Coolest Way to Cache EVER!

[+Bamilbis]

I'm a pilot and I'm talking to a pilot friend who flies a helicopter and does SAR (search and rescue). The topic of caching comes up and he tells me, yeah...we do that for training. He said its great for simulating a down hiker. They plot the lat/long of a cache, enter a search pattern and look for an insertion point, land and make their way to the hiker...plus they get a smiley face too!

 

How cool would caching be if you had a government paid helicopter to do it in? Anybody ever see a bunch of folks in jump suits and crash helmets with a rescue kit looking out for muggles?

Edited April 24, 2012 by CatfishPilot

[+Max and 99]

I'm a pilot and I'm talking to a pilot friend who flies a helicopter and does SAR (search and rescue). The topic of caching comes up and he tells me, yeah...we do that for training. He said its great for simulating a down hiker. They plot the lat/long of a cache, enter a search pattern and look for an insertion point, land and make their way to the hiker...plus they get a smiley face too!

 

How cool would caching be if you had a government paid helicopter to do it in? Anybody ever see a bunch of folks in jump suits and crash helmets with a rescue kit looking out for muggles?

 

If they found a cache of mine that way, they better post photos!

[+The A-Team]

I'll re-post the link to the Latitude 47 blog post where some cachers in my area got a FTF on top of a mountain by helicopter. They signed the log with "Quick, easy, find."

[+DragonsWest]

Gonna be interesting to see how they get that helicopter into a tunnel, but then, James Bond flew one in a building ...

[+lamoracke]

some guy at a recent CITO whose name will be anonymous said he plans to fly to as many western US states and cache as possible in one day. I told him I would gladly pass on the offer should you want some company as that would scare the daylight out of me.

[AZcachemeister]

I had a cache that was (probably the first and only cache) found by hot-air balloon.

It was intended as a rock-climbing cache, but one of our locals is also a balloon pilot, and since nobody had claimed the FTF, he decided he was going to do it in his balloon.

 

Way to go Scott!

 

Shiver Me Timbers

[+captnemo]

I had a cache that was (probably the first and only cache) found by hot-air balloon.

It was intended as a rock-climbing cache, but one of our locals is also a balloon pilot, and since nobody had claimed the FTF, he decided he was going to do it in his balloon.

 

Way to go Scott!

 

Shiver Me Timbers

Wow, as a Hot Air Balloon crew member this would have been great, I sent the picture to my Crew Chief and Balloon Pilot. Don't think they would go for it.

[+TeamPanda173]

That picture was awesome!!!! Thanks for sharing.

[+J the Goat]

I had a cache that was (probably the first and only cache) found by hot-air balloon.

It was intended as a rock-climbing cache, but one of our locals is also a balloon pilot, and since nobody had claimed the FTF, he decided he was going to do it in his balloon.

 

Way to go Scott!

 

Shiver Me Timbers

 

That's a tremendous picture. Looks like a great cache, too bad it had to go.

[+ohmelli]

I had a cache that was (probably the first and only cache) found by hot-air balloon.

It was intended as a rock-climbing cache, but one of our locals is also a balloon pilot, and since nobody had claimed the FTF, he decided he was going to do it in his balloon.

 

Way to go Scott!

 

Shiver Me Timbers

 

I LOVE it!!! That is the AWESOME thing about this game... it can be ANYTHING you want to make it! I'm not THAT adventuresome... but I sure do admire those who are!

[+Team Pixos]

Amazing

[+J the Goat]

Oh, and I didn't mean to ignore the OP, that's quite the vehicle to use for some caching. I've got one or two they might be able to do that with, do they take requests? :laughing:

[+Bamilbis]

I think they just do map searches like the rest of us. I thought it was cool how well a random cache can actually help train SAR professionals.

[+hukilaulau]

I am on a tight budget right now so I can't afford a helicopter or a balloon.

I think it's so unfair that only an elite few get to use helicopters and balloons to go geocaching.

My free membership should include access to a helicopter or a balloon paid for by Groundspeak.

 

 

[+briansnat]

Pretty cool

Edited April 25, 2012 by briansnat

[+MartyBartfast]

I was at an event once at a pub in London, when a cacher who flies with the Police helicopters 'attended' by hovering over the area catching us all in the spotlight - that was pretty cool.

[+redsox_mark]

How cool would caching be if you had a government paid helicopter to do it in? Anybody ever see a bunch of folks in jump suits and crash helmets with a rescue kit looking out for muggles?

 

The closest I have come to seeing something like that was This log.

This cache was on my watchlist (I would do it myself later) and I was very concerned to see what looked like photos of a cacher being rescued. In fact the cacher stumbled upon a practice search and rescue which happened to be by a cave entrance leading to a geocache. Eventually he came clean.

[+lamoracke]

I see that AZCacheMeister's log made the facebook shared story from Geocaching.com today...

 

Geocaching... by hot air balloon! You've probably driven, biked, climbed, walked, hiked, (crawled?) to find a geocache... what other modes of transportation have you taken to find a geocache?

[+GrateBear]

There have been a couple of caches I've tried to find that I wish I had a helicopter. Looked for one today and the closest I could drive was 1.5 miles, but the way was blocked by a fence with "No Tresspassing" signs. Same thing with another a few months ago. More and more high desert roads are being closed, and these are two very old caches.

[+OZ2CPU]

in FL Orlando, you can hire a helicopter for 5 mins for 80 $

I did this once with my kids and it was worth every $ :-)

man it was a great ride,

I am sure you can pay a bit extra and get him to fly a special place to take a cache if you like,

why not try ?

[+Flatiron & Mrs. Wrangler]

Well, AZcachemeister stole my thunder, darn it. I was going to ask if anyone had ever gotten a cache by hot-air ballon, but he beat me to it. I was lucky enough to be one of the five guys that got Steve's cache that day, and I was told that it was the first time it had ever been done before, though I've never been able to verify that. It was sure a fun day, but walking a hot-air ballon across our desert terrain was a little more difficult than I thought it would be. Holding the guy lines so we could manuever the ballon to the correct position was no easy feat either. It was really cool, though, to lean out of the ballon and snatch the cache from it's hiding spot. To make sure we all did the cache legitimately, we each went up in the ballon and signed the cache in person. I'd have liked to seen AZcachemeister's face when he saw that so many cachers he knew that weren't climbers claimed a find on his cache. Our pilot Scott went thru 4 or 5 bottles of propane to accomplish this feat, and we were all amazed at his piloting skills that day. It was definietly one of the more memorable days of my geocaching career. Way to go Scott!

[+CanadianRockies]

Geocaching... by hot air balloon! You've probably driven, biked, climbed, walked, hiked, (crawled?) to find a geocache... what other modes of transportation have you taken to find a geocache?

Although a "Horses allowed" attribute is available, I've never read a log where someone rode a horse to a cache. And I live in cowboy country.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

I see that AZCacheMeister's log made the facebook shared story from Geocaching.com today...

 

Geocaching... by hot air balloon! You've probably driven, biked, climbed, walked, hiked, (crawled?) to find a geocache... what other modes of transportation have you taken to find a geocache?

 

Kayak: several caches found by kayak.

 

Taxi/Bus: for my first find in Colorado from/to the hotel I was staying in.

 

Subway: took the subway from the airport into the center of Paris during a 7 hour layover to find a few caches.

 

Hired driver. I had a private driver during a four day trip in Tanzania that took me (and a non-cacher) to Mikumi National Park where I found my only Tanzanian cache.

 

One that I had hoped to do in Maine would involve taking a Ferry ride over to an island to find a puzzle cache that I was FTS.

 

Something I haven't done yet but hope to: Cruise ship.

[+lamoracke]

had to crawl to a cache once, but that was only because I injured myself and was too stubborn to give up finding that darn cache.

[+littlegemsy]

I can't help thinking jumping stilts (http://www.ghostbikes.com/categorylist/PowerBock-Shop-Jumping-Stilts-Adult-Pro-Jump-Exo-Pro/) would be kind of cool. Not sure if they'r eok "off road" as such though...

 

But if you really can run at 25MPH on them, you could save some money on petrol (gas) too!

[+G & C]

in FL Orlando, you can hire a helicopter for 5 mins for 80 $

I did this once with my kids and it was worth every $ :-)

man it was a great ride,

I am sure you can pay a bit extra and get him to fly a special place to take a cache if you like,

why not try ?

 

5 minutes for $80 is insanely expensive.

 

I bet you could walk into a helicopter flight school and find a CFI willing to build some time and make some cache (pun intended!) to fly you around for an entire hour for around double that $80.

[grammy12342]

I see that AZCacheMeister's log made the facebook shared story from Geocaching.com today...

 

Geocaching... by hot air balloon! You've probably driven, biked, climbed, walked, hiked, (crawled?) to find a geocache... what other modes of transportation have you taken to find a geocache?

 

Kayak: several caches found by kayak.

 

Taxi/Bus: for my first find in Colorado from/to the hotel I was staying in.

 

Subway: took the subway from the airport into the center of Paris during a 7 hour layover to find a few caches.

 

Hired driver. I had a private driver during a four day trip in Tanzania that took me (and a non-cacher) to Mikumi National Park where I found my only Tanzanian cache.

 

One that I had hoped to do in Maine would involve taking a Ferry ride over to an island to find a puzzle cache that I was FTS.

 

Something I haven't done yet but hope to: Cruise ship.

[grammy12342]

I see that AZCacheMeister's log made the facebook shared story from Geocaching.com today...

 

Geocaching... by hot air balloon! You've probably driven, biked, climbed, walked, hiked, (crawled?) to find a geocache... what other modes of transportation have you taken to find a geocache?

 

Kayak: several caches found by kayak.

 

Taxi/Bus: for my first find in Colorado from/to the hotel I was staying in.

 

Subway: took the subway from the airport into the center of Paris during a 7 hour layover to find a few caches.

 

Hired driver. I had a private driver during a four day trip in Tanzania that took me (and a non-cacher) to Mikumi National Park where I found my only Tanzanian cache.

 

One that I had hoped to do in Maine would involve taking a Ferry ride over to an island to find a puzzle cache that I was FTS.

 

Something I haven't done yet but hope to: Cruise ship.