High-Tech Hiking - Washington Trails Association

» On Trail September 2008 » Washington Trails www.wta.org
Geocacher Abby Wolfe (nickname “hydnsek”) signs the logbook at a geocache with GPS in hand.
Geocachers hide and seek out trinkets hidden all over the state.
Photo by Deb Brubaker
High-Tech Hiking
Discovering the phenomenon of geocaching
Erinn
Unger
WTA Editorial Intern
erinn@wta.org
Some people hike for a view, an adrenaline
rush or a victorious summit, and some combine
that with the prospect of discovering hidden
treasure. Troves of trinkets such as tiny plastic
animals, rhinestone jewelry and bent bottle
caps are scattered over the globe, with more
than 6,000 of these geocaches in Washington.
Cachers use billion-dollar satellites to find
Tupperware containers, or so the joke goes.
After downloading coordinates from a website,
cachers use GPS units to find hidden caches.
They buy traveling coins stamped with their
cacher handles, not to mention clothes and
bumper stickers. It’s a fervent subculture, down
to the fact that outsiders like me who don’t
have a clue are called “muggles.”
The sport is relatively new. Before May 2000,
satellite signals used by civilian and commercial
GPS units were intentionally corrupted by
the U.S. military for national security reasons.
Once the military perfected its ability to selectively
scramble the accuracy of GPS signals in
high-security zones, President Clinton discontinued
the practice of degrading civilian GPS signals,
or what was called Selective Availability.
This has allowed private and commercial GPS
users to get readings that are accurate within
10 to 20 meters. Before, the error could set you
off track by hundreds of meters.
Besides giving hunters and hikers more accurate
readings, this decision had a more curious,
and perhaps unanticipated, impact. It allowed

www.wta.org September 2008 » Washington Trails On Trail «
GPS-toting civilians to search out more than
600,000 plastic containers full of tchotchkes hidden
across every continent—including Antarctica.
Geocaching.com is the primary site for geocachers
to log caches they’ve placed and caches
they’ve found, plus communicate with other
members. The website, and the company that
manages it, called Groundspeak, was started in
2000 in Seattle.
The sport had its origins when, soon after Selective
Availability was turned off, a computer
consultant named Dave Ulmer hid a bucket full
of trinkets, including a can of beans (alas, no
longer allowed by geocaching regulations) in
the wilderness near Portland, Oregon. He gave
out the GPS coordinates on a web forum and
had one rule that has stuck: “Take some stuff,
leave some stuff.”
In recent years, the practice of geocaching
has soared in popularity. There used to be
fewer than 15 caches on Whidbey Island and
now there are at least 60, according to Abby
Wolfe, an experienced geocacher, orienteer and
member of WTA.
Her geocaching name is “hydnsek” (which is
also, I discovered, on her license plate), and she
has found more than 4,000 caches and has hidden
50 since she began geocaching in 2003.
She and I trekked around Cougar Mountain
Regional Wildland Park to find just a small fraction
of those.
While I was on my hands and knees, combing
through duff and feeling blindly behind
stumps, she stood behind me, offering vague
clues. When I finally found one of the caches
and pried it open for inspection, she beamed,
as if I were a child who had brought home an
excellent report card. My prize was a small,
scuffed plastic crab, which I zipped into my
jacket pocket for safekeeping.
Cougar Mountain isn’t the wildest place
to cache, squeezed as it is next to Bellevue,
Newcastle and Issaquah, but it is accessible to
those who may have a difficult time navigating
backcountry trails. There are caches that are
handicapped accessible; others require seekers
to scuba-dive, paddle or even rappel to their locations.
Many are cropping up in the middle of
cities, strapped to parking meters or lampposts.
There are even virtual ones—including one in
Nepal, near Mount Everest—that require cachers
to take photographs or answer questions to
prove they found the correct location.
There is no right or wrong to caching, Wolfe
said, though she prefers caches that require a
hike to get to. Her background is in orienteering,
and she likes getting “dirty and twiggy” in
the woods.
“I’ve been to every county, done tons of backcountry
hiking, summitted Mount St. Helens
and climbed to Camp Muir on Mount Rainier,
and more,” Wolfe wrote in an e-mail. “There
are hikes of the month, annual trips to Mount
Rainier [where she only hikes—geocaching isn’t
allowed there], loads of one-off hiking outings,
plus I do a lot of hiking just on my own, as do
other cachers,” she said.
“While geocaching may have been more
prevalent in the Northwest in its early years, it
is now a worldwide phenomenon,” said Laurie
Freeman, the president of the Washington State
Geocaching Association “Being an Internetbased
sport, it has spread quickly across most
of the globe.”
“A lot of families got into it, that’s what made
it take off,” Wolfe said. “It would be hard to find
a hiking area that doesn’t have caches these
days.”
Some cachers, Wolfe said, “wax nostalgic”
about the old days when there were fewer
urban caches and when the activity was less
popular.
“Early placers were more hikers, climbers and
outdoor people,” she said.
As with many recreational activities that occur
in what can be delicate habitat, there are
critics and supporters of the practice.
Cachers seek treasure in high places as well as low. Caches can be found at the Red Top
Lookout in the Blewett Pass area, offering views and hidden treasures.
Photo by Abby Wolfe
Where is it
off-limits?
Use common sense.
Don’t lurk around
schools, or possible
terrorist targets
(this includes large
bridges).
Railroad tracks
require a 150-foot
buffer on either
side of the tracks for
safety.
Don’t cache on
private property
(this includes Indian
reservations)
Geocaching is prohibited
in
National Parks,
National Wildlife
Refuges and Forest
Service wilderness
areas in the Cascades
of Washington.
Little Spokane River
Natural Area (this
area within Riverside
State Park) is closed
to caches.
For more
info
Check out:
www.geocaching.
com
Get connected
locally with the
Washington State
Geocaching
Association:
www.geocachingwa.
org

» On Trail September 2008 » Washington Trails www.wta.org
Sometimes it’s the
journey that counts.
Geocaching can
involve everything
from gentle hiking
to summiting
mountains to rappelling
down cliffs.
Here, a hiker seeks
geocaches on the
Pacific Coast Trail
to Sourdough Gap.
Photo by Abby Wolfe
“ Different agencies
have differing
opinions
on geocaching,
although this is
due to the original
visions on
how the lands
are to be managed.
”
—Ranger Jim
Smith, King
County parks
“In my opinion, as a land manager, geocaching
is a great tool, as it allows us to connect
with our users and to build bridges to potential
users,” said Jim Smith, a ranger with King
County Parks and a geocacher. “When rules and
guidelines of the geocaching organizations are
followed, it turns out to be a win-win situation
for all.”
However, sometimes, there are those who
don’t follow the rules.
“All in all, most land managers have had
great success with geocaching, although you
always get a bad apple in every bunch,” Smith
said.
Wolfe said that she is very conscious of
where she places her caches.
“Are they going to trample stuff [when looking
for the cache]?” she asks herself when
selecting a site.
Geocaching.com and the Washington State
Geocaching Association place strict guidelines
on cachers. If an improperly placed cache is
submitted for review or found, the Web page
will be archived. Caches are prohibited from
being placed near possible terrorist targets
(like bridges) and instead of unmarked ammo
cans and capped PVC pipes, caches are usually
stored in clearly labeled containers, because in
the past, geocache containers have been mistaken
for explosive devices.
In Washington state parks, permits are required,
to ensure cache owners maintain their
caches properly and so rangers can make sure
that caches aren’t placed in environmentally or
historically sensitive areas, Smith said.
“Different agencies have differing opinions on
geocaching, although this is due to the original
visions on how the lands are to be managed,”
he said.
Some agencies have banned physical geocaching
altogether, instead allowing only
virtual and earth caches (caches that educate
visitors on the geologic features of a location).
These areas include national parks and national
recreation areas, national wildlife refuges and
U.S. Fish and Wildlife areas. The Forest Service
does not allow geocaches in any wilderness
areas in the Cascades in Washington state.
“Most user-based activities in state parks
require a mutual give-and-take between users
and the agencies that govern these public
lands,” said Laurie Freeman, or “halfcanadian,”
the president of the Washington State Geocaching
Association. “We all want to make
sure that activities—whether they be mountain
biking, hiking, geocaching, hunting, or even
bird watching—don’t leave a footprint behind.
Permits for geocaching are one way to educate
everyone on the importance of no-trace activities.”
Responsible cachers abide by a code similar
to the familiar Leave No Trace rule: Cache In,
Trash Out. On their way to a site, participants
are asked to pick up trash, and there are organized
clean-up events.
“Geocachers put in many volunteer hours
of service to help the environment by doing
service work from picking up litter … to large
events that entail days of pulling noxious
weeds, removing garbage dumps or rebuilding
trail systems,” Smith said. “These volunteers
save agencies thousands of needed dollars.”
“The impact of geocaching, in theory, is minimal,”
Wolfe said.
Wolfe tries to place caches in rarely frequented
scenic areas where hikers would not
normally go or on trails with rich histories.
“I try to take people to interesting spots that
they might not have seen,” she said. “Sometimes
it’s about the journey.”