Georienteering, anyone?

[Guest DataFerret]

JAT, but has anyone considered combining Geocaching with Orienteering? I suppose the result could be called "Georienteering."

[Guest jeremy]

This has been discussed before. It was originally called a Stamped Offset Cache/Stash, but people have been calling it a Multi-stage cache.

 

Don't think it really needs a new term, it's just a variation of the sport. Other thoughts have been

 

. Clues and hints to where the cache is located nearby

. Starting point for a "fox hunt" (searching for radio transmitting devices

. Coordinates for the next stage of the cache

. Walk xx paces XXX degrees to the cache.

. etc etc.

 

There's always a "rule" that you need to take an item and leave an item, but the game has extremely loose rules. Some caches are just logbooks - and even virtual caches are fine, especially in areas where you can't exactly place a cache (e.g. urban areas).

 

Jeremy

[Guest Mike_Teague]

, where one would leave a deserted car in some location, with the keys nearby.. the idea was to find the keys via GPS, and the car was yours.. Again, nobody has tried this yet either.. The original "GPS Stash" or "Geocache" has proved to be good enough! Dave might have invented the whole idea of GPS Stashes (Geocaching), but he was wild with the "new ideas", for sure..

 

As for the original question:

 

When we originally started playing this game, I always thought of it as "orienteering-lite". In orienteering you find "waypoints" by map and compass (go this distance, on this bearing. look for the 3rd fence post from the south, etc.).. The idea of geocaching was to be somewhat different..

 

It was born of the GPS system, so we figured, all you should need is coordinates (with at least 5-10 foot resolution that all modern GPS's provide -- a hundredth of a minute)... Remember, we were all used to about 10-300 foot accuracy, before hand, and were now getting about 30 foot repeatable accuracy.. Most of the geocaching "old timers" were on the back porch with GPS in hand when SA was turned off on May 5, just to see it happen...

 

I never thought I'd say it, (well sonny, back when I was a kid!) but some of you dont know what it's like looking at your GPS, watching the coordinates and speed wander as you were sitting still with an open sky and 10 sats in view.. This is what it was before last May...

 

In the early debates on the gpsstash mailing list, there were debates on whether or not to post pictures, clues, etc. etc. for each cache.. We collectively decided to leave it up to the creator of the cache...

 

Geocaching has beautifully evolved into a game that basically involves all aspects of ALL of those activities (orienteering, letterboxing), without losing the spirit of the original "GPS Stash Hunt"...

 

I am still amazed, the game has not existed yet for more than 9 months or so... I am so glad to be part of it!

 

The 1 year geocaching anniversary will be coming up this May 5th.. We should do something cool for this occasion.!

[Guest CoastCacher]

Lucky me! I didn't get my GPS (have to ration my "toys") until after SA was off. Guess I'm spoiled.

 

Something special for the anniversary? How about a Party Cache (or more than one). Is there a geographic log of geocachers, so local folks could plan on at least someone attending local events? Pot luck picnic or something? I'd be happy to host one on the California central coast.

 

I'd recommend:

35 16.439N

120 53.302W

[Guest web-ling]

I've got two caches I refer to as "O-Caches" : Miss Pumpkin's O-Cache and Driving Miss Tandy O-Cache . Both involve downloading either a map or aerial with either waypoints (control points in O-Speak) with clues or the cache location. Both are designed to be done without a GPSr.

 

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Web-ling

www.web-ling.com

[Guest apersson850]

I made a test, by scanning an orienteering map, calibrating it in Ozi Explorer, and then setting all the control points used for an orienteering meet as waypoints.

These points have ID number in the range 31-what ever it takes, so you simply give the waypoints the same number.

 

Then you can either go to any point you like, or you can make a route between different points.

 

The first application is good for finding the place out there (and sometimes it tells you a little about how skew the map is).

The second application immediately gives you the length of the course. You can follow it, too, but that ruins the idea of orienteering.

 

Notice that I'm now talking from the organizers point of view. Since the world largest sports competition event, all categories counted, is a Swedish orienteering meet called the O-Ringen 5-days, we have a lot of organizing experience here.

 

Since somebody probably will start talking about Olympics and other small events, I'll just add that no other event have had 25000 participants making 125000 starts in 5 days, using 250000 maps (one to compete on, one to save), creating half a million times to track (start, finish, elapsed and accumulated times five) and also handling all the logistics of housing and transporting all these people, and perhaps 15000 more, as spectators. When I was in charge of the computer communication part of this event in 1995, we needed three times the computing power of the preceeding summer Olympics in Barcelona.

 

Remember, orienteering is the only real spectators sport (virtually every spectator participate!).

 

Anders

[Guest Eoghan]

They're letterboxes, rather than geocaches, but like lots of others, I used 'O' as a starting point for hidden stashes: O-knots