reastick
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Posts posted by reastick
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I skied 55 km yesterday
Jumpin jiminy, where did you ski 55k?
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I think Gonzo-YT's "find" of You Are The Star was really interesting. Something different from the norm, and a good illustration of what GPS technology can do for precision.
Check it out here.
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Canon Digital Rebel. I have been *extremely* happy with it, but am just now realizing that it has a flaw I'm unhappy with: It does not have the little split circle used for manual focusing. It is extremely difficult to focus in situations where the autofocus doesn't work.
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Anyone have recommendations for other caches in the area that I might want to check out?
I have fallen behind the number of caches placed up there, so these recommendations are just *my* favorites.
The best part of Nose Hill for me is the view of Calgary city centre. I think you can take this in from Cat Nose Hill, but even if you can't the cache has some nice aesthetics.
The Nose Hill Animal Colouring Cache has some nice aesthetics too: It's fun! It might be a little difficult to colour a card in -20C weather, but anything warmer than that is worth the effort.
There are also a couple of Brass Caps on Nose Hill, some of which have a view of the city. One is near the old quarry which might be of interest, but it is a fair ways under frozen soil right now so you really *gotta* want that one.
Right Under Dave's Nose! is a virtual, but it is near a glacial erratic that was used as a rubbing stone by the buffalo. I think it is worth a visit, and I think it is near Who Knows.
Advanced Triangulation 3 is near a slightly interesting piece of history. Although it is a stage in a multicache it is still worthwhile if you're at this end of the park (and it counts as a find).
And finally, the one I miss the most: Half of PI(e)!
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I would use the GPS to find my starting point and then try to do the rest of it with compass headings and counting paces, then check to see how close I was to the actual waypoints.
That would be really cool. The cache hasn't had any really oddball attempts in a while, but then again maybe my definition of oddball has changed since j2d2 posted his maze results.
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Benchmarks
in Canada
The Brass Cap Cache is a heck of a lot of fun, and I think one reason is that there is a little community that has built up around it. There are 31 that have been selected in Calgary so far, and everyone who's into it at some point tries to find them all. We do end up trading emails along the lines of "Did you find BCP123 yet? " etc.
With a complete database of all survey markers, it kind of loses its appeal when I can log three on my street between where I get off the bus and my house. What kind of community would build up around that?
Also, the selection of remote caps is often taken as a challenge by some of the cap community. Check out some of the shots on the page to see where outforthehunt has sent some of us.
I kind of hope the US-style benchmark hunting doesn't get approved in Canada, because it might lessen the fun of the Brass Cap Cache.
Please consider this one vote in a nonexistant poll on whether the guidelines should account for similar caches in each state/province.
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If anyone is interested in how the Toys Galore adventure turned out... it was a gang-caching by a party of 9. Great fun. We also found one of OFTH's Brass Cap caches along the way. Logs can be found here:
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...&log=y&decrypt=
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...&log=y&decrypt=
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...&log=y&decrypt=
This is my favorite picture of the ones posted from the adventure:
http://img.Groundspeak.com/cache/log/96442...406b9f0cf9f.jpg
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I suppose I would go for it.
In the mountains near here (Calgary), there are a few caches on top of peaks and in other gnarly locations. Some have been visited; others haven't. I just put one on top of a mountain near Lake Louise, and I don't expect it to get a visitor until the snows have left now.
So long as the journey and destination are rewarding, I think you'll get visits from the gnarlier cachers in your area. I think those attributes are more important than the treasure in the cache. That being said, there's no reward like claiming a "first to find" card.
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(First post in the new forums, so excuse any gibberish...)
I find this link helpful:
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.aspx?country_id=5
New caches are infrequent enough in Alberta that it is a conventient way to keep on top of what's new.
Mileage may vary in your part of the world.
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Some really nice shots, Dave. The morning shots were particularly nice. Some days a light dusting of snow is a good thing (even if you do have to scrape it off your car.)
It's too bad you couldn't see the glaciers at Lake Louise, or make it up the Icefields Parkway. There's some spectacular scenery up there. Kudos for taking the gnalry way up Sulphur Mountain.
Thanks for sharing your shots with us, and I hope you found our Alberta hospitality to your liking (if not the weather).
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There's a pretty strong community in Calgary, but it isn't really a club or anything. There are get-togethers every so often, and the last one even had an attendee from Edmonton I believe.
There is a Calgary Area Cachers mailing list too. It doesn't have a lot of traffic, but occasionally someone points something out or renders an opinion on some matter.
You can join the list by emailing napgravy from his profile page. -
And thus began the hiding of many a fun cache in Calgary. This is truly a historical post.
I'm kinda glad the fora stopped sorting properly so I could see this.reastick - finder of many an OFTH cache, cache event, and brass cap.
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Here are some more in the Banff part of your itinerary. They're just ones that I've done; I'm sure others in the vicinity are great too.
Tunnel Mountain - Banff You can see it in one of JoeyTomato's logs on Sulphur Mountain. A very quick hike with some great view.
Parting Ways Another short hike with a great view.
Don't Eat The Rhubarb! A fun walk through the historical Bankhead ghost town.
There are plenty of others in Kananaskis; let me know if you think you might make it down there and we can recommend some.
Finally, this one hasn't been found yet but it is a good full-day ascent. If you're gnarly.
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quote:
Originally posted by fizzymagic:My estimate is that we'll hit 64K before June.
Cache 65,000 was in fact posted in April. It appears that the rate of cache postings has been exponential for about a year.
This plot shows the caches posted by date (blue, a data point is at every thousand caches) and an exponential fit since cache 35,000 last September (pink):
The r2 is 0.9993. Here it is with a semi-log scale:
For interest, here is the number of caches posted per day, calculated over every 2,000 caches:
My interpretation is that the rate of posting was hyperexponential, and it has since settled down to exponential. But, I only do this for a hobby (sad), so I may be wrong.
(Let me know if these images don't post; I'm reusing an unapproved cache to store them for a bit.)
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. - Attributed to Benjamin Disraeli
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quote:
Originally posted by PDOP's:How are you doing with UTM?
I don't use UTM so much anymore, for a couple of reasons. First, I forgot about UTM offset when doing a cache recently, and spent a fair bit of time looking in the wrong spot. (The log is at Mitford on the Bow (it used to be a math cache).)
Second, there haven't been any math caches posted in my area for a bit, so demand has been low.
I do have a bunch of formulas programmed in VBA so I can do conversions in Excel, so that's cool. And helpful. The one that I was missing was the calculation of the UTM offset, but I programmed that up after my Mitford adventure.
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quote:
Originally posted by PDOP's:Yes. Does my avatar title make sense too?
I was going to delve into the text deeper to see if anything jumped out at me, but I haven't had a chance to. So, no.
I'll just have to guess that many of the caches near Hinton are hidden under low branches, and this is the technique used to retrieve them.
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quote:
Originally posted by PDOP's:There is a good tutorial using UTM on Canadian topomaps at http://www.dbartlett.com/
Is the referece to PDOP on that page where you got your ID from?
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I just had a cache approved in an hour. On a Sunday evening.
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Haven't heard anything in a while. Are the squares arriving in Hull? The Calgary squares in particular?
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Haven't heard anything in a while. Are the squares arriving in Hull? The Calgary squares in particular?
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I picked up the Calgary cache today. I uploaded a picture of the squares to the cache page.
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.asp?id=22293
The squares should be on their way east later today.
Rob.
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I picked up the Calgary cache today. I uploaded a picture of the squares to the cache page.
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.asp?id=22293
The squares should be on their way east later today.
Rob.
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binthair is the king of puzzle caches, as far as I am concerned. Unfortunately, I don't live in the area, but twice I have taken to solving one as best as I can using a map, and emailing him to see if I'm close.
In particular, check out http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.asp?ID=20187. Also, see http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.asp?ID=16651 for an example of an excypted cache clue.
His cache list is at http://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest_cache.asp?u=binthair. Well worth checking out.
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quote:
Originally posted by Web-ling:Looks like we're still growing exponentially.
Still correlates at 0.998 if you go from December. Given that, the correlation predicts we'll hit cache 35000 on August 22, and cache 40000 on September 21.
Ever Wanted A Free El Diablo Hiking Staff?
in General geocaching topics
Posted
Table Mountain in southern Alberta. Lots more great pictures from that day in the other logs.