This past Saturday night a pair of cachers left a wedding party to go after a cache, Up A Creek with Half a Paddle by chimps8mybaby and from the news reports dropped their iPhone which was their GPS into water and the device was unusable. Monday morning, I got up to read on GOWT on Facebook that a pair of cachers were missing south of La Grange, TN. I pulled up the caches, read the news reports and from what I could tell, the cachers didn't bring a watercraft of any time. I kinda figured they were at Up A Cree with Half a Paddle. I called the Fayette County Sheriff's Department and told the dispatcher the direction of the cache from the road and asked they call chimps8mybaby and provided the law enforcement agency his phone number. The FCSD did contact chimps8mybaby and he told the authorities what direction they need to be looking. About 10 minutes later, the young men were found. Thankfully, they were OK medically.
Since then, there has been knee-jerk reaction from many areas with even some calls to prohibit geocaching in Fayette County or the Wolf River. Personally, I hope that does not happen, I have enjoyed all the caches in that area and look forward to future trips.
I do have some questions:
1) What is the experience levels of the cachers? Apparently, they may not have a geocaching name and this gives me concern of their experience with the high level terrain caches.
2) They had some planning, in that they changed out of their wedding dress clothes for caching, but they had not other items, such as a handheld GPS, batteries or water?
3) Why would the young cachers attempt a 4.5 level terrain cache at night, especially in summer?
4) They became disorientated after their iPhone which was the GPS was not working, but when morning came on Sunday, they would obviously know the direction of the sunrise (East) and to head the opposite direction to Yager Road? Heading North would take them towards La Grange, take a heading East into the sunrise would take them to Highway 18?
In conclusion, this cacher is thankful the young men are safe and hope this does not end their geocaching experience but take the opportunity to learn some wisdom. I appreciate the efforts of the various authorities in their response and search efforts. I also want to thank the leadership roles of various cachers who called the authorities who offered assistance.
