Page 1 2 3

"I began to work on Blood and Guts last January; on the first day I started caching. It was one of the caches closest to home, and I was naive to the levels of difficulty that existed. I really didn't think it would be that hard, and I never figured it would become an obsession. Because it is on my watch list, each time I got an email because of someone posting a note to the site, I'd have a pseudo heart attack thinking that someone had found it ahead of me."

"People around me thought I was nuts as I worked my way through the stages. I'd come in to work with these crazy stories of climbing through sewers, hiring fishermen, a day-long road trip just to look at a wooden sign, leaving my own party to drive to one of the stages after a Eureka! moment, wandering through forests, and checking every pine tree I saw in desperation."

If you don't, and aren't willing to learn, don't even try this cache- you'll get nowhere. "When ekitt10 says you need to know civil war history, programming skills, celestial navigation, trigonometry, and orbital mechanics- yes, you do. And if you don't know about them, you will by the time you've solved the cache. If you don't, and aren't willing to learn, don't even try this cache- you'll get nowhere."

"The final stage killed me. I sat on the clue for almost 6 months. I had to give it up because, like I mentioned above, I was obsessed with the problem. I would think about it before falling asleep. I would think about it when I couldn't sleep. I would think about solutions every second I was in my car driving. I would think about it walking, while doing other caches. I had to stop because it was driving me crazy."

"When I saw that a group was getting ready to go all-out on the cache, I got motivated again. The thinking became intense, worse than before, but this time I was seeking time to think about it. Still, frustration, I could not piece it together. The group progressed quickly and notified me they were at stage 4. When they invited me to join them, I accepted."

"It's Friday, and tomorrow morning we are going to log the cache. We figured it out earlier this week and after pestering ekkitt10, we have confirmation we are correct! We're meeting at 9 and there will be posts to the log soon after. So, I can rest my brain now and use it for other things."

Titmouse

(Editors note: The detailed journal was composed by David Schuetz (Darth Null ) from the 800 posts to our Yahoo group. The group, dubbed Team NoVa12, was created just for this cache. This story is a summary composed from that journal and removing all the spoiler information. It was composed by Bryan Gehle, (pstar).

To start, pstar decided to see if there was any interest in a group find for Blood and Guts, due to the fact that it had been in existence for over a year without a single find, and figuring that it would take a group to find it!

Initially, six of us (donbadabon, BeachBuddies, boxermom, GLM, Darth Null and pstar) accepted the group challenge, and on January 10, we met, literally, at the Frying Pan Park Meeting House in search of Stage 1. Let me tell you that this was one of the coldest Januarys that I can recall. The temperature ranged from 8° to about 22° the entire month, not including wind-chill, snow, and ice! Anyway, after slogging around in the mud and ice, we picked up the clues to Stage 2. Excitedly, we scurried off to the nearest Starbucks for hot drinks and some brainstorming. Within about an hour, we were off to Stage 2.

We had a good mix of smart ones and lunatics. A good mix like this is recommended to solving this cache. By the end of the day, we had visited Stages 1 and 2 and were back at our respective homes, surfing the Internet, trying to decrypt the clues that would give away Stage 3. This group was fortunate enough to have some serious cachers on-team. We had a good mix of smart ones and lunatics. A good mix like this is recommended to solving this cache.

All members of the team spent every non-essential hour (meaning some work, sleep and family hours were diverted) working on this cache. If I were to guess, I’d estimate over 500 hours were collectively spent on solving this cache.

The following Saturday, we were ready to take a stab at Stage 3. Also, by then, the group was ten strong. Our remote addition to the team, Bigcall, provided support to the rest of us (the original six plus Gaiter Man, The Hwyman , and Bisanabi ) who carpooled to Stage 3 and spent the better part of four hours scouring the area for any kind of clue. After coming up empty-handed, a few of us spent the afternoon logging local (Stage 3 area) caches to get some sort of satisfaction.

Realizing that we had not tried everything at Stage 3, due to lack of preparation (my bad) Beach Buddies, GLM, Darth Null, and pstar returned to Stage 3 ‘more prepared’ and took it to the extreme- weather conditions again playing a significant factor. None of the Stages are dangerous, by cacher definitions, but this is not a cold-weather Stage without the proper equipment. One thing in particular would have made it less risky, and we would have been out of there on the first attempt.

On January 22, with Stage 3 clues in-hand, Bisanabi, Beach Buddies, Darth Null, boxermom, and pstar met at a Cracker Barrel for breakfast before heading out into the frozen tundra. After one fruitless attempt, we headed out to what turned out to be Stage 4. It becomes very clear when we arrive. Woohoo! But man, it is still cold- very cold!

Persistence and a little detective work prevail, and approximate coordinates to Stage 5 materialize. Once we got to Stage 4, the group picked up titmouse, one of maybe only two cachers who had single-handedly made it this far. Lots of math and celestial ‘stuff’ involved, and for over a week, the team is throwing out ideas left and right. Being one of the lunatics, instead of one of the brains, I can’t do justice to the amount of brainpower that was exerted on Stage 4 clues. However, persistence and a little detective work prevail, and approximate coordinates to Stage 5 materialize. ‘The road home is forged’ as we descend on the final cache en-masse to log this one and cross it off of the list! Champagne and donuts were a fitting toast to the end to one of the most challenging caches around!