Woodland Hiker

I am no expert on Twnshp/range but I remember that some townships have "correction" lines that line up with a longitude and appears to squeeze the sections, making them not square to accomodate decrease in distance as you go northward. Don't know if this would be in the description. Interesting though. Perhaps in the future, descriptions will include Gps coordinates. Surveying has improved since these sections were origionally layed out, which causes confusion in how much land actually lays within the origional descriptions.

RECENTLY I encountered two guys looking for something along one of my favorite hiking trails. I went on my way, and on the return they were just finishing up and getting ready to move to their next cache. Since I knew the trail fairly well I answered some questions, then invited myself along. Found three caches, hiked way harder than I expected to. Got rained on. Climbed steep hills. Had a great time. Next day I invested in a GPS, learned how to use it, and within a couple days found some local caches, BOUGHT A MAP!, drove around to find trailheads for future haunts, and have been telling everyone I know about it. Here’s what I like about it…Life is impossible to get good coordinates for, and hard to navigate to any worthwhile destination. When geocaching , you can plan, navigate, hike, find, and report your victories at the end of the day! That’s success!

I just hiked 3 days straight and now will probably work 2 weeks with little hiking time, but I will e-mail you these 2 places.

I originated the topic “Leave no trace” and, being new to this caching and forum, I really appreciate the response and interest. I do want to be more specific about what I see as a potential problem in hopes of averting the problem as much as possible. I’m speaking of two caches in particular where good coordinates were not able to be given, and therefore, obviously, good coordinates were not able to be read by searchers. That is KEY to the main problem I’m addressing. One is in a canyon and a water runoff area during snow melt and rainfall. The bad coordinates are causing the entire area of approximately 150’ by 300’ to be trampled. The other a steep hill of mostly loose gravel with sparse vegetation recovering from several years of draught. The area being investigated because of bad coordinates is perhaps 500’ by 500‘. The gps does not give good readings in these places because of the surrounding rocks etc. (Yes, very tall rocks, etc; beautiful!) In both locations you can see where the sparse vegetation is abused as footholds and handholds while climbing or sliding. I guess my real gripe is this; when the gps cannot give good coordinates, each person tramples a much greater area than necessary. Both of these places already have erosion problems, especially the one in the canyon where all the water rushes at once, then empties, taking with it lush vegetation loosened by us, as well as it’s surrounding fertile organic composted earthy loamy mulch. And, for those who expressed an interest; yes I’m very new to geocaching, as I said, but have been a Woodland Hiker for 40 years +, have hiked something in most of the 48 states, and hiked off and on here on the Front Range for more than 20 years. I also once owned land with a creek running through it, eroding so swiftly that 4 acres of pasture went down stream in one rainy week. You don’t have to be a geocacher to recognize the potential for erosion. To simplify, if we’d be careful to hide the cache in a place where coordinates can be read accurately, there will be much less damage to the land.

I recently started geo caching and am having a blast. But now I know why I'm seeing an alarming increase in little tramped trails going everywhere off the main trail. I'm especially concerned about 2 caches I recently looked for where they admitedly didn't get good coordinates for the hide, so, naturally, people are tramping all over the area because their arrow always points 150' back in the direction they just came from. Both of these places are eroding without our help. Seems like we of all people should be concerned for the impact on the natural environment.