Evil Dr. Evil

In this case, “Dr. Evil” refers to a series of “extreme” geocaches, placed by a handful of local geocachers, deep in the subterranean labyrinths of numerous North Carolina cities and towns. Some of these hides are more difficult (read “potentially deadly”) than others, but all offer physical (and sometimes mental) challenges to geocachers who appreciate venturing into deep, dark underground culverts and catacombs to claim their smileys. I’ve found a fair number of “Dr. Evil” hides, and so far I’ve made it home in one piece (though inevitably filthy dirty).

Yesterday, the No-Dead-Weight Irregulars — Diefenbaker (a.k.a. Scott), Fishdownthestairs (a.k.a. Natalie), Old Rob (a.k.a. Old Rob), and Old Rodan (a.k.a. me) — decided to try our luck at “Dr. Evil Visits Sanford,” a relatively old cache (placed in 2010) by the late, lamented Moncure Bee Dude (a.k.a. Lonnie, may he rest in peace). No one had found it in something like six years, so we figured it was time someone made the attempt. As with many in this series of hides, the online cache page offered only minimal information about the cache and the challenges awaiting intrepid hunters. The first test was finding access to the underground route, since no starting coordinates were given.

A thorough study of the Google Maps aerial view of the location clued us into a likely starting point, and once we arrived there, we appeared to have hit the jackpot. Maybe too much of a jackpot, as we found not one but three culverts that led in roughly the right direction. A brief incursion into each dark maw convinced us that the middle of the three was our most likely suspect. Now, let it be known that Old Rob does not do tunnels. He is not a tunnel rat. He offered to spot us from above, as best as the series of manholes and drains on the surface allowed. So, we three brave (read “possibly insane”) members of the crew hunkered down and began a long, uncomfortable duckwalk into the pipe, from which a prodigious stream of water poured with unbridled enthusiasm.

After some distance, the concrete tubes changed to corrugated metal — and the diameter of the passage decreased by a good ten percent. The water made the metal surface very slippery, making forward progress even more difficult. Eventually, we heard Rob calling to us from a drain opening above, indicating we’d gone a couple of hundred feet. We now came to a series of brick-lined shafts that led up to manholes on the surface (the iron-rung ladders in these are frequently used to hang cache containers, but we had some distance to go before we reached ground zero). Almost 400 feet in, we heard Rob calling that he was standing above our heads at the posted cache coordinates — but there was no manhole there. We found this odd, but — sure enough — not far away, we saw another vertical shaft, where we assumed (and hoped) we would find our quarry.

It didn’t take long to determine why there was no manhole at ground zero — the vertical shaft had been blocked with concrete.

[Insert lots of heavy sighing here.]

By all indications, the cache no longer existed. We assumed that at some point during the past six years, for whatever reason, the shaft had been sealed. And so, we retreated in defeat, soaked with both water and sweat, covered with all kinds of muckity-muck, and just about tuckered out from the long, difficult duckwalk-slash-crawl. And that might have been the end of the story but for a note we received from a geocacher who had found this particular Dr. Evil back in 2010. He insinuated the posted ground zero might not be entirely accurate because, when he found the cache, the newer concrete and metal pipes gave way to old brick-lined tunnels — and there was actually a memorial plaque on the wall where the cache resided. The indication here is that we may simply have not gone far enough... if his description of the setting still applies after so many years.

Anyway. I don’t know whether I will ever return to this particular Dr. Evil hide in hopes we might find it by proceeding some unknown distance farther in the tunnel. From where we ended up, the corrugated metal tunnel continued as far as our lights could shine, and I’m not sure this old body is as up to so taxing a physical challenge as it used to be. In fact, these days, I’m more of a mind that if the tunnel is too small to stand in, it’s probably too small for Mark.

I shan’t worry too much, though; there are still a lot of taller tunnels out there with caches in them. Maybe even another Dr. Evil.

This morning, I went out and found a new, much easier cache (a first-to-find, at that), with friends Diefenbaker and Night-Nawk (a.k.a. Tom), and then I placed a new one of my own, this one called “The Spider.” It’s a little mean but nowhere near as evil as a Dr. Evil. Still, I’m betting that a few hunters will bitterly curse my name.

[Insert evil laughter here.]

The No-Dead-Weight Irregulars (Old Rodan, Old Rob, Old Diefenbaker, Relatively Young Fishdownthestairs)
relaxing after the Dr. Evil experience