Accidental Adventure

I was doing something in South Austin when I realized I hadn’t gotten a cache for the day. No big deal, I thought. I’ll just see what’s around. I knew that most of the caches I hadn’t grabbed down there entailed more adventure than I wanted (I didn’t want to hike a greenbelt or search for a D5 in freezing weather), so I was prepared to take a drive out of town, possibly down to San Marcos. If I go far enough south, I’m almost there anyway, right? I studied the map for a few minutes and then noticed one I don’t remember seeing before, though I know it must have been there for some time. About four years ago, Austin Parks and Rec placed a cache series (fifty-one caches in all) at the various parks around town. Over the years, I’ve gotten many of them (though many have since been archived), but I missed this one, probably because it was so far south. My target acquired, I drove to and parked in a cul-de-sac and walked over the back path into the park.

The cache was only a few hundred crow feet away, so easy peasy, lemon squeezy, right? Well, not as much as I thought. According to the map, the path went along a sizable creek, but I neither heard nor smelled water. Once I reached the creek side, I saw that it was as dry as a bone. I considered sliding down my side and climbing the other, more gently sloping bank, but I wasn’t attired for that kind of thing. Farther up the path (again, according to the map), there was a crossing, so I decided to take the bridge there instead. Except there wasn’t a bridge. There may have been once, based on the stone ruins around the spot, but there were no such ruins on the other side, so that was doubtful. All there was was a worn path where countless people had gone down and a length of pink rope tied to a tree, lying down along it. The rope only went partway down, and someone had tied a length of coaxial cable to extend it. Altogether, the rope and cable only went halfway down the side, but that was far enough to reach rocky footholds that would make the rest far easier. I thought about it for a moment; I wasn’t really dressed for this, but I was already there.

I took the rope and gently climbed down. Once I reached the rocks, I gingerly descended to the bottom. Once I crossed over the creek bed proper, I just as gingerly jogged up the other side to another path also running parallel to the creek bed. I walked along, dreading the possibility of having to pull the cache out of a significant patch of cactus beside the path. I was pleased to find it instead sitting at the foot of a tree. I added my signature to the logbook and one more cache of the series to my list. Of course, I had to go back.

Once I had returned, I cautiously began down the easy side. I felt myself losing balance and successfully set off into a run in hopes of heading off a fall (running is just a controlled form of falling from a certain point of view). Once I returned up the other side, I clambered up the rocks and was thankful for that rope. The cable bit my hands a little, but it did the job of helping me back up to the edge so I could get back to the car. After a wet wipe for dirty hands, I was off for home again, my cache acquired and my unintended adventure complete.