Thurmont, MD July 24, 2010 – Venturing Crew 270 took off from the Cunningham Falls State Park “Dam Parking Area” with plenty of water and food at 8AM. The Crew wanted to get an early start as it was already about 95 degrees out.
We hiked up “Old Misery Trail” thus called because of it’s extremely steep ascent and completed the 5-stage “Olde misery cache” multi-type geocache. The Crew continued on the trail until it ended at the “Cat’s Eye/Bob’s Hill trail” and then continued up the mountain on that until we broke into the fire break area. The change in temperature at that point was extreme, it went from shade to full sunshine and all swore it had to be 120 degrees in the full sun!
Completing the “Misery loves company” geocache in the fire break area as fast as possible we all made a break for the shade of the trees once again! Continuing up the trail we went until we ran into the “Catoctin Trail” where we started our ascent and signed the logbook in the “News Flash … Parisians Demand Presidential Swap” geocache. We continued on until we came out on to Catoctin Hollow Rd which we followed back to the cars. All in all it was about a 7 mile hike (which seemed like 20) and we only had one twisted ankle and skinned knee (which happened about 100 yards from the cars on the return trip).
As a follow up all the adults had VERY sore calf muscles the next few days, the knee healed up nicely and everyone is ready to get out and do some more caching!