Geocaching

What on earth is Geocaching?

Geocaching is a passtime wherein you search for goodies stashed in little treasure-troves hidden all over town, in parks, and out in the wilds that surround you, using a hand-held receiver that decodes the Department of Defense's Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites. I was stunned to find that within 10 miles of my house there were more that 25 of these caches, and within 100 miles more than 600!

As is often the case with really engrossing diversions, the premise is simple: a person takes a small Tupperware container or ammo box and puts in a log book, some pencils, and some kid's toys, batteries, maybe a disposable camera (so the finders can take pictures of themselves) and such-like goodies.

Then they find a neat place somewhere - a cool park, a pretty glade in a National Forest area, a little-known nature trail in the middle of town, an underwater cave - and hide the cache so that it's invisible to passers-by. Next the cache hider takes a very careful GPS reading of the location and then puts the coordinates, a description, a difficulty rating, and some clues up on a website.

Now anyone in the world can look up the cache information, download the coordinates into their own hand-held GPS receiver, and go treasure-hunting. The difficulty can be anything from a walk in the park (literally) to an adventure requiring advanced outdoor skills, climbing equipment or scuba gear.

Sounds easy you say? When's the last time you tried to find something hidden in the woods by someone else? Even with a good GPS fix those last 15 feet are always a real challenge. With a lot of tree cover or under a viaduct the plot definitely thickens.

Once you've gotten reasonably close (or unreasonably close depending on the intervening terrain) there is the process of discreetly thrashing around on your hands and knees searching for the cache in moldy, goopy forest duff or low-tide stink-mud. This while approximately 350,000 mosquitos quickly siphon off your precious bodily fluids and/or the tide begins to come up around your ankles. All the while looking non-chalant and trying not to draw attention to yourself while behaving like a junkie searching for the stash he had to ditch last night.

It should be quite clear why Geocaching has almost irresistible appeal as a passtime.

  This is arguably the premier geocaching site, though there are others

What you need to get started Geocaching:

• A GPS receiver
• A way to connect to the World Wide Web
• A sense of adventure and a joy of discovery

Other helpful things:

• Hiking shoes and clothes
• Cell phone
• Software for downloading waypoints to your GPS
• Insect repellant
• Staff or walking stick (Cougar repellant)
• Tide charts
• REI membership
• I carry a shoulder bag with essentials on every hunt, even in town. It contains:
  • A Compass
  • A Flashlight
  • First Aid supplies
  • Gloves
  • Extra battries for all electrical devices
  • Pens, pencils
  • Plastic bags for packing out trash
  • Leatherman tool
  • Information pages for caches yet unfound

GPS Receivers

I'm not going to wade into the holy war concerning which GPS receiver is best. Put 'GPS receiver' in your favorite search engine and hang on to your hat. I use a Garmin GPS III with excellent results. I presently lust after a GPS V, but it's Geek-factor more than actual need.

Outdoor stuff

All of the usual issues which surround backwoods competence apply for geocaching. There are many equipment lists on the geocaching site in the discussion forums. My list above doesn't begin to cover what you probably should carry on a real hike in the wild. If you go out in the backcountry without the 'Ten Essentials' you probably deserve whatever happens.

In general geocachers seem to be a pretty environmentally careful bunch. The ethic of 'Cache in -- trash out' encourages us to pack out trash we find on our forays. There is a lot of sensitivity (and attendant debate) around minimizing environmental impact while pursuing the hide and the hunt. The whole idea of stealth involved with hiding things seems to argue for minimizing the evidence of our activities on site.

Things I have learned while Geocaching:

• However tempting it may be, do not give in to the urge to leave the path and strike out through the woods for a cache that's 'just 0.7 miles away'
  
  
• Mosquitos are avid geocachers. They've already found all the caches you are looking for. They're waiting at all of them to welcome and then eat you.
  
  
• If you live near the ocean a tide table is an important thing to have - and much easier to carry than an escape kayak.
  
  
• 150 feet of scree on a 37 degree angle probably constitutes a class 4.0 climb (in Yosemite Decimal System) even if the terrain difficulty rating for the cache says 3.0
  
  
• If 'pain is weakness leaving the body' then stinging nettle wounds are carelessness entering it.
  
  
• Always attempt to ascertain what constitutes 'protective coloring' in the vicintity of the target cache. Having consulted the map, and possibly cruised the area, ask yourself if your attire and accessories should say 'survivalist', 'drug fiend', or 'marmot'?
  
  
• Always set a waypoint where you park the car. (I, too, though this was a stupid suggestion before I had ever gone on a hunt. It's not stupid. Really. Stupid is standing in the woods unable to locate your vehicle while holding in your hand a device which provides access to the most complex, sophisticated, and easy-to-use navigation system ever created, now rendered useless because you couldn't be bothered to mash a few buttons to mark your starting point before you wandered off into the unknown.)