Manitoba Geocaching Association

[FoodNinja]

 

Untouchable , well who is in?

 I am looking at wed the 6th early departure to make the most of the day light.

snomobilers welcome

 

[Master Instigator]

I hope by snowmobile you mean snowshoe.  I don't want to see anyone damaging their toboggan to get this cache.  This is not flat open country.  It has a lot of step rocks and shrub trees.  Plus there are small creeks to cross the kind that don't freeze.  I said that I would be archiving the caches when I physically remove them, and I can guarantee that you won't be seeing my butt hiking out in the winter.  If I were you I would devise a plan to get it in the spring, but you will do as you will do after all you were up to your chest in swamp water.  Knowing me, if the situation was different I would have probably been right beside you in that creek.

[Dragonfreys]

I'm keen, but can't make that date. Knowing that MI isn't going out for it this winter I would recommend a Feb or March attempt when the snow has settled and things have frozen nicely. I have an extra pair of good snowshoes (army surplus usually has good aluminum frame cable webbing snowshoes that are nearly indestructable). Should be a cakewalk then . Other items of necessity would include: metal detector, ski poles (stability while traveling, checking ice and probes when cache searching), rope, ice self rescue pitons, picks or screws, avalanche shovel or light car shovel (for cache search), waterproof firestarter, headlamps, survival and winter gear.

[slippery_1]

Hey make this a weekend event and I may just be in for something like that...imagine the slipperry_1, Drangonfry's and the NINJA...on a Ice capade....hummmm food for thought

[FoodNinja]

now that I know it will be around for a while I like Dragonfreys idea if february. Event cache anyone? If I have enough notice I can book the weekend off. Sugested name The freeze you bits blitz?

[Dragonfreys]

Was looking at the beast in Google Earth, with the handy 1:50 K topographic overlays you can get from the biodiversity network. In my experience in Manitoba, outside of the shield country, the drawn on route of the map looks like the best potential route. However the glacial scarring in the area looks to run east-west so the topo may be deceiving and it may be a bit trickier than it looks. Anyone have any pearls of wisdom about the area that they would like to share? One piece of useful info would be whether the road south of the cache is even open in the winter. It's apparent from the topos that the cache is on the little island so one wildcard will be navigatable ice on the lake. I've had enough mid-winter open water experiences to have a healthy respect for that stuff.

[TheStuntman]

There have only been three people that have been to untouchable and only two that have touched it, M.I. and myself.mlkoop was there with me but feels reluctant to claim the find since he never actually signed the log.
I'm adding my 2 cents to offer a possible alternate route. there it a trail to the east that will get you within a hundred meters from a beaver dam. I parked my atv here and reduced the distance to about 1.66 miles.
The terraine earns every bit of it's 5 star rating. I strongly suggest snowshoes and provisions for an overnight if you're planning a february attempt. The summer walk alone took 4 1/2 hours round trip, not including the time spent at the cache.. You can count on at least an extra hour + each way during the winter.

[Dragonfreys]

Thanks Stuntman,

So using your recommended route I tried to track down some more recon online and managed to find 2 m digital orthophotos for the area from the Manitoba Land Initiative. I then tried something I've never done before and brought it into Google Earth as an image overlay. I am still flabergasted at how well that program handles imagery. Had to a bit of rotation and scaling over the right spots using Google's existing 15 m satellite imagery and then using the transparency feature it in effect fused the colour low res satellite imagery with the high res grey scale air photos and came out with amazing results. You can see the thicker patches of bush, trails and all the lovely ups and downs we will have to do to get to the lake.

So it looks to be just over a 3 km bushwack at about maybe 1 km per hour.

[ertyu]

Thats some sweet mapping!

[Dragonfreys]

Snowshoed 8 km yesterday along a creek that I've fallen into in late winter before and it was frozen pretty good. So hopefully the creeks and lakes around Untouchable are cooperative. Any weekend in February better than others. Obviously Valentines may be a weekend to avoid. Any preferrences.

[slippery_1]

went looking for my snow shoes yesterday...nope not there...

 

oh well the wife warned me...put em away or she would give them to some kid who would enjoy em./...hummmmmmm.

 

Anyone gota an extra pair of sharpa's they wanna let go?

-- Edited by slippery_1 at 16:26, 2006-12-18

-- Edited by slippery_1 at 16:34, 2006-12-18

[Dragonfreys]

Do we want to set this up as an event? It would help with planning and may reach a wider group of potential participants. Similar to the Bent-elbow Expedition. How about "Not so untouchable" for a title?

[TheStuntman]

How about calling it the "don't forget the unmentionables" tour. Or "Lost in spacious" "I want my mommy" trip come to mind. Shall I continue?

[FoodNinja]

I would like to see an event cache, I am iffy about attending them as my work scheadule is always changing... (Probably never able to host one) but with enough notice I can book a week end off...

[MuStash]

A little scouting trip today. 1 hour snowshoeing one way on this downloaded track.

There's a groomed snowmobile and ski trail crossing P.R. 315 and heading north. Eventually had to switch off the groomed trail to ungroomed trails. After the FORK2 waypoint, going got heavy and the trail petered out.

Just nibbling.

(sorry I couldn't figure out how to upload a better image to this post)

 

 

-- Edited by mustash at 22:30, 2007-01-09