Friday, October 15, 2004
Geocaching
In an effort to learn how to use my GPS, one place I turned to was geocaching. GPS's today are quite powerful little computers, in the early 80's I remember reading an article in backpacker that suggested such a device, back then it seemed like science fiction, but todays units can contain maps and in color, in fact the ones I have also have alarms clocks, calenders, stopwatch's, tide tables, area calculators, just to name a few.
Geocaching is a hobby were folks hide treasure boxes and then post the coordinates at www.geocaching.com. The coordinates or waypoints can be downloaded and put directy into the GPS or manually entered. The person hiding the cache will give some description and sometimes a clue so when your out in the woods or city and you are stumped you can get a little extra idea were to look, these clues are usually encrypted so you don't inadvertantly read them. Then off you go to find it. Most caches contain a log sheet and some trade items, so if there is something you want, take it and leave something behind. other caches may be based on some theme. When you find them, you can then post that find on the websight. My youngest wanted to put one out so we did, it is fun to get an email telling us when someone has found it and there reactions.
On one family backpacking trip this past summer I kept one on my shoulder strap the whole time we were on the move. When we got to camp, I mark the location on my GPS, the next day we made a summit attempt to a 10,000 foot volcano, but we decided to take a different route back to camp. Here is were geocaching came in handy, Once we were off the glacier, i turned on the navigation feature to our camp waypoint and it pointed us the way back, we had to go around a cliff or two and through some trees, but it did a fine job and took us directly back.
Another feature of GPS's is that it can keep a track of were you have been. In my case, when I got home, i was able to download the track onto a USGS topo map program and show the family everywhere we went on the map. This was printed out and put with our family backpacking journal.
If you get interested in geocaching, much of what you would need to know is on www.geocaching.com
Geocaching is a hobby were folks hide treasure boxes and then post the coordinates at www.geocaching.com. The coordinates or waypoints can be downloaded and put directy into the GPS or manually entered. The person hiding the cache will give some description and sometimes a clue so when your out in the woods or city and you are stumped you can get a little extra idea were to look, these clues are usually encrypted so you don't inadvertantly read them. Then off you go to find it. Most caches contain a log sheet and some trade items, so if there is something you want, take it and leave something behind. other caches may be based on some theme. When you find them, you can then post that find on the websight. My youngest wanted to put one out so we did, it is fun to get an email telling us when someone has found it and there reactions.
On one family backpacking trip this past summer I kept one on my shoulder strap the whole time we were on the move. When we got to camp, I mark the location on my GPS, the next day we made a summit attempt to a 10,000 foot volcano, but we decided to take a different route back to camp. Here is were geocaching came in handy, Once we were off the glacier, i turned on the navigation feature to our camp waypoint and it pointed us the way back, we had to go around a cliff or two and through some trees, but it did a fine job and took us directly back.
Another feature of GPS's is that it can keep a track of were you have been. In my case, when I got home, i was able to download the track onto a USGS topo map program and show the family everywhere we went on the map. This was printed out and put with our family backpacking journal.
If you get interested in geocaching, much of what you would need to know is on www.geocaching.com
# posted by Trail Seeker @ 6:51 PM 
