The Narrows

           If someone asked me what my favorite geocache was, I would be hard pressed for an answer.  We have found so many amazing caches, either the container itself, or the location, or the challenge to reach the cache, or any combination of the three.  It is very hard to determine what my favorite geocache is.  The Narrows a traditional 4 difficulty 4.5 terrain cache in the mountains of North Carolina definitely makes my list of top five caches, perhaps even top three.  Out of 41 finds since it was hidden in February of 2007 it has 18 favorite points.  This geocache isn't for everyone as the return trip is very tough!

           On Sept 15th 2012, some of my geocaching friends IkeHurley13, SCGeoNinja, and Team Benak, wanted to take me on a epic geocache hunt before I left on my deployment, and they didn't disappoint.  We left around 6 am from Columbia, South Carolina to start our 90 minute or so drive.  We had some geocaches to find along the way as SCGeoNinja, wanted to make The Narrows his 4500th find.  We arrived to the trail head around 915am, and so it began.

The Start

Trail

More Trail

Creek Crossing

 

           The hike in is not terrible, its relatively flat, with a couple of climbs but nothing to serious.  There is even a creek crossing on the way in.  I was feeling it today, and was lagging behind the whole time.  Word of advice: do not stay up late at Buffalo Wild Wings the night before.  Needless to say I would pay for it today.   Once we arrived at the turn to head down, you can only catch a glimpse of what is in store for you.  You can hear the sound of the water crashing on the rocks below and you barely can see through the trees what you are about to witness.  There is a price however, it includes a 300-500 foot (purely a educated guess) rope/root assisted decent down the side of the mountain.

Going Down

and Down

Down was Easy

           Once we arrived at the bottom, we were awestruck.  It was simply amazing, and we haven't even seen nothing yet! We stopped and ate lunch, roughly 700 feet from ground zero.  We stayed here awhile taking in the raw beauty of this place, and the stunning power of nature.  Once we were refueled, it was time to get to the cache, it required some minor bouldering to get to the cache, although some of these pictures required some not-so-minor-but-not-to-difficult bouldering to get into position for some good shots.  It didn't take long to find the well hidden ammo can, and we quickly signed our names and dropped some trackables.

Time to Eat

Views Near Lunch

Views Near Lunch

Views Near Lunch

Headed Towards the Cache

Close Up

           The geocache was only icing on the cake for this adventure.  We encountered some extreme kayakers hitting The Gorilla as they call it, and even got to chat with them as they portaged around the logs and rocks.  It was hard to leave this place.  Probably because we knew we had to CLIMB out of here!  This is when it got hard!  Pictures do not give it justice.  But I made it back to the geovehicle around 2pm, the last cache of the day.  If it wasn't for this crazy hobby of ours I would have never seen this place.  A big thank you to my geofriends for taking me on this adventure.

The Gorilla

One Crazy Kayaker

Going Up!

 

 

 

More Going Up!

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