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Lost My Cell Phone Geocaching.


Milbank

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My son and I went out to hide some geocaches this afternoon.

 

I got back to the house before I realized my phone was no longer in my jacket pocket. :mad:

 

I think I know were I lost it. There was this one steep hill we had climbed up and down.

After my wife gets off work I will go back there with her cell phone and dial my phone to make it ring.

I sure hope I had it turned on.

 

Anyone else ever lose there cell phone geocaching?

Did you go back and find it??

 

My wife is going to love this one...... :mad:

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Once I found and cache and got back to my car and I could not find my keys. I backtracked into the woods, and would you believe I found them. From that point on I have always been paranoid about losing my keys or my phone, so the first thing I do is put them in my jacket pocket and zip it.

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Unfortunately, I also came up missing a cell phone after a fairly steep uphill rock scramble. The rocks were somewhat loosely piled and a search up and down the hill didn't uncover it, nor did ringing the phone from another location (I think the battery was pretty run down when I lost it).

 

Fortunately I had a "new every two" deal, so a replacement phone was free.

 

Unfortunately, on a CITO a week later, I discovered the phone was no longer in my holster after slipping on a muddy riverbank. I had wound up sitting in the mud at the edge of the river, muddy down to my knees and undwerwater below that. Although ringing the phone seemed futile given its probable location, we tried anywaywithout success.

 

Fortunately, when I got home, I heard a folorn beeping sound from the desk drawer where the phone had apparently fallen before I even left the house.

 

The holster was obviously NOT holding the phone well. For a little while, I zipped it in a pocket, but it was pretty inconvenient to answer that way. I had to do something to make this phone last at least another two years or be prepared to pay a real premium price.

 

Very fortunately, It turns out that GearKeeper makes a great cellphone tether for about $20. It's a thin steel cable on a industrial strength clip with a low-force reel (about 3 ounces of "tug") and several options to attach to the phone. It works great! I got mine online at Bass Pro, but I've seen them at Radio Shack since.

 

The phone has come out of my pocket or worked loose from the holster several times since, but the tether has always held it dangling close to my belt and avoided a lost or dropped phone.

 

So yeah, you're not the first and there are some good workarounds.

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Had basically the same thing happen to me as Milbank had happen. After a long day of caching, I got back to the car at dark and reached for my phone to let the woman know I was on my way home, and behold it was gone. Went back the next morning and was able to call it with another phone and found it right where I thought I lost it when I bent down for a cache.

I've also dropped it off a pier at the ocean, found a net and fished it out from about 10' deep about 15 minutes later. Rinsed it off, let it dry, and it turned right on! Loved my v60i!

 

Good luck finding your phone!!

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6 times.

 

I used to have a cell phone with a clip. I kept it clipped into my pocket. Numeroues times taking out my Palm and GPSr would OFTEN cause my cell phone to get dislodged and I would have to go back and find it. A couple times I wouldn't have found it if it weren't for my tracks in the snow. Eventually, I lost it for good and had to get a new phone, which I keep in the breast zipper pockey of my jacket or in my bag.

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Anyone else ever lose there cell phone geocaching?

Did you go back and find it??

 

My wife is going to love this one...... :mad:

 

I've have both lost a phone and found a phone while geocaching.

 

My cell phone was in a swivel holster that was basically an elastic pocket that held the phone in with friction. I walked a trail in the woods, both on the trail and off in the leaves, looking for a spot to place a cache. Shot several sets of coord's and left the park for Wal-Mart to get 35mm film cannisters. At Wal-Mart I reached down to my belt to make a call. NO PHONE! Checked the truck and it wasn't anywhere to be found. Went back to the trail to look for my phone. I couldn't take another phone to search with, since I had left mine on vibrate. Found it laying in the middle of the trail about one minute before some other hikers came along.

 

Searching for a cache with my son, we found a cell phone in the leaves. There was moisture under the slip on cover and the battery was dead. Cover had an address label on it that was partially legible. Was able to find the owners in the phone book and called to let them know we had found their phone. Turns out it was lost in November and we found it in January! They had already replaced the phone and had no use for the old phone. We took it apart, dried it ou and charged it. Appears to work normally. Now my son wan'ts to activate it (he's only 12).

 

JohnTee

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Anyone else ever lose there cell phone geocaching?

Did you go back and find it??

 

My wife is going to love this one...... :mad:

 

They had already replaced the phone and had no use for the old phone. We took it apart, dried it ou and charged it. Appears to work normally. Now my son wan'ts to activate it (he's only 12).

 

JohnTee

 

Probably can't be done. If the phone was reported lost, which it likely was, it has been blacklisted. This means the esn cannot be activated and the cell phone cannot be used.

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My wife lost hers on our very first hunt! I went back to the site and followed my Track

Path on the GPSr while dialing her number over and over until I heard the ring and found it! Instant justification for the cost of my 1st Geko ($70 on clearence) vs getting a new phone (easily over $100)!

:mad:

 

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LU...9e-7ae4e92887f1

Edited by Lostboy1966
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I haven't lost my cell phone while geocaching yet, but I'm sure I will.

 

I did lose my GPSr once. I had safely tucked my Garmin into a pocket, but apparently I had left the lanyard dangling. A tree branch snagged the lanyard and cleanly picked my pocket - I didn't notice the GPSr was missing until I got back to my car.

 

I hiked back and found the device hanging from a branch about 10 feet from the cache.

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haven't lost my phone ..yet. but i did once lose my keys while out caching on 4-wheelers. when we got back to the truck to load up..ahhhh... no keys. searched for a bit but we just rode around too much. i called the wife (on the phone i haven't lost yet) to bring me the spare set of keys and boy was she unhappy. we were an hour and a half from home and she had to bring them to a place she had never been, with no clue how to get there. needless to say there are now 2 sets of keys with me always.

i also lost my gpsr while doing a cache on an island in the middle of the spring river. well actually before the cache. we canoed over a small waterfall and rolled. everthing went floating downstream but my gpsr just sank like a rock. after we chased everything down i realized it was gone too, so i waded back up to the rollover site and there it was under 5 feet of water. it was still on and had reception so we continued on to the cache.

maybe one of these days i'll get lucky and lose my phone..'til then...........

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Probably can't be done. If the phone was reported lost, which it likely was, it has been blacklisted. This means the esn cannot be activated and the cell phone cannot be used.

 

Heh, heh, heh . . . News Flash for him . . . It's not happening! :):mad:

 

Just 'cause he wants it, doesn't mean he NEEDS it. :mad:

 

JohnTee

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My son and I went out to hide some geocaches this afternoon.

 

I got back to the house before I realized my phone was no longer in my jacket pocket. :mad:

 

I think I know were I lost it. There was this one steep hill we had climbed up and down.

After my wife gets off work I will go back there with her cell phone and dial my phone to make it ring.

I sure hope I had it turned on.

 

Anyone else ever lose there cell phone geocaching?

Did you go back and find it??

 

My wife is going to love this one...... :mad:

 

actually...I think it was when I was benchmarking....

and that was in a landfill. it stayed there.

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Anyone else ever lose there cell phone geocaching?

 

Have a seat, this might take a minute.

 

I've lost the following. Some permanent, others I was able to recover.

2 cell phones, 4 GPSrs, 1 PDA, Keys, Travel Bugs, left a cup of coffee on top of my car a few times, left my GPS up there a couple of times too, a cache, (yep, I was hiding a few caches one day, put one down to tie my shoe and left it right on the trail. Came back about 2 weeks later, cache was still there and the logbook was signed by a non-cacher. True story.) uuh.. I think that's about it.

 

Here's a funny story about losing a cell phone. Well, it's not really about the cell phone but it's still a good story: Willow Lake.

Edited by JMBella
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Anyone else ever lose there cell phone geocaching?

Did you go back and find it??

 

My wife is going to love this one...... :D

 

They had already replaced the phone and had no use for the old phone. We took it apart, dried it ou and charged it. Appears to work normally. Now my son wan'ts to activate it (he's only 12).

 

JohnTee

 

Probably can't be done. If the phone was reported lost, which it likely was, it has been blacklisted. This means the esn cannot be activated and the cell phone cannot be used.

 

I am told that You don't have to have it activated to use 911.

Why not keep it charged and keep it in the glove box just in case.

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Haven't lost one cacheing(yet!) but I have lost two in the water while fishing. I've also lost an Amateur radio handy talky, two tackle boxes, and countless sun glasses and hats.

 

Those were just offering to the River/Lake Gods, to please them for a bountiful harvest of fish. I can't begin to count the many hats, sunglasses, cellphones and sneakers I've lost on are around the rivers and lakes I've kayaked.

 

You have to give the gods credit though, they hate giving up what's been offered to them.

 

"If man had meant for cellphones to float, he would have given them swimming lessons."

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To prevent losing stuff as has been described in the many posts to this thread, I always do the following:

 

- Carry a backpack when I'm geocaching

- Put my cell phone in a zipped compartment in the backpack

- Carry my GPS with a lanyard around my neck

- Hide my "massive" car key chain in my vehicle, lock the vehicle and carry a single key in a secure pocket

 

Now, if I could just remember where I put that cache...... :D

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Lost a cellphone at a cache? Yup.... been there, done that. I had my cellphone on my belt fasten by the stock holder. I had had the phone for a little over a year in a 3rd party case but the case had fallen apart so that's why I put it into the stock holder. I never really liked the design of that holder and had been using it for almost a month and knew that had a problem falling off.

 

Well... I saw this cache just recently published. I grab my gps, flashlight, and cellphone. Trampled around trying to find the right horse trail. I remember just before finding the cache glanced at my phone so I could include the time in my log... and that was the last time I saw my phone. I didn't mind so much.. it was a crummy Sieman's S-40 so I basically bought another subscription and got a new phone for my troubles...

 

My co-worker has left his GPS (Garmin III) at a cache TWICE. The first time another cacher who knew him was kind enought to pick it up and e-mail him... however a few weeks later he did the same thing... and the it was NEVER to be seen again. ;)

 

BUT that forced him to buy a Garmin V+.

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Thought I lost my car key today. Spent several minutes looking in the leaf litter for the single key and auto remote. NADA. Had the spare out and was down the road to the next stop. Saw it sitting in the back seat where I had reached for my hiking stick, with key in hand I guess.

I have a new cell phone that wasn't lost it I killed it. It was open on the dash and then dove off into an open cup of sweet tea. The one that I told myself that I didn't need a lid for. When I pulled away from the cache off into the cup it went. I tried alcohol, water, and nothing changed the fact that the flash from the camera stayed on all the time the battery was in place and just a few minutes after being turned on the screen would change colors and fade away. First phone I've had insurance on and it was a painless, well minus the deductable transaction. New phone in hand the next day.

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My brother in-law lost his cell phone when he was placing his first cache. It was a 1.5 terrain rating only 500 from parking, but he went back multiple times with no luck finding it. He gave me the coords to the cache on the day before it was an approved cache. My son and I went out searching for the cache and within 5 mins the GPS led us to ground zero. But instead of finding the cache at that location, we found his cell phone. Bright yellow in a green mossy area. It took us another 15 min to actually find the cache. We called him up and told him the story and he laughed. You can read the logs for the cache at http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...&log=y&decrypt=

 

*Jeff*

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Funny you should mention it. I lost mine yesterday while doing some caches on the way home from Houston. I had put it on my belt when i headed into the woods for one of the caches then i noticed it was gone about 6 caches later. Backtracked to find it (about 30 miles and after sunset) using Chicken's cellphone to dial the number and hopefully hear the ring. Got lucky and heard it on the 2nd cache then went into the brush and found it hanging on a branch. :tired:

 

Oh, i did lose a less than a month old Garmin mapping GPSr too a couple of years ago,, but i don't wanna talk about that. :tired:

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