Night Caches

[+ejm92]

With Halloween coming up, I thought it would be cool to do a night cache. But I've wondered, how do you make it only possible at night?

[+Sue Gremlin]

Using reflectors to mark the way is effective. You can't see them during the day. Post the coordinates to the starting point, not to the cache.

[+jadeskyline]

Night Caches on Halloween! Why didn't I think of that! Sounds like fun, GeoTrickorTreating!

[+Chuy!]

Fire Tacks.

 

In San Diego, these two night caches make effective use of them:

The Proctor Valley Monster Project ; and

The Forbidden Forest.

 

Both are very well put together; I recommend them when visiting our financially turmoiled, but otherwise, fine city.

Edited October 4, 2005 by Chuy

[+Harry Dolphin]

Yeah. And I did one of them during the daylight hours. (Night Blindness) Much tougher during the day, but we found the Fire Tacks, and the cache awyway!

[+DocDiTTo]

With Halloween coming up, I thought it would be cool to do a night cache.  But I've wondered, how do you make it only possible at night?

 

Why worry about "enforcing" anything? Design it to be done at night, if people choose to do it during the day it doesn't matter. Sure it might be more fun at night, but people will play this game however they want, regardless of your intentions. Make it a cool night cache, and let the day people figure their own way through it. As long as you let folks know how you intended it to be done, those who are in it for the fun will do it that way. I once did a 7 mile round-trip hiking cache on a mountain at night because that was how it was intended. And you know what? I had a blast. But I am in this for the fun, not for the finds. There's no need to enforce anything. People will do what they want, whether you like it or not. Learn to accept that and you'll have less to worry about and more fun with your game.

[+5¢]

sit out there during the day and tell people not to hunt it till after dusk

[+Touchstone]

I have two night caches, and oddly enough, one has been found multiple times by day (people just follow the firetacks), but the other one hasn't.

 

I used a fair number of firetacks to the first of the caches on the loop trail, but the way the trail goes to the second, and the height I put the tacks at the second, makes the second one harder to spot.

 

If you want to make it fairly "day proof", you might think of either putting the tacks high enough up that they are difficult to see during the day, or putting them further apart and putting them not on the trail side of a tree. They are relatively bright when hit by the beam of a good flashlight that they should be prett easy to spot at night.

 

Make sure you do a run of the trail during the night to test it out. Wouldn't be too nice to get some angry DNF's by leading people astray.

[+Kllr Wolf]

I have been thinking on how do a night cache since there is not any in my area that I know of. I was thinking of using glow in the dark paint for each stage coordinates to make it difficult to do in the daylight. Not sure if it will work, and am still trying to find the right place to do it.

[+Tsegi Mike and Desert Viking]

There is one way. A local cacher set up his "radioactive" series of caches. You cant find them in the daytime (and I tried looking after I found one). He has the tiniest of containers, the size of a grain of rice. They are painted with glow in the dark paint, which shows green under black lights. You can use that to hold the coordinates to the final cache of a multi.

 

An alternative Ive considered doing. Sadly Im too lazy to put it together. Using a glow in the dark paint pen, write the coordinates on a rock in a rock pile. Using a blacklight (or a flashlight to trigger the glow in the dark stuff) they can then get the coordinates to the final cache.

 

I suppose someone really determined could find these in the daytime. Most people will do this in the dark.

[+BigFurryMonster]

What's the difference between a Fire Tack and a 'regular' reflector?

[+Kit Fox]

I have been thinking on how do a night cache since there is not any in my area that I know of. I was thinking of using glow in the dark paint for each stage coordinates to make it difficult to do in the daylight. Not sure if it will work, and am still trying to find the right place to do it.

I'm pretty sure that the UV paint degrades rapidly in direct sunlight.

 

My plan, once I figure how to make them, is to use battery powered LED blinkers. Not the fast blinking novelty LEDs, but a slow (every couple of seconds) blink. This way they would be virtually impossible to find during the day.

 

What's the difference between a Fire Tack and a 'regular' reflector?

Nothing more than different manufacturers.

 

A great referenc site is http://www.nightcaching.org/

[+welch]

But I've wondered, how do you make it only possible at night?

Just do things that make the cache more difficult to find during the day than at night. Firetacks for example, of course if someone's good at finding thumbtacks in the woods they may not be detered.

 

I haven't done the cache yet, but this one involves (amoung other things) counting flashs from a red light. I don't know that it would impossiable to see in the day, but seeing a flashing light has to be easier with the background dimmed.

[+Chuy!]

Why worry about "enforcing" anything?  Design it to be done at night, if people choose to do it during the day it doesn't matter.  Sure it might be more fun at night, but people will play this game however they want, regardless of your intentions.  Make it a cool night cache, and let the day people figure their own way through it.  As long as you let folks know how you intended it to be done, those who are in it for the fun will do it that way.  I once did a 7 mile round-trip hiking cache on a  mountain at night because that was how it was intended.  And you know what? I had a blast.  But I am in this for the fun, not for the finds.  There's no need to enforce anything.  People will do what they want, whether you like it or not.  Learn to accept that and you'll have less to worry about and more fun with your game.

Well said!

 

But to me, the challenge of making it difficult, if not impossible, to find during daylight hours is part of the fun. "Enforce" is too harsh a word.

 

FireTacks Trail Markers™ is a product; the key word is "tack"; it adheres as a normal tack would. Other types of reflectors include tapes and ribbons.

 

What the Dak Girls did in Forbidden Forest was place some reflectors under branches making it virtually impossible to find at daylight. At night time, the cacher has to move around a bit until the light catches the reflector. To my knowledge, no one has ever found their cache during daylight (one did find it at twilight). When it came out, several cachers tried for the FTF during daylight but gave up after finding only 3 or 4 of the 10 or so reflectors.

[+lindsychris]

Another possibility for making it "day-proof" is to use two different colors of reflectors. Pick two that are very different in the dark (red and original white), mark the real path in red, with the white ones as decoys. The reflectors look very similar in the daytime, so just finding the tacks won't help. Just make sure you tell people which color to follow on the cache page!

[+BigFurryMonster]

Make a fake cache, too, at the end of the wrong colour trail.

[+Tsegi Mike and Desert Viking]

I'm pretty sure that the UV paint degrades rapidly in direct sunlight.

 

The glow in the dark caches are 2 yrs old, and still going strong. You cant get much more sunlight than here in Arizona.

[+Kit Fox]

I'm pretty sure that the UV paint degrades rapidly in direct sunlight.

 

The glow in the dark caches are 2 yrs old, and still going strong. You cant get much more sunlight than here in Arizona.

I guess I got bad information

 

Can you link to the company where you purchased the UV paint or a brand name?

[+sept1c_tank]

I probably find 40% of my caches at night (most of them are not specifically night caches), and I have a great desire to create the toughest night cache in these parts.

 

Having said that, here is a method that I discovered visiting my friends in Seattle.

 

 

The diagram above (my own artwork) gives you a visual. The letters A, B, C and D represent reflectors. E is where you have to be to see all four reflectors. From there, you have to shoot a bearing and move a determined distance to the cache (F).

 

When I set up my mega-night-cache, E will be over water (requiring a boat); all the reflectors and the cache will be on land.

[+wornout]

I found a night cache in Alamo, California. I had so much fun doing it, I put one out at home in San Felipe, Baja, Mexico. Most people seeking this cache are cachers on vacation and just in the area for a few days. After one such cacher didn't find it following my 'fire flies', I posted the actual cache location so they would not come away empty and mad. Reason they didn't find it by following the 'fire flies' is a couple of the 'fire flies' were covered up by leaves on the Ocotillo Cactus after a big rain. Cache is GCHB61, San Felipe After Dark.

[+welch]

When I set up my mega-night-cache, E will be over water (requiring a boat); all the reflectors and the cache will be on land.

So this will be a winter time cache??

[+The Jester]

Having said that, here is a method that I discovered visiting my friends in Seattle.

Well, I guess I don't have to respond myself as sept1c_tank said it so well. I'm glad my little cache was so memorable!

[+Tsegi Mike and Desert Viking]

My mistake, the caches are not around now. They lasted a year. They were not my caches, so I do not know where he got the paint.

Edited October 8, 2005 by Tsegi Mike and Desert Viking

[+blairwater101]

good idea on the firetacks ... looked it up and ordered some ... will be setting one soon

[+mayprod]

I just bought a 7 oz. can of Glow In the Dark Rustoleum Specialty paint at Home Depot. I can't speak for the durability of it but I plan on putting a coat of some clear UV protectant over the paint. They also have a reflective finish spray paint as does Krylon.

Edited November 6, 2005 by mayprod

[Hugh Jazz]

You can make use of a laser pointer for 'enforcement.' Have one of the night cache redirectors be a small ammo can containing a cheap low power laser pointer and a special laser pointer cap which together project a faint icon. This would be very hard to read in the daytime. You can get these cheap laser pointers that come with a dozen auxiliary caps that can project images or icons. Unless the daytime-attempter brought their own high powered laser, they would be pretty much stuck at that point. I punch out the 'active element' from the laser pointer cap (it's usually just a clear plastic disc) and carefully embed it in a much larger block of lucite so that it's not so easy to lose out in the wilderness.

[+Sagefox]

...But I've wondered, how do you make it only possible at night?

Your topic also references enforcement. If someone wants to try to find it during the day they should not need to be "enforced" - prevented from logging the find if they are lucky enough to find it.

 

It is a challenge to find night caches during the day, especially for a travelling cacher that can't come back at night.

 

I recently learned about firetacks the hard way. We were some distance from home and discovered one of our PDA caches was a night cache when we arrived at the parking lot. I worked on it anyway figuring I could find the reflectors. Never found one. Now I've got to get back over there at night to see what these little buggers look like.

[Myself248]

I just bought a 7 oz. can of Glow In the Dark Rustoleum Specialty paint at Home Depot. I can't speak for the durability of it but I plan on putting a coat of some clear UV protectant over the paint. They also have a reflective finish spray paint as does Krylon.

The UV-blocking coat will make the GitD paint useless. Luminescent materials absorb light at a short (high-energy) wavelength, store it for a while, and slowly release it in a longer (lower-energy) wavelength.

 

Since they're emitting in the blue-green spectrum, they need to charge from something even higher, specifically ultraviolet. Any covering that blocks UV will prevent your GitD paint from charging. Conversely, a cacher using a small keychain UV light will see your glowing markers vividly.

[+Chance Encounter]

I've had good luck using Krylon Reflect-A-Lite spray paint (available at most Ace hardware stores and a few Big Box home improvement warehouses). It's fairly expensive --- around $10.00 a can --- but well worth the money foor a unique night cache experience. You can design a mask template (I used a Skull and Crossbones pattern) and spray it directly onto tree trunks.

 

During daylight hours the paint is clear, so all you see is the tree bark. Hit it with a flashlight after dark, however, and it reflects the light back in shimmering white. It works best if the light is held at eye level so the reflection is along the focal plane, so mention this in your cache description.

[Keystone]

You can design a mask template (I used a Skull and Crossbones pattern) and spray it directly onto tree trunks.

Hovers finger over "Archive this Cache" button.....

 

but first stops to ask, "Did you obtain permission from the landowner or land manager to do this?"

[+M-T-P]

My only night cache hide makes use of the top of a solar-powered sidewalk light. It is well hidden and impossible to see during daylight since the light is charging instead of elluminating. At dusk, the LED light comes on and is easy visible.

[+olbluesguy]

I'm planning one where the fire tack will be placed in the back end of a pvc tube.

you will have to be lined up perfectly with the tube to see the reflection.

You have to work backwards when placing these.

[+Jeep_Dog]

My only night cache hide makes use of the top of a solar-powered sidewalk light. It is well hidden and impossible to see during daylight since the light is charging instead of elluminating. At dusk, the LED light comes on and is easy visible.

Clever method. Rats! I do not have time to get to Waco before my next excursion to Southwest Asia to grab this one!

 

One word of advice from someone who utilized this type of light along his sidewalk - those darn lights chew through rechargeable batteries faster than a Magellan GPSr.

[+K-SQUARED]

"Caches may be quickly archived if we see the following (which is not inclusive): Caches that deface public or private property, whether a natural or man-made object, in order to provide a clue or a logging method." -Geocaching.com listing requirements (http://www.geocaching.com/about/guidelines.aspx).

 

To me that means we should not be painting glow-in-the-dark marks on trees, etc. I had a reviewer tell me not to put glow paint on the wall of a tunnel/mine once. Fire tacks are fine because they can be removed. All parts of our caches should be easily removable in case there is a problem with where they are set up. Just adding my experience with the topic... -Kevin

[+Chance Encounter]

As I mentioned to Keystone, the night cache in question is on property owned by a family member who gave full permission...

[+Harry Dolphin]

Discriminating against people with night blindness? Just don't put any on my ten-mile list.