High-Tech
Hunt
If
it's treasure you seek, break out the GPS.
BY
ERIC HENDRICKSEN
Last November, as I set out down the Sweet Creek trailhead, fog was
drifting down the hills. It diffused the daylight and shrouded the
trees. The creek, which is just a trickle in the summer, was now surging
from the Oregon winter rain. The trail passed by one thin, silver
waterfall after another. It was beautiful — and most of it was
lost on me.
I was busy staring down at the screen of my GPS device, wondering
which way was north and at what time it would be dark. I had a set
of coordinates written down on a piece of paper in my back pocket.
This wasn't just an aimless hike. I had a mission: it was geocaching.
The sport of geocaching (pronounced geo-cashing) is a child of the
Internet. On May 3, 2000 David Ulmer hid a can of beans, a slingshot,
and a few CDs in a bucket just outside of Portland, Ore., and posted
the location on the web. Mike Teague was the first to find the container,
and went on to design his own web page to document similar caches.
By July of the same year, Jeremy Irish had found Teague's web site
and approached him with a more complex site design with maps and logbooks.
This site lasted for only a little while, until Irish took further
control and created Geocaching.com, now the sport's official web page.
Actually, geocaching is the offspring of a somewhat incestuous marriage.
The sport's mother, the Internet, evolved from a Department of Defense
program, originally called ARPANET, the Advanced Research Projects
Agency Network. GPS (Global Positioning System); the sport's father,
was also created by the Department of Defense, and used exclusively
in the military. It is basically a network of 24 satellites that orbit
the globe, sending out signals that a GPS receiver on Earth can pick
up.
The convergence of GPS and the Internet has created a powerful combination
with potential that has scarcely been realized. Even those who don't
own a GPS receiver, or a computer with Internet access for that matter,
can still recognize the quantum leaps in navigation and communication
that the two technologies represent.
At any given time, at any given location in the world, four or more
satellites are within range and beaming clear signals down to GPS
receivers (now about the size and cost of a cell phone). These portable
receivers use the signals to triangulate their position on the ground.
If you ever find yourself scrounging around in the woods, staring
haplessly at your GPS receiver, you can either thank or blame the
Clinton Administration. On May 1, 2000, the administration called
an end to GPS Selective Availability, which until then was degrading
satellite signals for anyone other than the military. This demilitarization
made commercially available GPS units remarkably more accurate and
opened up the possibility of sports like geocaching. A technology
once used exclusively by the military to target missiles, guide aerial
bombings and navigate navy ships has become a recreational device.
On Geocaching.com, someone can get coordinates at no cost for thousands
of caches in over 180 countries. The United States has the most hidden
caches — nearly 6,200 nationwide — but Canada has thousands
and the same goes for much of Western Europe and South America. There
are 400 caches in Denmark, 40 caches listed for Malaysia, and 10 in
Iraq (insert your own WMD joke here). The sport is international,
but what exactly are these people hunting for?
The reality is that the caches themselves have little or no value,
and can be hidden by anyone and posted free of charge on the site.
Some cachers hide signature items, such as personalized key chains,
initialed golf balls, Tibetan prayer flags or a short letter to the
would-be finder. No one has ever found a Rolex. In the end the cache
itself is relatively unimportant. Most of the thrill is in the hunt.
Kyle Lynch-Klarup, a geocacher for three years says, "Really you're
not hunting for treasure. It's mostly to simply get out in nature.
The actual prize isn't what drives you. Most of the things you find
are simple, little trinkets."
The geocachers who enjoy this hunt are a weird mix, including computer
nerds, Trekies, survivalists, average families, nature lovers, and
anyone else with a GPS device and enough money for gas. The official
web site has an appealing conservationist quality and has enacted
a Cache In/Trash Out program to encourage participants to clean up
as they hunt.
Really, those who savor geocaching the most are as much outdoor enthusiast
as they are gadget nut, a burgeoning personality combination that
seems to be indicative of our era. While it may seem nearly sacrilegious
to some, the blend of electronics and outdoors can be quite inviting.
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| Hiking
around Sweet Creek. |
Sweet Creek is located just outside Mapleton, Ore., about 15 miles
from the coast. The trail is well manicured, but it's still a hike.
As I walked along the dirt path intent on my GPS, I tripped on a root
protruding from the ground. Pausing there on the trail to examine
my bleeding knee, I had time to think about direction and orientation,
which is often a necessity in this game. People learn much of the
common sense of the sport on their first trip or two.
Geocacher Mike Wunderlich says through the Geocaching.com chatroom,
that on the subject of his second attempt, "I was introduced to many
of the important lessons of geocaching: Stay on the trails as much
as possible, always get updated cache information before going out
(mine was three weeks old), and always bring an extra set of batteries
for when your GPS goes dead and it's getting dark."
In fact, the darkness had sneaked up on me during my trip.
I was resting at the last waterfall on the trail, just about to turn
around and head back toward my car when I noticed an oddly shaped
tree. The trunk was suspended above the ground by a tangle of its
own roots. The roots wove together, leaving a hollow place in the
center. I checked my GPS. The coordinates roughly matched those in
my back pocket. I peeked into the hollow.
A few minutes of searching and muffled cursing netted only one thing:
a piece of car bumper I was sure must have fallen from the logging
road high above on the hill. In the spirit of beautification, I put
it in my backpack along with the GPS and stumbled back to my car.
I don't care how high-tech the gear is: Geocaching is difficult, the
hunt occasionally fruitless.
As I write this, my knee is healed and my GPS is still sitting in
my backpack. I threw away the car bumper. I've checked the site since
that last trip, and the cache I pursued was indeed listed as missing.
The geocachers I talked to reported a success rate of about 50 percent
on their hunts.
Hunting for a cache can be exciting, and if the disappointment of
being skunked is any indication, I imagine that actually finding the
cache must be rewarding. But there will always be people who prefer
an aimless hike to a reconnaissance mission. Sometimes it's better
to leave the gizmos at home.
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