Calvin's Weblog

Crash Course in Geocaching - Take II

I was going to entitle this entry as "Always the poker bridesmaid..." on account of my 3rd place finish in yet another poker tournament this weekend - leaving me out of the real money reserved for 1st and 2nd place finishes. I manages to 'not win' despite the large chip stack I managed to build early, and kept increasing right until one critical mistake, minutes from the end of the tourney, which left me out in 3rd.
But, I've already blogged too much about poker, so instead I'm going to explain more about my new favorite hobby, GeoCaching.

As I mentioned back on June 13th, I bought a handheld GPS unit, and quickly discovered a craze called "GeoCaching". Well, it has only been two weeks, but I've already spent 10 days (probably 30 hours at least?), and four packs of batteries on my new hobby. I've successfully found 15 caches within 10Km of my house, have failed to find at least 8 more of the elusive little buggers, have retrieved my first travel-bug, and have begun putting together a first cache of my own. My legs look like hamburger from bushwhacking in shorts, I've got grass and mud stains on virtually everything I've worn in the past two weeks, and my hiking boots must have about two pounds of caked on mud clinging to them right now. But on the upside, I've been getting a LOT of exercise, and have found very little opportunity to just sit back and have a beer (or eight) so I'm finally starting to lose a couple of those pounds I packed on after my surgery.

So what the heck am I talking about anyway? What's all the excitement about? Let me explain...

First, you might want to check out GeoCaching.com. Better yet, read through their Frequently Asked Questions section, which defined geocaching as "an entertaining adventure game for gps users. Participating in a cache hunt is a good way to take advantage of the wonderful features and capability of a gps unit. The basic idea is to have individuals and organizations set up caches all over the world and share the locations of these caches on the internet. GPS users can then use the location coordinates to find the caches. Once found, a cache may provide the visitor with a wide variety of rewards."

...but that's really just the tip of the iceberg. A cache can be as small as a film canister, or as big as an oil drum. Inside there could be as little as a log sheet and pencil so that you can sign your name/date if you find it, or there could be cash, collector coins, gift certificates, toys, camping supplies, travel-bugs (I'll get to that), you name it. There are over 180,000 active caches hiding in 214 countries around the world. Since GPS signals can be seen on every spot on the surface of the earth, there are caches in the most remote of destinations (North pole, Antarctica, deserted islands, etc) and there are caches ingeniously hidden in the middle of metropolitan urban sprawls.

There are quite a few places on the web where you can log the coordinates of a cache, but the most common, and largest database is geocaching.com, and to use their system (free), there are some simple ground rules when placing, retrieving, and logging caches. They explain what kinds of containers to use, what the cache should (and should not) contain, etc, etc, etc. So basically, what someone might do if they know the're going on a hike, and decide they want to place a cache while they're gone, is they'll prepare a waterproof container with a pencil and logbook (pens freeze in the winter), they'll label the container as "an official geocache game piece". Inside will be pasted the standard geocache printout that explains what this container is, and why it's important to leave it where it is if it's found by accident, along with an invitation to join the game if the cache is indeed stumbled upon by a non-player. The person placing the cache then takes a half dozen "waypoints" on their GPS and calculates the average position as their "X-marks-the-spot" coordinates. Commercial GPS units are accurate to within about 3 meters, but depending of tree coverage, or weather conditions, they can drift upwards of 20 meters occasionally, so it's always good to take a waypoint, then walk away, walk back and take another waypoint, etc, etc, until you've got a good idea what the "real" coordinates are.
Now all you do when you return from your hike is to login to geocaching.com and input the name, coordinates, description, and perhaps a few hints for your new cache, and geocaching enthusiasts in your area (or any area for that matter, if they happen to be watching YOUR area) will be instantly notified that there's a new cache close by. Since it's normal to include a special "First To Find" (FTF) prize in new caches, there will be a lot of enthusiasts jumping into their hiking boots to race there and claim that prize. I'm still new at it, but it appears as though there's a bit of prestige around having a significant number of FTFs to one's name. Additionally, since FTF prizes are occasionally actually somewhat valuable (unregistered GeoCoins, real money, or Travel Bugs) there can often be a real incentive.

SO, as a geocacher who wants to LOCATE a new cache (or for that matter, any old cache) you'd first upload or manually enter the waypoint coordinates into your GPS unit, then you'd use MapBlast or Google Maps to pinpoint those coordinates on a map. Flipping between google-maps roadmap and satellite map views pretty much shows you how to get to the closest parking lot, and then which trails to follow to get you close to the cache. If it's a deep woods excursion, then having a topographical map of the area is HIGHLY recommended - nothing's worse than having your GPS tell you you're 10 meters away, only to discover that it's on the other side of a ravine, or at the bottom of a cliff... GPS routes take you as-the-bird-flies... direct route from where you are, to where you want to go - it doesn't know that there's no way across that raging river, or down that gully if you approach from that direction... But anyway, I digress. Let's assume that you've made it all the way to the exact coordinates, and now you know you're within 3 meters of the cache. Sounds easy right? HA! Getting that close is the easy part, even if you had to drive 10 miles then hike 2 hours. It's easy to follow a compass, but now, is it 3 meters north? South? East? West? Think about it... that's actually 36 square meters to cover, or approximately 325 square feet. Even something as large as a surplus army ammo-tin (commonly used, as they're cheap, durable and water tight) can be hidden between a rock, a rotting stump, covered with moss, and perfectly invisible to the naked eye. Now pretend you're looking for a camouflaged film canister. Some of the hiding spots are amazingly ingenious too... especially in urban settings. One awesome ground rule though is that caches can't be buried. Imagine if you had to dig up 36 square meters of forest floor! Once you start to get the cacher's eye though, they get easy to spot. Hollow stumps and logs are a favorite, as are niches between rocks, or crevasses between rootwads. In urban settings though, it's a whole different ballgame. It could look like an electrical outlet on a powerpole, that's actually only attached by magnets, or it could be a lozenge tin, magnetically stuck under a park bench, and painted the same colour as the bench.

So anyway, now you've finally found it! The sense of accomplishment is amazing! You sign the log, write a blurb about how tricky/easy/frustrating/clever/etc the find was, you thank the cache creator for a great outing, you take something, you leave something, and you then make your way home to your computer so you can log your find, check your new stats, and see if any more caches have been placed in your area since you left.

So, this is already a pretty long blog entry, but there's still sooooo much to talk about! Like all the software I've found to upload/download maps, waypoints, routes, backtracks, etc. I haven't even described multi-caches (where one cache only contains clues to finding another 'undocumented' cache), or mystery caches (where you don't even get any coordinates - you have to solve a series of clues and/or visit a series of locations in order to determine the real cache coordinates) - but one thing I WILL leave you with, is Travel Bugs! I love these guys... In reality, a travel bug can be any little object - a smurf, a teletubby, a star wars action figure, and stuffed toy, you name it. You then go to GroundSpeak.com and purchase 'dog tags' for your Travel Bug. Once you receive the dog tags and have attached them to your travel bug, you register the dog tag number with geocaching.com, and a status page starts for your bug. On this page, you enter the 'intentions' of your travel bug... like "I've always wanted to see the outback of Australia" or "I want to go around the world in 80 days" or "I want to go to Hawaii, but I'd like to be back here by this time next year". Then, you set your travel bug free in a cache somewhere, and start watching his status page to see who has picked him up, and where he's been. On Saturday, Carole and I found German Shepard in a new cache just a few blocks from our home. German Shepard is from Calgary, and he wants to travel to new places and meet lots of geocachers, so we agreed to take him with us to California next week, where we'll be sure to leave him in a Cache known to be a travel bug transit point. This is so much fun... I checked out a travel bug from Coquitlam that started out in March, and has already been to half of Europe - I think he's in the Netherlands right now... Anyway, there are pictures of his all over the world; on a river cruise in Austria, in Paris, etc - so we've started taking pictures of German Shepard too, and will be submitting them to his site as he travels southward. Here's our First Picture of German Shepard.

Soon I'll be placing a cache of my own, but rest assured it's going to be a HARD one (hopefully) - and soon Carole and I will be setting our own travel bugs into the wild - we want them to see some of the places that we haven't been yet - hopefully they take lots of pictures!

I'll be writing lots more about geocaching in the future - you can be sure of that. In the mean time, you might want to bookmark my geocache profile - from there, you can see how many caches I've found, and read about thier locations, comments, etc.
Here's a link to my profile

Posted by Calvin at June 29, 2005 10:52 AM