TeamK-9

Actually, the story in Outside magazine was about their new program that is actually a shorter class for students who are 30-40+...

Just recently, I read an article in Outside magazine about NOLS, the National Outdoor Leadership School. It's basically the premiere outdoor adventure outfitter for young adults ages 18-30. But it's not even really an outfitter, as much as it really is a school. The courses, (which range anywhere from 2-5 weeks) actually are expeditions, in which the participants essentially learn the leadership skills involved with the activity, in hopes of the people being able to lead their own trips after one of these courses. It really is no vacation, from what I've read, it's alot like boot camp, but people seem to come out of it very satisfied with what they've learned. Anwyay, I was figuring with all the geocachers we have on these forums, we must have one or two graduates of NOLS. So do we?

Many of you are aware of Mapquest removing the functioning to get driving directions to a lat/long coordinate set. We at TRI-GO (the Three Rivers Informal Geocaching Organization) felt that this was uncalled for and we want to try and get Mapquest to change their decision. One of our members has started a petition at petitiononline.com and we encourage all of you to sign it. Petition to Mapquest

There are ways to avoid problems with that. In fact I think that makes snow caching even more fun. Making false trails and such can be amusing. Yeah, there's all kinds of interesting ways to mislead people from the cache. I've read of a cacher carrying a waterbottle with yellow food coloring, that he dumped in the snow near the cache. It really distracted people from going after where they thought the cache was. Eventually people caught on though, and it became a fairly obvious marker as to where the cache really was.

Weird... Never noticed anything like this before. Oh well, I'm going to lock this cause it's already being discussed here.

This is probably nothing to worry about, but I thought I'd report it, just in case iit is something that may help make the site better in the future. I found two caches today. When I go to the cache pages, I see the logs I made, and when I got my profile and my cache page, I also see the finds. But when I do a search by zip code. It doesn't show those two caches as found like it normally does. I refresh and nothing happens.

Winter is great for caching. The parks are generally less visited, and sometimes there's footprints that you can follow right to the cache! A lot of people say snow caching takes too much preparation. I mean, you have to get dressed warmly, and you have to make sure you have dry clothes and gloves, and if you have children, you have to make sure they're dressed warmly. And you also have to realize wether or not there's snow where you're going: (On one of my first cache attempts, we went up to one of the state forests on the ridge. I live in the valley. And of course, it had been sunny, slightly warmer, and snowless for several days in the valley. I got to the mountains and found 1-2.5 feet of snow, and I of course was in trail runners.) But preparation for snow, is just as bad as preparing for really hot weather. Forget about it, get out there, and CACHE.

I got a new L.L. Bean Daypack: I had actually asked my parents for that specific pack, and now that I have it. I realize it's absolutely massive. I mean, it's a daypack, but it's BIG, and I know it will feel useless until I can fill it up quite a bit. I think I would have been happier with something a bit smaller, like a Camelback HAWG, but those are a bit more expensive than my pack and they have a lot less space. I also got a couple hundred dollars from my grandfather, most of which I put in the bank. But I kept $150 which I will be spending on "completing" my hiking gear. It's not like I really need anything, but there's some stuff that could "enrich" my hiking experience. Among those things are a new insulated bladder for my camelback, a new headlamp, and maybe some new socks. I'm actually pretty lucky, because my birthday is the middle of January. So it's close enough to christmas that I get some good presents, and then, right around the time, I'm starting to get bored, or need batteries or something, then it's my birthday all of a sudden. It's also just far enough from christmas that I can still get some pretty awesome presents.

When I first learned about geocaching, I told my mom. She always seems to be the devil's advocate when it comes to my hobbies. Her immediate thoughts were the possibility of Geocaching murders. I mean really. If you were a rapist or a murderer, and you were able to know that there's a 1/4 chance that on any given weekend, that someone will come right to your remote spot, all alone, then it would be like a field day for you. I've always wondered about her theory, and I understand that it could be possible. I mean, it could be a very easily premeditated crime. Quite honestly though, the chances of that working out for the murderer would be slim. I don't think anything like this will happen in the near future, but it could happen. But quite simply. Will I change the way I cache? No.

I general use an old school backpack to haul my stuff. Mine is just a normal Jansport bag. It's a good size, but one of the most convenient features is a mesh, side water bottle pocket that holds my GPS perfectly, so it's out of my hands but still secure and getting a good sat lock. I figured I needed something a bit more specialized for geocaching, and so I ordered this: I didn't really realize how big it would be. It's a good size for hiking out in the wilderness. You could probably carry $100's of dollars worth of cache goodies, but quite frankly, it's a bit big for suburban caching where even a backpack can look conspicuos. I can't say anything bad about the pack itself though. It's really nice, and it will be used...

As long as the car takes us to where we need to go, and there's not a horrible ammount of snow, I'm fine. But I'd actually prefer two feet of snow to really cold weather.

Actually, when I first started out, I uploaded waypoints to my computer all the time. I actually got just about the closest two hundred caches. I only have one port that the gps will plug into though, and several other more important things go into it also, so the GPS computer plug was taken off the computer. It doesn't take so much time that it's horribly time consuming, maybe because I only ever hit a few caches a day, but still I think it's just fine. But I will go paperless with the PDA as often as possible. Haha...

You were talking about someone being more interested in $2 worth of coins as opposed to $5 pack of batteries. I think the reasoning in that is just for a sentimental, I mean, I have enough batteries in my pack, my jeep, and in half a dozen places around my house, and honestly, I'd only take batteries if I were in dire need of them, but I do occasionally leave them. Still, I'd rather have the coin, cause it's more of a sentimental value. I mean, anything really cool that I find in caches, I have on a shelf in my display case, with all my model cars, and I'd much rather show people the cool coin that I got as a prize in my dorky sport, than a pack of batteries. Anyway, getting away from that, I've been FTF on a few caches, actually two that I can think of off the top of my head, maybe three. One of them, was loaded with tons of great prizes, and I was actually very happy with a very cool looking coin, until I read the message in the logbook, that said the first finder should dig down a little deeper. Sure enough, I dug down, and at the bottom of that ammo can was a brand new CITO t-shirt. I was overjoyed. This summer, I was FTF on yet another cache, which was a bit more strenuous. I don't remember if there was any actual prize for FTF, but there was a really cool certificate signed by the owner. And for the second and third finders, there were ribbons. In my own cache, I actually can't remember what I left for a FTF prize, but I don't think it as anything too signifigant. But I did leave a good number of random coins from different countries, and I think a couple people each took some until they were gone, and they were fairly well recieved.. My general conclusion is that anything from the Groundspeak store can be a cool FTF prize, but for my next cache, I'm leaving a hunting vest, since it is hunting season, and cachers need to wear them..

No offense guys, but Cheesequake? Does the name have some kind of local signifigance? Or is it just meant to be silly?

I was actually attending an orienteering seminar by the local audubon society a few years ago, when someone mentioned it. I was interested, but I knew GPS only from what I had seen on TV, and the way I figured it, it was probably a very expensive game, and that if it wasn't expensive, there probably weren't any caches nearby. And then August 2003, a friend had told me how she had spent her summer geocaching, I of course had heard of it, and I was slightly intrigued. I got online and did some quick research, and found the site, I was definately intrigued. I then went to work saving up for a GPS, but by the time I had the money for even an entry level unit, it was about a month and a half till christmas, and so my parents told me that maybe it would be a good christmas present. After that, I lost interest, until christmas came, and I found a shiny new GPS in one of the boxes with my name on it. I've been caching ever since...

If anyone enters their monthly drawing and wins any kind of cool police memorabilia, I'd be willing to trade something like a PA geocoin or two for it. I love collecting police stuff...

Several months ago, a cacher by the name of Horny Lizard Team, tooking my Keystone Cops travel bug from the Tanks Alot cache. Since then, he has had no activity on the bug, and has not responded to several emails. Does anyone by chance know this cacher, and might be able to talk to them and see what's going on?

I actually thought of making a multi-stage cache of different cd-cases, where each case was a stage, and you'd take a cd and the cd would have the clue you'd need. Well, when I ran the idea past a few friends, they told me that alot of people wouldn't be so quick to put a CD of questionable origination into their computer because of all the viruses and crap out there...

Well, for example, there's a local cache that's not even that hard, but like 90% of the hiders DNF on their first try. If the owner ran out to the cache every couple DNFS he got, he'd be out there once a week just to confirm it's still there. The cache isn't even particularly hard. The first stage is a bit of a puzzle but an easy puzzle, you just need to be inconspicuous. The second stage the hiding place is incredibly obvious, it's just fairly large and you need to be really thorough... I know if I got a bunch of DNFs on my cache, I wouldn't be able to scramble and get a new cache ready before I head up just to check on it...

I don't think that anyone was trying to be mean or look down on you at any time during this post. You have to realize though that each and every cache is given personal attention by a volunteer. These volunteers read through your cache page, check to make sure everything sounds good, and then they check the coordinates on several different maps just to make sure that it's location is not a conflict of interest. All in all, an approver can spend between 5-30 minutes on one single cache, and more time can be involved for the approver if email needs to be exchanged with the hider. With the site's recent technical glitches, caches have been submitted, but approvers have not been able to get to them, and so the line just gets longer and longer. Your local approver may have several hundred caches that he needs to deal with right now, and he needs to give each one of those cache pages a careful examination. You also have to realize that most approvers are real people, just like you and me. They are volunteers, and so they're not paid and they have no set office hours. The approvers get stuff done whenever they can. One approver I know has told me that on many occasions, he simply has a "working lunch" where he eats and approves caches during his lunch break from work. I'm sorry that your cache is taking so long to get approved. I too know the anticipation of having your first cache hide approved. A day or two can seem like such an amazingly long amount of time. But eventually I sat back and calmed down and my cache was approved after a day or two, which is a pretty good time for an area as busy as mine. So just sit back and realize that your cache will be approved eventually, you just have to be patient, because all good things take time. And be sure to send a nice email to your approver thanking him for his service to the geocaching community and dedicating his free time to allowing this great sport to become even greater...

It really all depends on interpretation wether that is officially blaze orange or not. I think this vest is perfect for areas where you think there might be some idiots with guns in the area, and you just want to be a bit more visible. Wether it actually is good enough for areas where there are specific laws reguarding the necessity of blaze orange apparel, I don't know. But wearing one of these out into the woods is better than nothing...

Are you gonna wear all three at once? No... One thing I noticed is that the styling of the "youth vest" is a bit different than the styling of the adult vest. I kind of like the styling of the youth vest better... Are the kids ones actually smaller?

I actually found this topic by reading a derogatory comment somewhere about the "geeky stuff that Groundspeak just came out with." Let me just say, I don't think it's geeky, and I'm glad I found this topic, because I've been wanting one of these. I'd be proud to say that my suggestion was the inspiration for this item, but I'm not 100% sure about me being the first to suggest it, so I'll just keep my mouth shut. Anyway, they're really cool. I do quite a bit of caching in areas where you're required to (or stupid if you dont) wear blaze orange on hunting seasons, and this is just perfect the perfect thing. I'll probably be ordering two or three next chance I get, along with some other items I need to get...

I've been known to post that occasionally, but I like the longer caches too...

I'm a 14 y/o guy. I don't really cache independently. My dad and dog are very active in my caching. BTW, I'm cute... ...And single...