How far have you walked to find a cache?

[+Corfman Clan]

Late last November, I started section hiking the Arizona National Scenic Trail. It's an 800 mile trail through Arizona from the Mexican border to the Utah border. The first section I hiked was 62 miles and I found a cache very near the end of the hike. I noted in my log how I had never walked so far to find a cache before. Since then, I have hiked several more sections, the shortest of about 37 miles and the longest about 95 miles, finding caches along the way.

 

So after covering more than half the trail, I've walked some pretty long distances to find some caches and am wondering how far others have walked to find caches too.

[+wmpastor]

Over a mile at the upper end and as little as 10 feet at the lower end.

[+SageTracey]

Great effort, Corfman Clan! I have arthritis in my foot so I look for other transport options to get as close to GZ as I can before I start walking. Cycling is both good for my foot and for caching.

[+T.D.M.22]

Low end? Exactly zero extra distance. I just happened to check for caches, and there was one where I was standing.

 

High end? I think it was 2 kilometers from start to finish. (Just over a mile) but that was my own fault. I walked to the cache, or almost to the cache. Then I realized, since I assumed I knew where it was, it was on the other side of a valley, and stream I couldn't cross. So had to walk back, almost to my starting point, then to the cache the right way.

 

How far would I go? Depends. I'd do a 2 day hike for one cache in the mountains, but I don't think I'd walk for more than an hour on the flat prairie. Same reason I haven't done the local powertrails, it gets boring looking at mustard, cows, and canola for hours at a time.

[TahoeJoe]

Late last November, I started section hiking the Arizona National Scenic Trail. It's an 800 mile trail through Arizona from the Mexican border to the Utah border. The first section I hiked was 62 miles and I found a cache very near the end of the hike. I noted in my log how I had never walked so far to find a cache before. Since then, I have hiked several more sections, the shortest of about 37 miles and the longest about 95 miles, finding caches along the way.

 

So after covering more than half the trail, I've walked some pretty long distances to find some caches and am wondering how far others have walked to find caches too.

Great accomplishment! I've hiked a few 5 or 6 miles away but not the distance you covered.

[+Roman!]

I've done hikes pushing 20 miles on many occasions most with major elevation gains of 2500-4000 feet to grab a cache.

Edited May 6, 2015 by Roman!

[+Misha]

about ten miles!

[+SwineFlew]

A 14 miles round trip for one cache from the nearest trailhead was the most I ever done. I think it would be a little hard to top that.

[+Touchstone]

The longest was 70+ miles, for a Multi, but it was spread out over several days, in order to get all the Stages.

 

For a single trip, I can think of a couple that were in the 20 mile range.

 

Good luck on your section hiking!

[+Fugads]

For a high CP cache, there is no limit to what I would do[... man I miss living in a Lonelycacheproject region. My longest hike for a geocache was a 26.5 mile hike to get Reeds Peak, in New Mexico. I had plans to go after a 40 mile backpacking cache in the Gila, but both times I was ready to go I was thwarted (once by a death in the family, and another time by flooding on the Gila).

 

Right now I'm working on hiking all the completed segments of the Cumberland Trail in Tennessee. The segments are in the 8-15 mile range (one way). I have have found some nice caches along the trail, and other segments have none, so I have been trying to plant some hides while I'm out there. Getting permits isn't always straightforward though, which is a pain, but good trails like these deserve a cache or two to lure the geocacher/hiker out. Your accomplishments in Arizona are awesome. In my eyes, you are certainly a cacher to look up to.

 

Oh, and when is the LCP going to go nationwide?

[+Harry Dolphin]

Hiking for the cache? Or finding a cache on the hike?

My sister and I hiked the Presi Traverse. Twenty three miles, 9000 feet of elevation gain. I was section hiking the AT. My sister was peak bagging. We logged two caches on the way. (And hid a webcam cache...) But the caches were coincidental to the hike. We would have hiked it without the caches.

[+Ma & Pa]

Hiking for the cache? Or finding a cache on the hike? ..............

 

Exactly what I was thinking.

 

We have done backpacking trips where we picked up a few caches over the few days of the hike, but the cache was not the purpose of the hike.

 

We have had geocaching days where we attacked caches in an area byhiking more than 10 miles, but the goal was not to get just one cache.

 

We have a cache at the end of a dune which requires 11 kms to get to it and another 11 kms to get back, unless you have a boat of course.

 

PAul

Edited May 7, 2015 by Ma & Pa

[+Corfman Clan]

For a high CP cache, there is no limit to what I would do[... man I miss living in a Lonelycacheproject region. My longest hike for a geocache was a 26.5 mile hike to get Reeds Peak, in New Mexico

Sweet! I'd love to hike the CDT. Maybe I'll get out that way some day.

 

Oh, and when is the LCP going to go nationwide?

I'd love to but I think that would over do its welcome with the web hosting company.

[+Corfman Clan]

But the caches were coincidental to the hike. We would have hiked it without the caches.

Exactly. I didn't mean to only state distances where the sole purpose of the hike was to find the cache. My first example where I walked 62 miles to find the cache would have only been a hundred yards or so if it was the sole objective.

[+niraD]

Wow... Your hikes are pretty impressive, Corfman Clan. My longest geocaching hikes have been much more modest: roughly 13-14 miles, once as an easy 2-day backpacking trip, and a couple times as day hikes.

 

One of the members of the GBA offers a geocoin to other members who complete a "deathmarch", which is a geocaching hike with a total distance of 12+ miles (plus a few other criteria). One of these days, I'd like to actually join one. I've done that distance; I just haven't met the other criteria while doing that distance.

[+AustinMN]

Never more than a couple miles, round trip.

[+Crow-T-Robot]

Much respect, Corfman Clan! Those hikes are impressive.

 

Going by the criteria of "furthest to hike for a single cache"-the longest hike I've taken was right around 14 miles. According to the GPS, the cache was 3 miles away but it was hidden along a river. It was winter, so I just hiked the river to the cache. When I graphed it out at home, it added up to a smidge over 14 miles.

 

I think there have been times that I've hiked further in combined distances, but that was finding multiple caches all over in state parks, so I'm not real sure just how far it was in total. Probably no more than 20 miles.

[+Ringrat]

Tough question!

I fall into the "hiking anyway but geocaching along the way" group, especially when it comes to long hikes. In general if I'm hiking with geocaching being the primary goal I'm probably going for the day and not more than 35 km (21 miles or so). The longest hike I've done was the 184 km (114 mile) long Walkers' Haute Route and I found 2 caches along the way. It was in 2008, so there weren't too many en route and I wasn't willing to do much detouring. There are a few more along the way now, but still not many.

[cezanne]

I've done a number of hiking multi caches that cover a longer distance.

 

This one http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC22D00_lets-rug?guid=6d831ec0-e0b0-40a0-ba52-3cb2e630de33 is a hike of around 120km. I split it in seven parts (I had serious knee issues at that time) and only

used public transportation to get to the starting points and thus ended up with considerably more than 120 km.

 

This one is about 180km long http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC22D00_lets-rug?guid=6d831ec0-e0b0-40a0-ba52-3cb2e630de33 . I also had to split it into several parts. I liked the area so much that I walked along more than half of the route again with a friend when she did the cache.

 

This one is only about 70km long but involves a lot of height meters (and ups and downs)

http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC2XY7N_steirischer-02-gleinalpe

As a friend and myself could not find 3 or 4 contiguous days we split it up into 2 times 2 days (or rather 1.5 days for the second half).

 

This one covers http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC2WT7J_steirischer-02-fischbacher-alpen >82 km but due to our route choice we ended up with a longer distance.

 

I did that one

http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC5121B_444-von-modling-nach-grinzing?guid=3cbbf70f-0352-42b9-ad5a-0b1c446ffba9

which covers more than 54km when done with public transportation - we ended up with 3 days (would have been possible in two if we had done a longer first day but stopping where we stopped was most convenient at that day).

 

I like multi caches that cover a long distance. The longest distance on one day I covered for one of the caches mentioned above was around 35km but with less than 1000 height meters covered. That already goes to my limits as I have some joint problems. Otherwise I would also like to cover 40km distances on a single day.

The highest amount of height meters covered on a cache day for a single cache was around 2500.

 

All the caches above range among my favourite caches. Of course such caches are not the ideal caches for normal weekend caching. When I have only a single day available multi caches hike of length between 15 and 25km are my favourite.

Edited May 7, 2015 by cezanne

[Alvater]

I usually cache while walking my dog so my longest walks have been at least 8 km because some of my finds are about 4 km away from my home and that is probably the aerial route, not by the road. Because I have found all caches inside the 4-5 circle my walks seem to get longer...

 

One cache I have logged while biking and that is 10 km from here.

[+jellis]

Are you talking one way or both and are you talking about one cache or just caching on one trip?

I believe the longest I took was a round trip (loop) in the Sunol Wilderness that was about 18 miles with the Alamogul and we cached bottles of water and our jackets and took coords. I had one goal for going there and he had another. Don't remember how many I found along the way. He had less since some of the caches I found were his. Lots of elevation gains and losses. We were both tired and sore and ready to die once we were done. Spotted some free range horses out there too.

[+zoothornrollo]

Hubby and I had the hike to Phantom Ranch at bottom of Grand Canyon on our bucket list for years. When we turned 55, we decided we had better get on with it. We spent about 3 weeks hiking (and caching) 6-8 mile stretches in NM, CO, and UT at higher elevations (we live close to sea level) to condition ourselves before starting the "big one." We hiked South Kaibab Trail down to Phantom (approx. 7 miles), spent two nights, then hiked out on Bright Angel (about 10 miles). Of course, the hike was the objective, but we were able to complete a 6-stage virtual/multi cache "South Kaibab to Bright Angel" and sign the Bright Angel Trail log book (one of the few traditionals in the NPS system).

 

Longest hike just for caching purposes was "Four Cache Loop" in Sam Houston National Forest, TX that was 10 miles round-trip for one smilie.

Edited May 8, 2015 by zoothornrollo

[+Shop99er]

A 7-mile round trip for Tunnel of Light.

 

8-mile RT for an event. Really.

[+MountainWoods]

My wife and I once walked about a mile to log a cache, but didn't get all the way there. As we walked down the deeply descending ridge, we realized that we were both pretty tired from the nearly .5 mile walk in rough Ozark woods; and that I am just too rotund to think about getting the rest of the way down, and then have to hike back the .5 miles. With the first part of that being nearly vertical. So we turned our shaking legs around and headed back toward the car. We were dead tired when we got back, and could only imagine what it would have been like if we'd have continued descending.

 

If you think that sounds wimpy, you need to look at the number of isoclines that we walked through just to get to where we did get to. The cache was placed by someone a good 35 years younger than us, so I'm sure a lot of folks could get to it with no problem. But not when you get to our age and my weight!

 

I've easily walked about 3/4 miles for geocaches before. But they weren't nearly straight down and straight up!

[CleverPaella]

A friend (Crazycossack) and I did a fifteen mile hike today, round trip, which felt pretty far for someone who doesn't normally hike very far at all! However, we did manage to get five caches out of it, so I suppose it's worth it - even with the rain trying to ruin the day. I suppose Geocaching is just one of those things that makes folk do some pretty amazing things, just to log that one more find.

[+barefootjeff]

On Saturday I hiked about 3 or 4km doing the GC5TMBE 8-stage multi, but my longest hike for a single cache would probably be the Medium Hike Challenge (GC5HX3W) which was about a 6km round trip. Probably not all that remarkable, except I do all my caching barefoot.

[GPS-Hermit]

I have a cache that is 7 miles round trip and people that do it consider it a ball and are proud of their bragging rights.!

[DerPate]

My longest hikes for a cache:

 

350 miles / 560 km:

http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC1FPN1

 

1200 miles / 2000 km:

http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC11PTE