Treasure hunters became rescuers last week, when two Geocachers stumbled upon two stranded women in the deserts of the Western US. Roy Joseph and Paul Fox were “geocaching” in their off-road jeep on the Colorado-Utah border the week of August 25th. As they motored along, they passed a stationary van – an uncommon occurrence in the desert – and decided to investigate. Inside, sat a woman and her elderly mother; they had been going for a drive two days earlier when their van got stuck in the mud and debris left behind after heavy rain. They were unable to budge the van, or call for help. The women had no food or water and had been sitting alone for two days. Joseph and Fox helped tow the van out of the mud and gave the women food and water. Joseph remarked, “If there had been more rain and runoff, it would have been more serious. Just down ravine, the creek dropped down into a bigger canyon.”
Thankfully, these hobbyists helped avert a possible disaster. But what exactly were they doing out there? Who are Geocachers and what do they do? A growing hobby in the 21st century, Geocaching involves the use of satellite tracking and the Internet. It’s basically a worldwide treasure hunt. Geocaches are containers hidden in an exact location by fellow enthusiasts. They can be large boxes or tiny, mini-caches. Each cache contains a logbook for finders to sign and a place to leave little “treasures” for the next Geocacher. The geographical coordinates (latitude and longitude) are posted on the Geocaching website (see below) for members to find. Geocachers use GPS devices to guide them to the cache. Once they find it, they post their victories online, recording their successes.
Owners of caches are encouraged to hide their treasure chests in interesting places to provide fun experiences for seekers. Members often leave little gifts for the successful finders inside the watertight caches. One rule of Geocaching, however, is that anything removed from a cache must be replaced by another item of equal or greater value. Sometimes, objects have a Travel Bug or Geocoin attached to them. These devices tag an object and contain directions to help the object travel to a specific destination. Any Geocachers who feel they can help it along its way take it to another cache on the route. The tags can also be followed online, tracking the travels of the objects using GPS technology.
With the help of GPS tracking, geocaching is able to excite around 4-5 million enthusiasts who search for over 1 million caches worldwide. The adventure begins at www.geocaching.com.
