Top 10 Geocaching Tactics – #5 to #1

Our last post was Top 10 Geocaching Tactics #10-#6. Today, we’ll finish up our geocaching tactics with #5-4-3-2-1.

#5. Check everything.  Except for burying it, almost anything goes when hiding a cache.  We’ve seen them disguised as rocks, pine cones, reflectors, light switches, bird houses, bolts and sheet metal. Look for something that doesn’t belong – a shape. a rock in a tree, a stack of sticks, a color variation, a glint in the sun. Don’t take anything at face value. Look everywhere. Tug, twist, prod, kick or whatever it takes to inspect something.  Don’t forget to be discreet about it.

We are all-weather cachers. It can be tough in the winter. You have to read the descriptions carefully and see if it’s accessible then.

#4.  If something near GZ looks like a good hide site, check it out. If you’ve done your background work, have a good idea of what your cache is and see a likely hiding spot, go for it.  Don’t ignore a good place because the GPSr says it’s too far away. We’ve found caches as far as 100 feet from the posted coordinates. You can post corrected coordinates in your log or you can keep quiet and let the next person fumble around cursing their GPS.

In the Laurel Highlands of western Pennsylvania, here’s Ground Zero. It was a three mile hike on the Laurel Ridge Trail to get here and the bugs are out. Let the search begin. We’re looking for an ammo can and we’re not leaving until we find it.

#3.  Take some cache tools. Once you’ve found the cache, you may have other things to deal with.  The cache may have to be pulled from a tight place. It may be so small that it takes tweezers to extract the log.  It may not have a pencil. The log may be full or wet.  The ziploc bags may be torn. Carry a “cache extraction and repair kit” to deal with all that. If the cache is really FUBAR, do what you can and send a note to the owner.

Here it is, an hour later. It was well hidden and tucked away in the rocks. We find our caching sticks, which are five foot lengths of 1 1/2 inch dowel rod, to be indispensable. In terrain like this, they give you a third leg, which comes in handy around here.

#2.  Don’t expect the GPSr to take you directly to the cache. This is by far the biggest mistake that new geocachers make and even experienced cachers get lulled into it. All GPS does is get you close. Don’t keep pacing and walking around waiting for it to go to zero and then expect the cache to be at your feet.  Once it starts bouncing around in single digits, its job is done. Then it’s time to start looking.

#1.  Think like a geocacher.  Don’t bury your face in the GPSr. Do your research. Evaluate the terrain and route. When you get to GZ, ask yourself  “Where would I hide this?”  Leave the cache as you found it or better. Pick up some trash along the way.  Geocaching is huge and growing all the time. It is self-regulating and most places are very receptive to it.  To keep it that way, we have to be good stewards of the sport and the places where we do it.

Cache on … The Cachemanian Devils

Top 10 Geocaching Tactics – #10 to #6

People who don’t geocache (referred to as “muggles” by us adventurous types) often don’t see what the big deal is about geocaching. They think you plug in the coordinates and just walk right to the cache.  Not so. On its best day, the GPS system will get you within 10 feet of a point.  That’s a circle 20 feet in diameter or a square almost 18 feet on a side – 314 square feet total. If you’re fighting thorns and mosquitoes, that’s a lot of ground to cover.

The truth is that when most people start geocaching, they punch in the coordinates, put their head down and follow the arrow. They go through the briars and the brambles to the cache only to find that there’s a path next to it. We were no exception.  But soon, you become smarter and more tactical about it. Keep in mind that people who hide caches want them to be found, but they also want them to be challenging. They also have to place the cache and maintain it.  The fact that they have to go there too works in our favor. So check out our favorite tactics.  They work very well for us.

#10. Read the cache information sheet and logs in detail.  This is the research phase of geocaching. Very often, the hider gives you a cryptic clue.  Sometimes finders do too or just blurt out a key fact in a log entry.  Parse every word and pull out as much information as you can.  With the new generation of smart phone apps and GPS devices, if you download the cache, you download some logs too, so that’s real handy.  If you’re seeking a long distance cache away from home, recon the area with a topo map, gazetteer or Google Earth. Talk to locals to fill in information gaps.  Gather your intel and have a plan.  Be sure to have any special equipment you might need, like tweezers (for nano caches) or flashlights.

The western end of the 3,118 foot Paw Paw Tunnel in West Virginia. The geocache is on top of the edifice and you have to traverse the tunnel to get here. This tunnel was near the end of the old C&O Canal. That’s the original 1850 tow path going through it and that’s what you walk on. You need flashlights for this one. One thing we’ve found out about tunnels – even if you can see the other end, they get REAL dark in between. If you go tunnel caching, you’ll need a light with some horsepower. Mini-mags and the like won’t be sufficient. The darkness just eats the beam.  Tunnels also get quite cold and damp, even in the summer, so take something to ward off the chills.

#9.  Try not to head for the cache with any pre-conceived notions of what you’ll find.  Some hiders will tell you exactly what it is.  Others don’t. If all you know is it’s a micro or a small or a regular, don’t assume it’s a key holder or magnetic or an ammo can because then you search based on that and skip over the real thing. If you can’t find it in the cache info, you need to have a good search plan. Don’t waste time looking for something that’s not there.  On the other hand, many hiders will put out a series of caches that are all the same or very similar.  Once you figure out the pattern, you can start racking them up.

#8.  Plan your route and modify as needed.  In general, if the distance on the GPSr is going down, you’re headed in the right direction. It doesn’t mean you’re on the best route.  You may be on a trail that loops around a steep, thickly forested hill.  You can cut over the hill or you can stay on the trail, which means the GPSr may start to go up again. Don’t become fixated on the GPSr. It’s giving you the shortest distance between two points.  It doesn’t read terrain or evaluate routes.  You do.

Here’s an exercise in route planning and modification. This is the Whirlpool Gorge at Niagara Falls and the Spanish Aerocar that goes over it. See those big rocks to the left of the car? There’s a geocache in that vicinity and yes, you can walk to it. Just don’t let the GPSr take you in a straight line.

#7.  Look for a trail or opening.  Like we said earlier,  hiders want their caches to be found. I don’t think we’ve ever found a cache just thrown into a thicket. If you find yourself facing a wall of brush or some other obstacle, start looking for a way through or around it. It’s probably close. Everyone ends up breaking brush at some point, but do it as a last resort. Usually, if you fight through brush to get to GZ, you’ll find a trail nearby when you get there.

#6.  Have a good search routine. When the GPSr is bouncing around in the single and/or low double digits, you’re close.  Do a quick scan of the area.  Check the obvious places. Then take your stick and poke around some of the less obvious. Finally, do a detailed search of the area with a search pattern. Look high and low.  Move slowly. Keep your eyes moving. Your peripheral vision is better at picking up shapes. A lot of caches are found “out of the corner of my eye.”

That’s all for this edition. #5 to #1 on our next post.…The Cachemanian Devils

Intro to Geocaching – Getting Started

I’ve gotten some questions and feedback on how to get started in geocaching, so I’m putting together a short series of four posts to point you  in the right direction.  This is the first one.  The second one will be on hardware.  The third one will be on software.  The fourth one will be on other equipment recommendations.  I can always add to the series so if you’ve got questions, comments or ideas, send them along.

Geocaching originated in Beavercreek, OR and has been around since May 3, 2000.  On that day, a computer engineer named Dave Ulmer hid a bucket in the woods and posted the latitude and longitude online in a GPS users’ group.  He called his new activity “The Great American Stashing Hunt.”  He did it to give his fellow GPS users a target to test the accuracy of their devices and had no idea what it would turn into.

A day later, fellow GPS enthusiast Mike Teague found it and posted his story on the group page.  Geocaching was born, although it didn’t get called that until several weeks later.

Today there are an estimated 5 million geocachers hunting 1.8 million geocaches in every country in the world, including Afghanistan and Antarctica.

Here’s a link to a geocaching dot com’s  history page.

Here’s a link to a good explanation and summary of geocaching on Wikipedia, including all the different kinds of caches and different organizations that list them.

Dave Ulmer’s original stash is long gone, destroyed by a road crew. In its place, some geo-fanatics put this plaque with a geocache nearby in 2003. If you’re ever in the Beavercreek, OR area and want to stop at this holy shrine, the geocache is called “Original Stash Tribute Plaque”  on geocaching dot com.

Mainstream geocaching is the province of geocaching dot com, by far the biggest and most expansive geocaching site.  Starting out as a hobby site in 2000, it grew by leaps and bounds and is now run by a corporate entity called Groundspeak.  If you want to geocache, this is where you start.

To access full cache details, you have to register for a membership.  There are free memberships and premium (paid) memberships.  They cost $30 a year per account.  Here’s a link to a summary of the differences between them.  You can also register at that link.  If you just want to grab a few caches when you’re out doing something else or just try it out, a free membership should work just fine.  If you eventually migrate into caching at different places and need to to do searches remotely or along a route, you’ll want to go with the premium. You can also mix and match.  When I was geocaching with my kids, I had a premium account and they had free ones.

A geocaching membership also gives you access to waymarking dot com.   This useful tool has all kinds of destinations along with geocaches and benchmarks that are nearby.  It’s great for traveling and caching on the fly.  

There are other sites that list geocaches, such as Navicaching, Terracaching and Opencaching.  They require separate memberships but they’re free.  I’m signed on to them and a couple more but they simply don’t have the extensive cache lists and features that Groundspeak does.

Now you need something to geocache with.  If you have a smart phone, that may be all you need.

Geocaching technology has changed a lot in the last several years and smart phones have led the way.  Gone are the days of printing out cache sheets and sticking the serial GPS device out the window to get a signal.  Paperless caching is now the norm and smart phones enable geocaching on the fly, which was unheard of five years ago.

Smart phone geocaching apps can search, locate, map, list and log geocaches anywhere you have Internet connectivity.  They continue to proliferate and improve but they are only as good as the phone they are installed on – and not all phones are created equal.  Smart phone manufacturers have to make compromises in design, components and function to fit everything together.  Sometimes, the GPS function is a low priority. The GPS chip and/or the firmware may be slow and inaccurate.  It may be good on the Interstate highway but lousy on a back road.  The only way to know is to try it out and/or do some research.

The best way to get some background on geocaching phones is to do a Google search on “geocaching with (your phone model).”  There’s lots out there.

We’ve been through the wringer with phones.  Our Blackberry Storms were excellent.  Their GPS was fast and accurate. We geocached all over the country with them and used them until they literally wore out.  Next we got the Samsung Galaxy.  It was horrible.  We took them back and got the HTC Thunderbolt, which was the state of the art phone then.  It was horrible too.

That’s when I went on Google and ran down some information about phones.  Motorola phones use high grade GPS chips.  We traded in the HTC for the DroidX2 and have been very happy with them.

Our smart phone found the three geocaches in Luckenbach, TX but not Waylon, Willie and the boys. There’s more caches here than people – except on weekends.

I understand the i-phone is also quite good.

If you’ve got your phone, then it’s time to load a killer geocaching app.  If you have a Droid, the three best apps are CacheSense, Neongeo and c:geo.   The features of all three are pretty much the same – touch screens with color, searching, navigating, logging.  I give the edge to Cachesense for two reasons. 1)  It loads much faster than the other two  2) It has a feature that lets you create template messages for your logs.  All you have to do is click on found and the templated message is called up.  If you like it, send it.  No more typing on a tiny keyboard.   A lifetime license for CacheSense is $10.

Neongeo is very similar but without the message templates.  It is Android only and costs five bucks.  It’s developer is very active and responsive to the community.  He turns out new features on a regular basis, often in response to geocacher input.  Over the last year, Neongeo has taken the Droid geocaching world by storm.  It’s an excellent app.

C:geo is also very good and has been around the longest.  It was the first app to deliver live, real-time geocaching on the fly.  It’s an open source app that works on Android only. Its interfaces and features aren’t quite as rich as the other two but  only hard core cachers would notice the difference.  The fully functional version is free.  C:geo has two potential downsides.  It doesn’t work on iphones and they don’t get along with Groundspeak.   Rather than use Groundspeak’s programming API, they “web scrape” the data they need.   Groundspeak considers them a rogue element, but that’s a developer problem and doesn’t seem to affect the end user experience.  Before CacheSense and Neongeo came out, we used c:geo all the time.  It was way better than Groundspeak’s own app.  But there’s always the possibility that Groundspeak will run them out of town.  C:geo has a cult following of sorts. The continuing conflict between the two is kind of a geocaching soap opera.  Here’s a C:geo FAQ link with some good information about the whole thing.

You really can’t go wrong with any of these three.  There are lots of others out there.  App stores have dozens listed  and I’ve tried several of them. These are the only ones I would recommend.

The iphone has its own apps and there’s quite a list.  You’ll have to do some homework and testing but from a hardware standpoint, the iphone itself is a solid platform for geocaching.

Here’s a link to Groundspeak’s phone apps page.

One final note – if you have a free Groundspeak membership, they limit your smart phone downloads to three geocaches a day.  Premium membership is unlimited.

If you don’t have a smart phone or if the one you have is useless or if you plan to geocache in the wild, then you’ll need a dedicated handheld GPS device.  We’ll discuss those in our next post.

Good hunting …. The Cachemanian Devils

Our new blog

My student teacher – Sgt. Blogger. Here he makes a point during a “teachable moment.” You’ll see him around the new blog “Teaching Kids Math and Other Stuff.”

Hi again,

I’ve had three real passions in my life – my family, the outdoors and teaching.

My family continues to evolve as my kids have grown up, I got re-married and now we have grandkids.  You’ll see them in some of our posts and pictures.

I grew up in the Allegheny Mountains of central Pennsylvania running around with the guns and the dawgs.  Then the Marine Corps gave me my outdoor fix for 20 years.  Now, adventures in retirement get me outside.  That’s all covered by this “Off the Beaten Path” blog.

I’ve always felt that my real calling was teaching.  My mom was a teacher and I guess I inherited the gene. She always said that good teachers are born, not made.  I discovered early on that I was good at it and liked it. 

Count Cachula, a regular guest lecturer.  That’s one blog post. Ah ah ah

The Boy Scouts, martial arts and the Marine Corps gave me plenty of practice on how to teach and no shortage of subjects .  When I retired from the Corps, I never really considered anything else but teaching as a second career.   I taught middle school math for five years, freelanced as a Microsoft Certified Trainer for another five years then went back to a different middle school for five more years.  During most of that time, I was also an adjunct instructor at a local community college teaching computers and general education subjects.  In 2008, I got re-married.  Pam and I both retired and became geocaching fanatics.

Teaching was the hardest I ever worked.  At times it was more stressful than combat.  I had a lot of success in the classroom and was nominated for the Who’s Who of American Teachers three times.  Teaching is first and foremost a leadership challenge.  Running a classroom is a lot like commanding a military unit.  You have to lead by example, establish routines, make your standards known and enforce them firmly but fairly.  When a classroom is firing on all cylinders, there’s nothing quite like it.  I found it to be very rewarding and satisfying.

I always thought the biggest part of my job was to model successful and responsible adult male behavior since students see so little of it.   In TV, movies, video games etc, men are routinely portrayed as losers and idiots.  I was determined to change that perception. On the back of my car, I had Marine Corps and recon stickers and my NRA life member sticker.  I had a dad come up to me at parent conferences one night and say “We’ve never met, but I could tell from the stickers on your car that you’re the kind of guy I want teaching my kids.”   I live for high praise.

Another adoring parent. He also appears on the guest lecturer circuit.

Like most teachers, I was a pack rat and never threw anything away.  In addition to this “geostuff”, which I used in the classroom a lot, I’ve got a ton of material unique to the teaching side of things.   This includes years  of accumulated ideas, opinions, forms, sheets, letters, exercises and evaluations.  Some of it is on paper, some is on my hard drive and some is in my head.    It seemed like a shame to toss it or forget about it, so I decided to give it a new lease on life and blog it. 

Introducing “Teaching Kids Math and OtherStuff.”   The title is self-explanatory.  Most, if not all, of the content in my teaching blog will be useful to parents, coaches, youth leaders and even grandparents (whose ranks I have now entered.) If it gives one good idea or one chuckle to one person, it will have been worth it.

You’ll  find some opinions and reflections on this site which you may or may not agree with.   You may find my sense of humor a bit wacky but it goes with the territory I’ve been in for five decades.  There are several issues in particular that I wrestled with for years without a good resolution. You’ll be seeing a series called “Classroom Capers”  where I free write about anything that comes to mind.  I hope you find something of interest or value somewhere on the site.

I’ll keep adding stuff until I run out, which will probably never happen.  Where appropriate, I’ll cross-link things.  I welcome your feedback and ideas.

Click this link  Teaching Kids Math and Other Stuff to get started.

Thanks …. Dan

Geocaching Destinations – Uncle Tom’s Trail, Yellowstone Park

There’s no shortage of things to see and do at Yellowstone Park.  Between geocaches, benchmarks, passport stamps,  Kodak moments and the occasional geodash point, there’s enough to keep us busy for weeks.  That’s why we keep going back. This hike on the north rim of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is one of the more strenuous undertakings in the park but it’s worth it.

The first white explorer to see  the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone was Charles Cook in 1869.  The canyon  runs for 20 miles southwest to northeast starting at the Lower Yellowstone Falls.  Along the way, it averages 4,000 feet wide and 1,200 feet deep.  The North Rim Road runs along its edge.

A National Park Service photo. On Uncle Tom’s Trail circa 1900. The original trail was built by “Uncle” Tom Richardson, a local rancher, in 1898.  It bore little resemblance to today’s route.  He led his clients down a series of ropes and ramshackle bridges all the way to the bottom of the canyon and the base of Lower Yellowstone Falls.  Lunch was provided.

One of the canyon’s most distinctive features is the layers of multi-colored rock that line the walls.   This entire chasm was once a geyser basin that was covered with glaciers.  The constant battle between Ice Age cold and volcanic heat produced physical and chemical changes in the rock that aren’t seen anywhere else.  When the glaciers retreated, catastrophic flooding  and erosion occurred, creating the canyon.  One of the dominant colors in the rock is yellow, hence the name Yellowstone.

A great shot taken from an overlook further along the south rim. See the yellow stone right up front? The canyon walls are lined with it.

The original route is long gone, replaced by a series of  paved switchbacks cut into the slope.  When the switchbacks run out, there are 328 metal grate steps bolted into the rock face of the canyon wall. They take you straight down to an overlook at the base of the falls.  The modern route doesn’t go as far down as the original, but it’s close.

KidsRN at the trailhead. She’s not looking too excited about this.

The hike is about 1/2 mile one way. The elevation at the top is 8,000 feet and in that 1/2 mile, you’ll go down to 7,500 feet.  Almost half of that 500 foot vertical drop is in the 328 metal steps mentioned earlier.  If you have heart, lung or joint problems or if you have issues with heights and ledges, this probably isn’t the hike for you.  If you go, wear decent shoes – no heels, bare feet or flip flops – and make sure you’ve got plenty of water.  It will probably take two hours round trip but about halfway up, it seems like forever.  The overlooks on top of the canyon rim are crowded but there’s not a lot of people on this  trek.  It’s a bit off the beaten path and a lot who start turn around.  You’ll see fewer and fewer people as you approach the bottom.

Here they are. There’s plenty of room for three people to pass and lots of landings with benches. The grated steel is not made for high heels, flip flops or bare feet. If you go in the morning, watch for ice, even in the summer. The trail is closed in the winter and may close periodically anytime for storms, rain and ice.

There are four virtual geocaches in close proximity to the parking area, several benchmarks and numerous overlooks.  You can park and walk to several at a time but will have to drive between jump off points as there are finds on both sides of the canyon.  It makes for a good day’s outing.  Cell phone coverage here is lousy, so plan on using a GPS instead of a smart phone app.  You can try pre-loading the caches into the phone and utilizing its internal GPS but we haven’t had much luck with that.  Smart phone GPS is never as good as a dedicated device.

Us at the bottom. There’s no virtual geocache here.  We thought there was but our GPS led us astray.  Actually, it’s our own fault.  The cache we were looking for, called “Spectacular Yellowstone Falls”,  stated very clearly in the description that you do not have to go to the bottom of Uncle Tom’s Trail except we didn’t read it.  But we would have done the hike anyway.  Now comes the fun part – going back up.

This link will open a Google map of the immediate area.

This link will open the “Spectacular Yellowstone Falls” page on geocaching (dot) com.

Have fun with this one.  We did.  (:-D)  The Cachemanian Devils