Another Year, Another HAG (HAG 9)! And Then Some Detective Work CSI Style!

Well it is several months into the new year and of course the 9th annual HAG (Hide and Go Cache) has been and gone.  For any of my new readers or casual muggle readers, the HAG is a two month caching ordeal.  The local cachers of Vancouver Island participate by using the month of January to hide a bunch of new caches specifically for the event, and wait in anticipation to launch day. 
Launch day is in February, and this is when all the submitted caches for the HAG get published by our fantastic local reviewers.  This is when all the cachers head out in frenzy to make the FTF (First To Find) on all the new caches.  And then spend the whole month of February getting out there and finding what they can.  When March rolls around, the HAG is officially over.  This is when all stats on the HAG caches are collected by the "HAGs" as they like to call themselves, which is Amandazon and Mrs. Cache Crop.

After all is said and done, now comes the last part..... PARTY!  That's right, we all meet up at the 6 Mile Pub for an evening of merriment and food.  As part of it all the people that hid a cache gets a token of gratitude from the HAGs, and then the winners of the trophies are announced. 
In previous years Just Leafy and I have won the Best Log award and the Best Puzzle award.  But sadly we did not have time to participate in the hide part of the HAG this year becasue of the trip to the ET Highway.  But it was nice to let someone else win for once!

Here is the list of winners this year:

Most Finds: Wrooster
Most FTFs: Wrooster
Most Hides: Vicmorda
Best Night Cache: Team World Tour for Crimes in the City GC44F4E
Best Multi: rock'n'roll for BLT Multi GC4525J
Best Log: Paconlacellars and LJL for their logs in It's Elemental, My Dear Cacher.
Best Trail Series: birdseecer for the SS series ending in Culmination GC44WYP
Best Puzzle: Mike&Lily for If The Shoe Fits GC44HMR
Best Camo: The Incredibles for Red-Breasted Nuthatch GC44AD8
Tricky Trophy (most convoluted, drive-you-nuts cache): slimshadysr for SSsr's Stereogram Stash
Intrepid Cacher Trophy: 17blonde for the terrain she covers putting caches in the Sooke Wilderness
Pyramid Trophy: ljg-47 for the MANY contributions she has made to caching in the Sooke Hills.

Congrats to all the winners of the 9th Annual HAG.

To all who attended, it was nice to see you all there!  To those that I did not get to speak to, lets work to make that happen at the next event.

After the event was completed I teamed up with sdkonkle and Giant Pickle to go do the night/multi cache "CSI Victoria - GC202AR".  While still at the 6 Mile Pub joined forces with Team World Tour, and drove out to stage one.  When we arrived and started following the clues we soon ran into LEMON-T, and our team became 7 rookie CSI Agents. 
We solved stage one and headed onto the others, quickly figuring out what to do.  Soon after driving to some really cool places that were used for the stages we found ourself at the infamous final.  I say infamous not becasue it is hard, but because someone keeps stealing the reflective tacks that are used to mark the way.  We had arranged to contact the cache owner at this point to get some valuable tips to get us going, and after that was done we moved along and quickly (almost too quickly) had the cache in hand.

Thanks Giant Pickle and sdkonkle for inviting me to join you on this most excellent quest.  Team World Tour and LEMON-T it was nice to finally get out and cache with you, and I hope to do it again.  And to Mrs. Incredibles thanks for adopting this cache and keeping it alive, and a big thanks for that tip to allow us to actually complete this amazing night/multi!!!

And another thank you to A-Team for the use of your photo from this event!!  It's like you are becoming my personal photo journalist!!