Team Wildebeest

Nope, no fee's. Take it out of the box, put the batteries in and go!

I got my stick at Eastern Mountain Sports. It was on sale at the end of the season a couple of years ago. It's got a nice cushioned grip with a wrist strap, a cork ball on the top than uncrews to reveal a screw for a camera (monopod), a snow cup, and a rubber cap for the titanium tip. It collapses down to 28", too big to fit in my camelbak, but I found a carabiner that clips it to one of the gear loops. I think it ended up being about $40. I've also heard that walmart sometimes has them for about $10, but I've never seen one in my local store.

Good gear list! I carry most of that whenever I go out too, except for a real rain coat I picked up at walmart for $10. It came with it's own stuff sack and fits over me and the pack. I also carry a collapsable aluminum hiking stick, not only for walking, but for poking under things for caches, snakes, large bugs. I seem to be allergic to most bug repellents so I started wearing light hiking pants tucked into my boots, and a long sleeve shirt. The black flies and skeeters still get me, but the ticks don't. Maybe Avon's Skin so Soft would be a good choice for the 2 year old. It seems to work well, and it's the only kind I can use occasionally without feeling run down for 2 days afterward. I'm not sure about the flashlight. You will be carrying extra AA's for the GPS so how about puting a cheap AA light in the pack. Even the supposedly dead batteries from the GPS will power the light for quite a while.

In GSAK, under the send waypoints to GPS section, change the GPS symbols to Found= Geocache Found, and Not found= Geocache. Placed and archived can be whatever you want. The 60c needs the treasure chest icons for the geocache mode to work.

I've got a camelbak too. Not very big, but enough room for my camera, extra batts, 2 liters of water, swag, some snacks, first aid kit and a raincoat in a stuff sack. I picked it up at Eastern Mountain Sports on clearance 2 years ago. Any outdoor store should carry them or something similar. Make sure you try it on in the store with some weight in it befor you buy.

Hi, welcome to caching. You need to mark a waypoint. press and hold the stick untill mark waypoint appears. Click up to the location box . Change the numbers in the box to whatever the cache page says, and go back down to OK. You can change the name of the waypoint to match the cache name in the same way.

Bobo.. that's funny. Charlene is a good name for a gun too. I've had 2. The first was an etrex venture that I sold to my caching partner. New one is a 60cs. I wanted the better mapping with that one.

We have 25 finds in 4 years, mostly due to not being able to get out as often as we want to. We've done a couple of park-n-grabs, but after doing them we asked, what was the point? Same thing with the small local parks, if I can walk across the whole park in 2 minutes I'm not going to cache there. I'd rather spend 18 hours hiking in the woods and maybe getting 1 find than spend 8 hours driving from park to park and guardrail to parking lot to get 100 finds anyday. That being said, I know a lot of people like the quick, easy caches. Good for them, all of those caches in my area happen to be on my ignore list. I suppose it boils down to the fact that to me caching is a secondary activity to hiking. I'll plan for a hike, if there's a cache near it, great. I'll look for it. If not, great, I have a hike to go on.

Also, a bunch near Lake Placid

I think it would be a good idea to post the fine on the sign, along with what the danger is. The fire itself ,while damaging in a way, isin't the danger. It's the heavy rains which could cause landslides at any time. Without the fines posted I would have gone in, but with that kind of fine, not a chance. And the press relase said the rangers are enforcing it.

Man, I need to get out there more, I'm not even in the top 240.

I sold my b&w venture to a friend and bought a 60cs. Just being able to tell at a glance what might be a stream, road or contour line made the color screen worth it for me. The venture does just fine, but I like the color better.

A camelbak cloud walker w/ a 2 liter bladder for short hikes. I carry the essentials and a cell phone, note book and raincoat. My caching partner has a similar pack and carries the swag, cell phone and raincoat. I have a Kelty moraine 3300 for longer hikes, then I carry everything I need to spend an overnight in the woods myself and so does my partner. The small one is always packed except for the GPS, cell phone and water. Ready to go anytime.

You can use it right out of the box, but like MLK said it depends on what you want to use it for. With city select you can enter an address and get turn by turn directions, or search for things like the nearest gas station or resturant. I have the topo maps loaded on mine right now and it helps to see where the ridges and creeks are in the woods so I can avoid cliffs and things.

I have a Camelbak Cloudwalker for normal caching trips. 2L of water, plus swag, a huge raincoat in a tube, basic first aid kit, and snacks. I usually bring my camera too. I also got a Kelty Moraine 3600 for longer treks. It’ll hold 4L of water, all of the other stuff, plus a change of clothes, 2 days of food and my homemade camping stove. I’m planning on getting a Hennesy hammock and a water filter, so I can ditch one of the water bladders.

I also hook mine to my pack. The GPS goes in it's case, which is clipped to the sternum strap, and the lanyard loops around a plastic d-ring on the shoulder strap just in case the clip breaks or gets snagged. Anything that get close enough to hit the GPS will also whack me in the face so I'll know about it right away.

Last year at Allegneny National forest in PA. 14 hours of hiking and the only rest room was at the parking area, and that was a stone outhouse. A hole in the floor and a pipe leading out the back of the hut. I think there was a regulation posted that relieving yourself in the woods was not allowed, but without any other facilities what are you supposed to do? I feel really bad for anyone who might camp at the sites by the lake, hold it for the duration or hike 6 hours back to the lot.

About 40 local caches are on my ignore list for this very reason. I'm sure they are very nice caches, but they're in small local parks with playgrounds. My caching partner and I are in our early 30's, not married and no kids. We're both exactly what people are told to look for frequenting parks. We decided not to put ourselves in a position to have to prove to people or LE that we are not out trying to snatch kids by not being in those areas to begin with. We only go caching in larger parks or places where backpacks and GPSr's are more common. If I really need to get those caches, a friend of mine would go with me along with her kids, to provide 'cover'. Sure, it cuts down on the number of caches we go for, but since we enjoy the hike to the cache more than the cache itself, park-n-grabs 40 feet from the road aren't our thing anyway. We even went for a cache at Allegheny National forest last year and got so caught up in the hike that we forgot about the cache completly.

I'm pretty close to Canada (Buffalo), but I don't get there as much as I'd like to. Just looking over the story and reading the posts in the Canada forum, it seems to be a very similar ruling to the US parks. No caching in national parks, heritage (historical) sites, etc.

I wouldn't worry too much about loosing the signal. It's going to happen no matter what you do. I clippped my 60sc to the sternum strap on my backpack and never lost signal untill I bent over the cache. My caching partner would occasionally loose signal with his vista. Other times it seems like a single tree would block everyhing. I've found that the better I got at finding the caches the less I needed the GPSr within 100 ft.

I got a gift card to Circuit City a couple of years ago and the only thing at the place that I could afford with it was an Etrex venture. I had fun with that for a while, untill I got bored and looked for something else to do with it. I googled GPS and games and it showed me geocaching. I saw a cache in the woods near a friends house, so we went and tried it. It was a multi but we didn't know that, in fact we had no idea what to look for at all. A year later, we tried again and found it. The next day we went out and got the other 2 in those woods. A week after we found some more. I've since sold the venture to my friend and purchased a 60cs. Now we have 25 finds, not a lot, but we enjoy hiking more than the caching. The destination for the hike always has a cache near it, just in case, even if we don't bother looking for it.

I use a longer lanyard for my 60cs. It's attatched to a loop on one of my pack straps. I also use the belt clip to attatch to the sternum strap. It stays clipped untill I need to look at it, and the lanyard lets it get far enough out so I can see it.

I use mine all the time. I have some pretty good back, hip and knee problems and my doctor sugessted walking to build up the muscles. Since I already had a GPS'r I took up caching. I do really badly on any king of smooth surface like pavement or packed trails. My staff, a telescoping aluminium job, takes a lot of the pressure off on the trip back to the car. After I got hurt and started hiking, spring of last year, I could only do a mile or so. After I got the staff I doubled the distance and am now able to do 15 miles without a problem (Rimrock/Morrison trails at the Allegheny national forest, plus a walk to the overlook.) I won't hike or cache without my staff. Aside from being more stable 3 (or 4) legs intead of 2, they get your upper body into the workout and take some of the weight off your legs, letting you go farther.

I actually do carry a towel in my backpack. It's amazing just how useful the darn thing really is out in the wilderness. BTW have you heard the final episodes of the radio series? It ends on a much more upbeat tone than the trilogy did.

I like 'strag', fits in better with the TB's being what they are than 'muggle' does. Now if you will excuse me I have to get my towel and wipe the condensation off my pan-galactic gargle blaster.