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Home > Archive > Aug 2, 2007

Treasure Hunting GPS Style
By Katrice Schimbeck
Staff Writer
Those who like to find buried treasure or pretend to be practicing their covert spying skills, geocaching may be just the thing.
Of course, you will need a Global Positioning System tracking unit worthy of James Bond, and maybe even a four-wheeler, but don’t count on your car to transform into one like Bond’s.
It all started 153 years ago, when guide James Perrott hid a calling card in a bottle and buried it in the soil at Cranmere Pool in a remote part of Dartmoor, England. This was the birth of “letterboxing,” the precurser to the more modern version, geocaching.
Letterboxing took hold in England as hikers left letters in remote locations to be mailed by the next person finding the box.
Modern letterboxes contain stamps and logbooks. The finder leaves his personal stamp in the logbook and puts the box stamp in his passport as a souvenier. Finding a letterbox requires skills in puzzle-solving and orienteering.
Geocachers use GPS locators and coordinates logged on many geocaching Web sites. The caches contain a logbook for the finder to write their name and date, and trinkets for the finder to keep. Courtesy dictates finders replace the “treasure” for the next finder.
According to www.geocaching.com – “the official GPS cache hunt site” and one of the oldest and most widely used sites, there are 432,983 active caches worldwide, although caches are added to that number daily.
GPS, a satellite navigation system, was developed by the U.S. Department of Defense and was intended to military use. To ensure this, the signals were scrambled to be inaccessble to civilian would-be users, according to the Web site www.geocaching.gpsgames.org/history. But in May 2000, President Clinton lifted the scrambling, known as Selective Availability (SA), making GPS signals available for civilian uses.
Two days later, the first geocache – a bucket of trinkets – was hidden by Dave Ulmer in Portland, Ore., and Ulmer posted its location on an online site. The stash – a term later renamed “cache” -- was found twice in the ensuing three days.  The hobby has since taken off worldwide.
The Tureks, local residents, enjoy geocaching for family recreation and exercise. They have been tracking spots for about five years now. They usually go out a couple times a month and find a couple spots. It takes only about four to five hours a month. They haven’t found a “travel bug” yet, but are looking for one.
Travel bugs (available at Groundspeak.com) are tracking tags that can be attached to items in a cache. The tag gives the finder goals to complete, such as reaching a specific place or traveling to a certain number of states or countries. The travel bug purchaser creates the goals, and each travel bug gets its own Web page, which serves as a diary of its progress, on geocashing.com.
“Travelbugs are fun. You have to be quick because people are really watching those,” Stephanie Turek said. She said her kids love geocaching, and did it for her teenage son’s birthday party.
Several types of geocaches evolved from letterboxing. Some work like a children’s treasure hunt, with clues left at subsequent locations. Others are microcaches, with barely room for a small piece of paper inside. The fun is in the locating. Some caches are a specific place with nothing hidden. Proof of visitation is describing something found there, information from a plaque, or a picture in the spot. Some caches are re-hidden every time they are found. Other caches require puzzle-solving to find.
There are many Web sites devoted to geocaching, with caches listed in your specific area. To record your finding on geocaching.com, you need to become a member, which is free. The only real cost to the hobby is what “treasure” you wish to deposit for others, and your GPS unit.
Utah State Parks have gotten into the geocaching spirit this year, even though the activity is banned in National Parks. A cache is hidden in each of the 42 state parks with special commemorative State Parks 50th anniversary coins, bracelets and other trinkets. To find instructions to these places, go to www.stateparks.utah.gov and click on the 50th anniversary banner, and then click on the geocache link at the bottom of the page.
One program is Cache In Trash Out (CITO), in which treasure hunters gather a bag of garbage to keep the site clean. Many of the geocache Websites encourage this program. Geocaching and park officials encourage responsible practice of the hobby, being careful not to disturb scenic or natural treasures while caching or finding your own treasure.

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