Urban exploration in Motala

A recent challenge (Challenge #043E Östergötland Top 10) got me to try for some of the harder caches around. At least the popular ones... Of the three I had unlogged, two were 5/5:s and the last one was a high difficulty rating (D4).

One of the 5/5 was Motala Underground which is under old Motala Verkstad. Jakob8h had this as the only one left to log, so when the challenge appeared there was some action... 

It turned out that it was only me and jakob8h going on this trip, so we used jakob8h's geoCar.

The cache place is among the older industrial buildings in Motala. As usual there are quite a lot of water in places like this.

We were prepared for darkness and some water, but did not bring any flexible ladder. It turned out that we did not need any as previous visitors had put some stuff we could use to get up to the next level. But ladder might still be a good idea.

I have no helmet; maybe something to acquire?

Here is the entrance. Looks inviting, does it not?

 After some time we did locate the cache and brought out the cameras to take some shots.

Jakob in action.

 Quite a lot of pipes in here.

Here is the cache container. I think it is my glove that is laying beside it, a glove I forgot in jakob's car. A tradition I have, forgetting stuff during caching.

 With the cache logged it was just getting outside again. The entrance far away looked even more inviting than the entrance here.

So, back outside again, with mission completed.

In all this is a suitable 5/5 for those of you that haven't done any before. This was my first, and I enjoyed it so it got a favorite point from me.

After this, I had two caches more to log before completing the challenge. More on that another time.

The first 10000 is the hardest

Spring has been here for a while, although winter gives us a reminder from time to time. But during the Easter weekend weather was fantastic.  So what better things to do than to do some geoCaching? (Ok, there are things that are better but you get my drift.)

For my part, the weekend started with a trip to Timmersdala, outside Skövde, with torado and father&son Hampe97. Timmersdala is a nice area, with shifting terrain. Here a gang of 6 cachers have put out a series of caches called KM-xxx which I thinks stands for Klyftamon.  Each hid a series of 20 caches, with a mystery bonus on that.  And there was a final mystery as well.  So in all 127 caches. They have been pretty clear that this is not a power trail, making them often a bit more difficult and a bit higher terrain. I think they succeeded quite well, but some parts (especially the D series) still felt like power trailing. What better way to spend "long Friday"?

During the early parts of the Klyftamon trip we met Inycon from Skövde, who tried to go around this series on bikes. They (a pair, husband and wife) would have succeeded if not his back tire had become flat. We helped them out once (with the right equipment in the back trunk) but it did not help, so they fetched there car and continued around. But I think mountain bike is a recommended way to travel around these parts.

We did try to log all these but did not manage all of them. A typical series was easier in the beginning and got harder near the end, so avoid logging them in reverse order. We managed to log the first four series, with just a few life line phone calls...  As we reached the E series we run into problems, and also a gang of other cachers, Larsen I think was among them. They had been looking for E-081 for half an hour and just found what looked like the remains of a log strip. Then they had been search for E-082 for half an hour more. So they decided to skip to F series directly.  We did some searching for E-082 and E-081 on our own but had to make our first DNFs. We tried some more E caches, and found a couple but the number of DNFs increased - so we skipped to F series as well.  In that we DNF a terrain 3½ and the bonus mystery, so the final mystery was not possible. 

Instead of the DNFs we did pick up a few other caches, but not many. And it took quite some time to make the Klyftamon trip so in all we managed 115 caches that day.  As they dropped me off in Motala, and I had some time before the bus departed, I did take a walk and logged the "FNs Geocachingkommite" mystery by Bo & Elisabet.  A great mystery that fitted my interests, both when it commes to mystery caches and when it comes to things outside geocaching... Recommended.  So, 116 caches become my new record.  I do not feel any preasure to break that record, but we'll see.

The title?  Oh, there is a saying among the real rich that the first billion dollars is the hardest. And that is definitely true - don't think I ever will get to my second ;-) But 10000 caches is an easier goal, soon reached by the first cachers in Sweden.

This was the first blog entry about the Easter weekend. I will try to make two more, about Sunday and Monday. Saturday was a resting day - just one cache logged!