YOU DIDN’T MENTION THIS CACHE WAS DOWNRANGE OF A 3 DAY EXPLOSIVES FIREARM EVENT!
I was in Pullman on business this weekend and I made it my goal to find all the old caches in the area. I wasn’t planning on going for any caches today but when I realized I still had 2 hours of sunlight left in the day I made a run for this cache, and I was not prepared. I had only 1 primitive map downloaded, and no nearby caches.
But I insisted anyway, and I made it to the area just in time. When I turned down the paved road I discovered that there was event today, and I could practically drive straight up to GZ. But what’s with all these signs that say Boomershooot, and this line of gun stands? And what looks like a firing line. Turns out they were in the middle of a firearms and explosives event and the cache was downrange.
Luckily they were just all camping, drinking beer, and telling questionable stories about Seattle life.
I found the cache easily, and signed the log just as the sun was setting.
Thank you Joe Huffman for the cache!
PeacefulMountain
May 1, 2021
Via email from geocaching.com.
[I try to make my Geocaches a little more interesting than most.—Joe]
Joe – what’s the GC code on that one?
GC4F0.
Wow, Joe, that is an oldie!! Only 3 digits! Good for you for maintaining it for all these years!!
Is the cache actually in the line of fire? If so, no wonder the guy freaked! I was still nervous being downrange for the High Intensity and private fireballs seeing the line behind me even knowing any RSO would have made local entertainment of anyone approaching a bench.
At least he would have been waived off during active shooting rather than a call of “Range him. Send it!”.
The only thing that would make the cache perfect is if it was at the bottom of a former crater from a previous fireball. I think at this point that field should have a map with cataloged craters like the Moon. “This is 1997-1, just a catalog number”, “That is 2017 Sans Eyebrows”, “2019 Brown Waders Crater” and so on.
You can’t quite see it from the firing line because it is over the hill from the line. But it is between some targets and some shooters.
That’s awesome! As I said, no wonder the guy freaked!
I would offer him a free day at Field Fire next year. I’ll donate the rifle and ammunition and let him do a different form of geocaching on steel and let him imagine rounds where the cache is. Give him a proper introduction to the site and give him a story he’d never forget.
If there was, in fact, beer-drinking going on, then he was perfectly safe to go downrange, because at least some of Joe’s Range Nazis would have been there to put a boot down on anything sus.
[Read following in up-speak tone and add “like” wherever you wish]
But the “questionable” stories about Seattle life are acktually their Lived Experience, so his characterization is super problematic and offensive and I’m triggered.
I’m trying to imagine a sheltered urban Seattlite showing up at the Boomershoot site seeking a cache and seeing that line. Even after the main even and everyone relaxing, packing up and enjoying the evening.
That would be a culturally jarring experience and I’d be grinning with the shooters in my chair watching the hamsters turn in his head trying to absorb and figure out if he fell through a portal into an alternate universe.
I’ve seen that look on the faces of people when I tell them what I go and do in Idaho every few years. It’s worth it.
Kudos to him for not running at the sight of the line, even quiet and safe. A lot of folks would not absorb that sight in a positive way. It does sound like our intrepid explorer got a good story out of it.