What kind of idiot climbs a pine tree

My battle wounds

There's a cache in town that I've been interested in going after for a while now, a 4 star difficulty and 4 star terrain.  Harder than any cache we've tried for. We had a somewhat open night, so we figured we'd finally give it a shot. When we arrived we quickly determined which tree to search, and Erin spotted the cache fairly quickly.  It was about 25 feet up.  Who hides a cache this far up a pine tree? Ok, a better question is what kind of idiot climbs up the pine tree to sign the log.  I guess this kind of idiot. I figured it had been found before, and someone had to have put it up there, how hard could this be? Just getting to the trunk was a bit of a painful process. I had to push away branches as best I could and squirm around others.  After reaching the trunk I had to pull myself up before I could get my feet on a supporting branch.  After that it was just a matter of picking the next branch to move to, grabbing it and realizing it was sharp and pokey and then getting poked by other branches as I moved up. Eventually I made it up to the cache and tried to open it. No luck.  Ok, maybe I'll unhook it from the tree and toss it down to Erin. Nope, it wasn't just hooked, the wire was twisted onto the tree. Somehow I managed to brace myself in a position to use both my hands briefly and I got the cache untwisted and sent it down to Erin to sign. This wasn't very comfortable, but sharing this with Erin wouldn't really help. I knew she was working as fast as she could. After she got it signed she tossed it back to me, or rather just a bit short of where I was.  Damn. It was hard enough just hanging onto the tree without turning around and trying to catch a small object. After Erin dug the cache out of the tree where it had fallen we gave it another try and somehow I managed to catch it. This is when Erin ran back to the car to get her phone to take the following pictures.  My arms were aching, and I still was trying to reattach the cache to the tree.  The wire broke off, so I needed to twist it back onto the cache before the tree. Eventually I got the cache put back where I found it and started down the tree. When I finally climbed out of the tree Erin told me I was bleeding.  It didn't hurt.  At least it didn't hurt any more than the rest of me which was just as scrapped up.  My arms were aching and I don't think I could have stayed up in the tree any longer then what I had, but we had found the cache and been able to sign it.  I guess this is what fun feels like.

I think I've had enough christmas tree for a while