Monday, February 11, 2008
When Geocaching Goes Wrong
How we spent our weekend, from the Halifax Chronicle Herald:
"The snow kept sweeping steadily down, darkness was about to fall, and [Scotian] had no idea where he was.
Just desolate and unfamiliar woods ahead and his 2 1/2 -year-old daughter [BananaMuffin] wrapped in a snuggly around his chest.
So he sang his little girl her ABCs and 1, 2, 3s while trying to clear his mind and find a safe path out of unfamiliar woods on a stormy Sunday afternoon.
The 29-year-old Dartmouth engineer did that after more than two hours of walking, climbing over a barbed wire fence, and lucking into an unlocked and warm construction trailer on the grounds of the Imperial Oil Refinery on Sunday.
But not before his wife April, with 10-month-old baby [Spunky] in tow, had her share of frantic moments, waiting anxiously inside a stranger's house while Halifax Regional Police and RCMP combed dense woods just off Portland Estates Boulevard leading toward Shearwater.
"We have good news," Halifax Regional Police patrol supervisor Wayne Hurst, said at about 5:55 p.m. Sunday, shortly after [they] were spotted safe and sound. "It's a very happy ending. It makes the day - it makes the day for sure."
The outcome could have been much worse considering the weather and that night was about to set in, said the officer in charge at the scene.
Both elements worried [Scotian] too.
He had just planned to stop in the woods for about 15 minutes to find items connected to a treasure hunting-type hobby known as geocaching.
His wife, waiting in the car with the couple's baby boy, got worried when a half hour passed. She checked the path and heard calls for help. So she knocked on the door of a Portland Estates resident about 4 p.m. and asked her to call 911, staying in the woman's home while police and RCMP searched in the cold and wintry white.
But it was a snowplow driver on the refinery grounds who inadvertently found [Scotian] in the end.
The lost man finally stumbled upon the heated trailer after becoming disoriented when the battery in his GPS system died.
He had a compass with him too but says he somehow overshot the distance and ended up way over by the refinery.
[Scotian] has experience in the woods but the gadget malfunctions and weather conditions made for an unexpected and tense adventure.
"The first time I got worried was when I was up here and I saw a clearing and I went for it and it wasn't this clearing," he said after reuniting with his wife in Portland Estates.
"It was nothing . . . just woods, just a logging road. I couldn't believe how desolate it was up there and the snow. I mean, I couldn't hear any cars, couldn't hear any traffic (but) once I found the power lines I thought, OK, it's close to civilization.
Then he spotted the trailer.
"I had to climb a barbed-wire fence to get to it, I tore my pants and at that point when the snow set in I wasn't going to let a barbed-wire fence stop me from getting shelter."
And at that point, he was much more worried about his wife's worries. She was relieved Sunday when she learned both her husband and daughter were safe.
"My concern was that he might have been injured and then my daughter was trying to fend for herself," she said before they reunited, bundled their babies in the car and head home for supper."Labels: travel
|
Archives
Brand Labels
Category Labels
Friends of Nurtured
|
Account
Subscribe to Posts [