California Bear

Thanks! I looked at all of the Power Squadron topics and didn't see anything about this. I'll check ID card topic!

Has anyone approached the NGS to see if Geocaching.com can enter into an cooperative arrangement like the US Power Squadron did? There are enough of us doing this and we obviously have the land navigation skills that are vital for finding benchmarks. The USPS has a 'NOS-USPS Cooperative Charting ID Card' that identifies teh carrier as being 'official' in their capacity of searching for benchmarks. Having an ID like this would ease the minds of land and building owners and security guards when they find someone walking around looking for something on or near their property or facility. It would be nice to be lent some credibility in doing this, on top of doing it for fun.

I agree. Old Station Descriptions provide a window into the past. I loved discovering that a patch of old cracked concrete on a bluff I had walked over several times was the remains of an old airfield from the 1930s. I did some BM hunting back in March then stopped for a long while and did other things. I came back to it in December with a renewed interest. Sometimes a person needs to take a break from a hobby and come back with a renewed perspective.

Here in my immediate area (Long Beach-Seal Beach in California), I have seen a few logs by others but I seem to be the only one really into it. My personal belief on the smaller number of BM Hunters vs. Geocachers is the payoff for finding a BM. When I explain Geocaching to people the response is usually an interested "What do you find in the caches?" When I explain BM Hunting, the repsonse is "What do you do when you find the disk? Nothing?!?!?" followed by a 'whatever floats your boat' look. The response is a little better if I mention that I am helping to maintain a national database for the marks. BM Hunting has a more mental payoff than a tangible one so is less appealing. It is also a bit more uncertain as the benchmark may or may not be there. You can look on the geocaching site and see that someone found/didn't find the cache last week whereas with a BM, it may not have been logged in the past 30 years (or longer). Even the most recent loggings for a BM may be five years old. I don't think I have seen one that was logged with the NGS after 1998. There is also a research element that may be involved if the area has changed. I personally enjoy researching what happened to a landmark described in a Station Description. In summary, I think that most BM Hunters will remain lone wolves.

Thanks all for the input! I might jave to add a coat hanger to the items I carry. When I get one, I will go back to that spot and check again.

I was looking for a benchmark this morning that is listed as being "4 INCHES BELOW THE SURFACE OF THE GROUND". I couldn't find the marker but found an RM for this marker and was able to pace off the distance to where the mark should be. At that location, BM is painted on the sidewalk with an arrow pointing into a flower bed. I poked around in the ice plant but didn't see any obvious markers or concrete (which the mark is allegedly set in). Has anyone ever had to dig to find a marker? And why on earth would anyone place a mark under the ground where it can't be used?