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Tracking as a sport
'Geocachers' use satellite technology, wits to hunt down hidden 'treasure'
by Mary Therese Biebel
The hunt is on. Armed with a map, a Global Positioning System device and an intriguing clue, Lynn Aldrich sets out in search of treasure on a recent Friday afternoon.
She doesn't expect gold or diamonds, just a plastic container filled with small toys and trinkets.
The thrill will come from using science and intuition to find this geocache, selecting one of the items it contains as a souvenir and leaving a whimsical keepsake in its place.
"It's something different to do, and it's relaxing to be outdoors," says Aldrich, a College Misericordia physics professor who enjoys finding geocaches so much that she plans to establish one of her own.
Here's how this relatively new sport works:
Some adventurous soul hides a watertight container, most likely in a scenic spot on public land. Using a GPS device, that person makes precise note of the latitude and longitude of the hiding place -- down to the hundredths or thousandths of a second -- and posts those coordinates on the Internet along with any helpful clues he or she might decide to add.
Interested parties download the information and use their own GPS devices to find the hiding place. As they walk along, the instruments, which pick up electromagnetic signals from satellites, tell them how far they are from their destination.
Sounds easy, doesn’t it?
To see just how challenging this activity might be, let's accompany Aldrich as she looks for a geocache. The website www.geocaching.com boasts more than 16,000 geocaches in 122 countries, and at least 10 of them are within an easy drive of Wilkes-Barre.
Aldrich is heading for one in the Big Pine Hill section of the Lackawanna State Forest in Lackawanna County. Established by an outdoorswoman who calls herself RenegadeJane, its coordinates are 41°14.092 latitude and 75°38.198 longitude. Aldrich has two GPS devices, neither of which record thousandths of a second, so she rounds the numbers to 41°14.03 and 75°13.12.
A helpful clue
RenegadeJane couldn’t resist offering a clue via the Web site. Written in an easily transcribed code, it suggests searchers be on the lookout for "four brothers, Siamese quadruplets, actually," who "stand by the rock which hides the cache. One brother played with sharp sticks as a young boy, much against his mother's wishes, and suffered the dire consequences of doing so."
Perhaps, Aldrich surmises, the clue refers to a quartet of trees, growing close together or sharing the same base. Maybe one of them appears to have a wound of some sort.
But long before she gets close enough to spot those trees, she'll consult the GPS to point herself in the right direction. Parking near a trail head in the forest, she checks the GPS to determine her position.
According to the device, she’s at 41°12.94 latitude and 75°37.85 longitude. She enters the coordinates of the geocache, and realizes it's 1.11 miles away.
RenegadeJane apparently didn't want to make this too difficult. Comparing a map of the forest and a topographical map she brought from home, Aldrich can see that a trail leads almost all the way to the spot. There won't be too much bushwhacking involved.
Pushing her way north, the geocache hunter watches numbers change on the screen of the GPS device. Every ten paces or so, she's one-hundredth of a mile closer to the cache.
Aldrich grins with pleasure. A longtime fan of orienteering -- where participants search for flags with a traditional map and compass -- she's enjoying this new, higher-tech scavenger hunt.
After she's hiked about 45 minutes, the GPS readings tell Aldrich she's no longer getting closer to her goal. It's time to change direction, so she abandons the path and makes her way west over rocky outcroppings and through some bushes.
Eventually, the GPS tells her she's reached the spot. The geocache should be within 20 feet. But where? Aldrich and a companion believe they've spotted the "four brothers." They look up and down, turn around, and realize they’re almost standing on the cache.
They also realize they wouldn't have had to do any bushwhacking at all if they'd approached from another direction. But, never mind, it's time for an inspection.
Treasure within
Wrapped in a plastic bag, RenegadeJane's geocache holds a miniature deck of playing cards, plastic novelty insects, a travel-size bottle of shampoo, neatly folded trash bags -- a reminder that geocachers can perform a valuable service by collecting litter on the way out of the woods -- and an outlandishly large button that proclaims, "It takes a mighty good woman to be better than no woman at all."
"I wonder who left this," Aldrich says, mystified by the misogynistic message.
Chances are, RenegadeJane is not responsible for the button. But she did leave some decoder rings, made of folded paper and designed to help people find another of her geocaches. She also left a colorful notebook in which searchers have commented about the satisfaction of their hide-and-seek venture and what kind of weather they experienced on the way.
Aldrich writes that she's introducing a friend to the sport and that she's leaving a chess piece. She also leaves a keychain "travel bug" in the hope that someone will pick it up and carry it to another cache, and chooses the miniature deck of cards as a memento.
RenegadeJane, contacted later by e-mail, says she has established six geocaches "on mountaintops with great vistas. That's my theme. People seem to like it, and they love the origami decoder rings I put in the caches. Lots of people take them."
Concert tickets, pens and pencils, a refrigerator magnet, Matchbox car or any other little toy would all be appropriate items to stash in a cache. Food is not a good idea, because the most innocent-looking candy bar could attract animals.
Other items to avoid, according to geocaching.com, are explosives, ammunition, drugs and alcohol.
"Respect the local laws," The Web site advises, and remember that families might search out a geocache, so it's best to keep the contents kid-friendly.
Geocache enthusiasts also recommend picking up and carrying out any trash encountered along the way -- even if you aren’t the person who dropped it.
Aldrich is adamant that's the right thing to do. On her recent expedition, she and her friend gathered and packed out two bags full of bottles and cans from a lookout site near the geocache. It's a perennial party spot, and local hikers know litter has been a problem there for years before the geocache was established.
What you’ll need
To aid your search for a geocache (pronounce it geo-CASH), you'll need a Global Positioning System device. Prices range from $100 to $1000.
The device works by receiving electromagnetic signals from a system of 24 satellites. The signals travel at the speed of light.
"It’s a fairly simple calculation," says Wilkes University geology professor Sid Halsor, who teaches a GPS course that is open to the public as well as full-time students. "At any point on the globe, you should be able to receive a signal from a minimum of four satellites. We know the velocity of the signal, and a clock in the GPS instrument tells you how much time has elapsed. Time multiplied by velocity equals distance."
The technology was developed for the military, but GPS devices have been available to civilians for years.
Halsor, who recently accompanied his students on a geocaching expedition, says "It's a great exercise to get people out in the woods, plus they learn how to navigate."
Still, both professors are concerned that geocaching not lead to damage in wetlands or other ecologically sensitive places. "People need to be mindful about areas in which they establish the caches," Halsor says. "Pay attention to where you're going to generate lots of foot traffic."
Degrees of difficulty
Halsor's class recently recovered a geocache on top of Penobscot Mountain, south of Wilkes-Barre, and one at the Seven Tubs Nature Area in Plains Township.
"Rich," the person who established the latter geocache, warns searchers that reaching it "requires a significant degree of physical prowess and daring... some people won’t find this daunting in the least; others may choose not to even attempt it."
Halsor is willing to describe the necessary feat, which one of his students accomplished.
But Aldrich, who found the cache on a separate excursion, suggests that reporters not ruin the surprise for other geocachers. So we won't.
