Geocaching has presented us with great challenges over the past few months since writing our last article (Hide & Seek Sports, June issue). From the Hajjar mountains to the coast of Fujairah, the team at DMTV’s Treasure Hunters took on some of the most challenging terrain in the UAE to find geocaches and discover the great outdoors.

If addiction has a recurring habit, it’s that it always wants more…More fun, more adventure, more challenges, more experience. This October*, we gave it just that.

In 2007, Ged Langosz, a resident geocacher, began the Desert Challenge: a series of difficult-to-extreme geocaches designed to test the skills of geocachers and make the experience all the more challenging. Langosz hid six geocaches in several regions of the UAE, and embedded a key into each one. The five keys were fobs that contained codes that combined to form the coordinates and hints to the final, sixth cache.

On 5th October 2011, divers from Al Boom Diving, together with geocacher Zaid Adham located the Black Key Challenge, just off the Dubai coast 10m underwater. Unfound since 2007, this was an exciting find given the difficulty of the cache and the dive skill required. The idea for looking for the Black Key was brought to Al Boom Diving by one of the dive centers’ independent PADI Assistant Instructors, Geoff Braden.

“It seemed like an obvious combination of hobbies,” said Geoff, “to combine the fun of geocaching with those needed in diving – and to introduce the two groups of enthusiasts”.

There had always been a recurring issue with attempting to find the cache: the cache description on the website talks extensively about the cement barge wreck, but the coordinates lead to another area of the sea, leading most people who want to dive for this cache to mistakenly dive at the wreck itself. It was up to the experience of a geocacher to come into play and combine with the expertise of the divers.

Initially, Zaid himself wanted to do the dive, but this particular adventure proved to be one that doesn’t just test one’s resilience to underwater sports, but that requires more than just the average scuba diving skills. This was a cache that required the scuba divers to have search-and-rescue skills. Luckily, the Al Boom team was more than qualified.

With experienced divers Samantha Joffe and Youssef Hassoun, as well as PADI Course Director Mohamed Helmy, Zaid and his camera crew embarked on the trip on the morning of October 5th. The use of GPS helped the boat team arrive at the coordinates of the cache. It was a surprise to some of the divers, considering the wreck was at least 500 meters away. The dive would now prove to be much easier, despite the limited visibility.

Zaid gave the divers a clarification on what they were now looking for. The cache was a tupperware box sealed and kept together by cable ties. The contents of the cache were all put in smaller containers that were made negatively buoyant with sand and water. Most importantly, the cache itself was hidden under a concrete slab. This slab, when flipped over, revealed the code that is required for solving this part of the Desert Challenge. The cache description had particularly advised to watch out for the slab’s weight and its sharpness. This was to be the significant challenge.

Mohamed laid out the search-and-rescue plan. The team was to dive off the given coordinates and swim in a circle pattern around the boat, leaving a rescue line behind them until they found the concrete slab. They would then utilize a lift-bag to lift the slab from its place and retrieve the code. Once this was done, the team would then go back to find the cache itself.

Visibility, however, proved to be the most important factor of the journey. With little over 1 meter of visibility in the silty water, the team had to make sure that every possible resource was used to ensure their successful attempt at finding the cache. Mohamed had given the search about fifteen minutes, postulating that it shouldn’t take longer than that to determine whether the cache could be found or not. Up on the boat, Zaid and ship captain Bong were beginning to be aware of the fact that the currents were making the boat drift away from the 6 meter radius of accuracy. The boat, though anchored, was now 30 meters away from what the GPS indicated was Ground Zero.

However it took no longer than fifteen minutes indeed for a liftbag to appear on the surface of the water, indicating that the concrete slab was found! Zaid and Bong instantly lifted this up to the boat where its code was taken down. With initial celebrations out of the way, it was now time to retrieve the cache. This process didn’t take a long time, unlike initial predictions, and very soon the screams of ecstasy filled the air as the team resurfaced with the cache!

“Visibility was again not good at all,” said Mohamed, “and we had to make use of all of our skills of search and recovery using lines, reels, and a lift bag underwater. The cache was certainly not easy to recover, and earned its 5/5 difficulty rating.”

And how! For a cache that had remained unfound since its placement in 2007 Al Boom had made it look like a walk in the park! As professional geocacher skills met with professional divers, celebrations on the boat were well-deserved!

Al Boom has been kind enough to leave a gift voucher for a free dive in Ras Musandam in the cache for the next person who finds it. The cache and the concrete slab were returned to their owner by Zaid, and will be returned to their underwater home very soon….so watch this space!

What a day! What an adventure! What a cache!

You can catch the episode chronicling the search for this cache or you can participate in future outings for episodes by joining Treasure Hunters on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/TreasureHunters). To get into geocaching as a sport, visit www.geocaching.com, and of course, to become a certified PADI scuba-diver, or to improve your dive skills, contact Al Boom Diving on abdiving@emirates.net.ae

 

 

*Article published November 2011