Geocaching can be healthy as well as fun

By Peter Vogel

Recently a colleague of mine at Notre Dame Regional Secondary School became actively involved in geocaching, an activity that marries three diverse areas: love of outdoors, GPS technology, and the Internet.

Ken McGuire, leader of the school's outdoors and mountain biking clubs, was an ideal candidate for one of North America's fastest growing "sports," something already happening within mere metres of his home, although unknown to him.

As he explains it, he first became aware of geocaching about six months ago when he learned of it from his daughter and a friend. They explained to him how there were various "treasures" hidden or "cached" all over North America, and even further afield, that could be located using GPS technology. In addition, Internet sites provide local geographical clues to the whereabouts of the caches, hence the term "geocaching."

The activity requires a handheld GPS unit, or a cell phone with GPS capability, and an Internet connection to research locations, given by co-ordinates and clues to the geocaches.

My colleague explained how his first cache was hidden within sight of his home in North Vancouver. It consisted of a small box hidden under a bridge over a stream. The "treasure" in the box, besides a logbook, was an item called a travel bug, a small object that can be taken from the cache and moved to another cache.

Each "finder" of a cache replaces the find with a similar item. The new location of the treasure is then reported through a central clearing site, thereby making it possible to record the travels of the find.

Travel bugs, along with specially produced geocoins, are assigned tracking codes which facilitate record keeping as they are found and eventually moved to other caches.

Ken went on to explain that he had subsequently learned that that were nearly 20 caches within three kilometres of his home. Such urban sites sometimes present a problem, as they may be stumbled upon accidentally or their locations may be revealed to others standing by when a geocacher makes a find. Such onlookers are affectionately known as Muggles.

Geocachers themselves may engender suspicion from locals as they attempt to locate a well-hidden urban cache, and there are occasional reports of police being called and even of caches being blown up by bomb squads, but thankfully such actions are rare.

Probably the biggest and first web site devoted to the hobby is www.geocaching.com, which started in September 2000, shortly after the Clinton administration in the U.S. ordered the removal of Selective Availability from GPS signals, which up to that time had meant location errors of up to 100 metres on consumer GPS units. The site reports that almost three-quarters of a million caches in over 100 countries are registered at present.

To see if your neighbourhood has any caches just enter your postal code at the geocaching.com site. There are half a dozen near my home, each displayed with a history of finders' notes, interesting observations, difficulty ratings, and even problems with Muggles. I was stunned to learn that the remains of an historic tunnel form a very interesting cache located just a few metres from a spot I cycle by almost daily.

While on vacation this past summer my colleague placed an item in a cache identified as "Tour of Duty" in Salt Lake City. This, he noted, was an inspiring site, located in a traffic island, that included photo albums and other memorablia of many of the local troops who had seen action in Iraq.

As Ken explained, geocaching adds a new dimension to walking, hiking, biking, snowshoeing, or almost anything you do outside. "While carrying out any outdoor activity, there are probably sites you could look for in that area. Many sites include items that children would like to take. Just remember to leave an item when you take one. There are often stamps that the children can collect in a book they could keep, like a passport, showing all the different sites they have visited."

My colleague, who has now located almost 40 caches, uses a Garmin CSX handheld GPS unit that has a geocaching component. Cache information may be downloaded directly onto the unit from the geocaching.com web site.

Readers may also be interested in the more localized site run by the B.C. Geocaching Association at www.bcgeocaching.com.

Suggestions and comments about this column may be sent to peterv@portal.ca. For additional information: http://twitter.com/petervogel.