picking my way carefully through the dark woods by light of headlamp

i saw a thousand moose that night, a zillion bears and yet i just kept walking – i knew that if i just kept putting one foot in front of the other i would slowly and surely make it to moncton – i knew that every step i took there that night was one less step id have to take the next day

finally close to three in the morning i crawled across a loose log bridge, rolled out my sack in the middle of a brush pile and slept like a log myself til 7 – i was real surprised when i woke up to see just how decrepit the bridge was i had come across in the dark

two and a half hours walking on sore feet later and i was at the end of the trail – my team was there waiting with a hot tims – oh frabjous day – we found and signed the log of the cache at the very end of the trail

9.30 am
only one today. i never picked up any reception but then i didnt really try.
too wiped.
found this one using the clue only.
120th in two full days and one morning-before-breakfast on the trail
id like to come back and finish these up…

T4TC
“D

I was quite dead but none of the blisters on my feet were serious – a hot shower, lots of coffee and a lumberjack’s breakfast and i was okay.

Theres another 70 caches on the dawson trail (i hope i dont hurt anyones feeling when i say thats the only reason id ever think of going back there) … and lots more caches on neighbouring and intersecting trails… I hope i get the chance in the next couple years to spend another couple days of pure misery out there… Ill still have yet to break Woody’s 83 cache record… I think too, if i get in the right shape, that a hundred caches on foot in a day is possible too.

*And then of course there is always the ultimate, the holy grail of power cachers: the ET Highway, more than 1000 caches along the side of 158km of highway in the Nevada Desert… anyone game?

More fotos from the Dobson 120 on flickr