Mission 12: Blind Canal

The Mission 12: Blind Canal geocache (GC1596) is the last-born of Project A.P.E., the operation mounted by Fox in the summer of 2001 to launch Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes: fourteen boxes scattered around the world, each holding a genuine prop from the film. This one was placed on 10 August 2001 at McKinley Woods, a forest preserve in Illinois (USA).

The studio wanted a cache near Chicago but knew nobody there: Jeremy Irish, head of Groundspeak, recommended Markwell, a local geocacher. Fox shipped him the container already filled; he had to drag an enormous ammo can stamped Project A.P.E. through the woods, hoping nobody would see him.

His part was meant to stay secret: he claimed to be unavailable on the day of publication, then went to “find” his own cache the following Sunday before converting his visit into a plain note. The FTF goes to robamy, who had spotted the announcement from his office: it fell a few hundred metres from a colleague's home. He took out the film prop, a harness, and its certificate.

Once Fox lost interest in the game, Groundspeak looked for adopters; Markwell officially took over the one he had placed himself, keeping every reference to Project A.P.E. In September 2006 the box disappeared and the cache was archived.