Geocaching: Hiking for Tech Geeks

About a year and a half ago, I used a multi-million-dollar system of satellites and computer equipment to go into a forest and find a slightly damp and dirty piece of Tupperware. I opened it up, pulled out a small notebook, wrote down the date, the words “Rogue Towel” and some other coded messages, and placed those messages inside. I quickly re-hid the small treasure box at the bottom of a stump and walked away, careful not to be spotted by the walkers on a nearby trail. I have since repeated this activity over 270 times.

These mysterious activities are part of an emerging sport called “geocaching,” which has become a regular activity for me before work, after school, or on the way to anywhere. I race other geocachers to new sites to earn the honour of being “first to find” (FTF), then meet other players a week later to trade stories about at how we each snuck into a closed park at 2:00 a.m. only to be beaten by a third team, for example.

A community of random people takes part in this pastime, which began as an excuse to get outside, but soon transformed into a full-time activity planned into a regular schedule, and then some. Enthusiasts love the tech element, the outdoors and the fact that it’s new. Players are hashing out rules, starting associations and posting new options, players and hide sites daily to Geocaching.com -- the nexus for caches and cachers.

So what exactly is geocaching? There’s no straight answer since the debate over whether it’s a sport, hobby, a game has never satisfactorily been resolved. Some cachers explain it as hiking for nerds, though that doesn’t quite pin it down.

Stash and cache

Here’s how it works. Most people have heard of the global positioning system (GPS), a series of satellites that use triangulation software to give people the exact location of something on the surface of our fair planet, including themselves. This system is commonly used for everything from fishing, to flying planes, to hunting, so most of us have had contact with GPS in one form or another.

After the public form of GPS became accurate, there was a boom in GPS-related games using receivers known as GPSr. Included in this was a simple game called the GPS “stash hunt,” later renamed geocaching. The game started in Oregon and quickly spread up and down the coast and beyond. It’s now global, with 331,000 caches and counting worldwide.

The basic idea behind caching is to take the co-ordinates of an exact location posted on the Internet, go to the location using a GPSr, and find something there. Normally it’s a watertight container of sorts, although sometimes it’s a number or piece of information that needs to be collected.

It’s about “alternative responsible park use,” says Rob Gennell (whose caching name is Mushroom Doom). “There are other things that can be enjoyed in the public spaces other than just standing there and staring at the fountain.”

Growing pains

David Ulmer was credited as inventing the game when he jumped at the opportunity to hide a bucket near Portland for other GPS enthusiasts. On May 3, 2000, he posted the co-ordinates and a short description of what was to be found on a USENET news group. Within a day, someone found the bucket, and the basic rules behind “the GPS stash hunt game” were established. Just a few days later, more stashes in other states started to appear on the same site.

In less than a month, the fledgling hobby went intercontinental when Australia picked up on the idea. The USENET site was totally overwhelmed with traffic, and only a couple days after Ulmer’s post, a new, more user-friendly website was set up.

By the time September rolled around, geocaching was outgrowing its former home. In a bid to make it a more commercial venture, Jeremy Irish registered Geocaching.com. The new site offers a much more user-friendly interface, centralized categorizing system, and a place to sell ad space, memberships and even clothing. Despite heavy criticism from early cachers, who were at odds with the commercial and centralist aspects of Irish’s initiative, the site gained steam and was soon became the biggest of its kind on the Net.

Local hotbed

But even though the sport has gone international, thanks to its cyberspace element, the West Coast of North America is still the hotbed for the sport What is surprising is how strong geocaching is on Vancouver Island, especially in Victoria. There are about 650 cache types listed within a 20-kilometre radius of Victoria’s Hillside shopping centre on Geocaching.com. That’s a remarkably high density compared to most other places. Countries such as India (21 active caches) and Brazil (86 active caches) are fairly sparse when gauged against geocache heavyweights like Canada (25,796) and Germany (25,129). And the United States cache count is growing too fast to keep tabs on, with 100 or so new entries every day.

Its West Coast popularity isn’t just because Oregon is where the sport got its start. The different growth rates of caching can be related to two core factors. One is wealth. Western countries have far more money to spend on the equipment and technology necessary for the game. A GPSr costs upwards of $400 from major hardware stories, although cheaper models can be found. Used models can be purchased from eBay for as low as $60.

The other factor is lifestyle and geography. Those areas with a large population of hikers and active types tend to have a denser cache population.

The actual participants come from a mixed bag of backgrounds, occupations and lifestyles. This includes students as young as 20, young families, singles and retired couples. Some caches are wheelchair-accessible, some are specifically for kids, and others are only accessible to hardcore hikers. The common denominator is the enjoyment of the great outdoors.

Muggles and misdemeanors

One of the reasons for its popularity is that it’s relatively straightforward to learn. But geocaching isn’t as obstacle-free as it might initially seem. One of the most common problems for a geocacher is dealing with “muggles.” Taken from the Harry Potter word for normal folk, muggles are people who don’t cache. Because they don’t know about the game, muggles inadvertently find and destroy caches, thinking whatever they find is theirs to take, use or throw away.

Aside from muggles, cachers face many other obstacles, including complicated navigational math, tides, animals, fallen trees and weather. Then there are legal issues like property laws.

Chris Edley (Mr. Landsharkz), director-at-large for the British Columbian Geocachers Association, is one of the people who represent the hobby. Edley is currently working with government agencies on issues and rules for caching in Victoria. “We’re the public face for geocaching,” he explains. “A lot of agencies are developing park polices and we represent the geocachers at the table.”

Geocachers need people like Edley to navigate the relationships with parks and people because the sport is becoming more complex. And it’s frustrating when a well-planned cache is ruined by others – unknowingly or otherwise. While the original cache was a bucket hidden partway into the ground in a park outside of Portland, Oregon, caches have developed into new forms.

Form and function

The traditional or go-to cache has one set of co-ordinates and a container placed somewhere at that physical location. It will contain at least one item -- a logbook. This is for the finder to note they did indeed find the cache, and mention any other little things that come to mind. Other things may be hidden inside, but it depends on the size of the cache. Most of the time, a cache is a Tupperware box ranging from sandwich-sized to a half-litre, and sometimes film canisters are used.

Similar to a go-to is a multi, which requires a geocacher to go to a series of locations, either finding information, small containers, or numbers, which he or she must use to continue on. At the end there would be a container just like a traditional cache.

Virtual caches are no longer being made on Geocaching.com, but the old ones have been grandfathered and are still found on a regular basis. Like a go-to, these caches have a single set of co-ordinates, which will guide a cacher to a location where there is information of some sort that needs to be retrieved and relayed back to the cache owner.

A special type of virtual cache is the earthcache, which would be a specific geological point of interest.

Rarest of all are event caches, which occur only at a certain time and place. Event cache locations are hidden by the host.

Cityscapes can also provide some interesting places to hide micro-caches. Micro-caches are hidden beneath benches or take the form of magnets on a secret metallic surface. “Vernon’s First Drive-In Cache” is an example of one of these mid-town micros. “If you’re having a bad day, you can drive through and get it,” explains Shelia Wheelhouse (whose cache name is Beanichick).

For the hardcore hikers: one of the tallest steeples in the world has a cache within a few steps from the top, the Munich train station has another, and many islands or remote points of land in the Gulf Islands and around Vancouver Island have caches on them. Some require scuba equipment or boats, while others require multi-day hikes into the wilderness.

Contrary to the anti-social, computer geek stereotype one might associate with this kind of thing, most geocachers are friendly and take part in get-togethers at specific co-ordinates, generally at restaurants or pubs -- although parks and campsites are also common meeting places.

The best part about all this is that it’s good, clean fun. No one gets hurt (usually), the environment is untouched (usually), and it can be enjoyed by people of any age, group, or occupation.

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