Back Country Caching

Most people who geocache or are familiar with geocaching understand, and often times evaluate or judge a player by the overall number of caches they have recorded as found.  However, there is a small hardcore group of geocachers that go after the caches most “average” geocachers would shake their head at and move on to an easy cache in the city. To these hardcore back country cachers it’s not about the number of caches one finds in a day, but the satisfaction of discovering a difficult and hard to reach geocache that brings the most enjoyment in this great game. Back country cachers are known to spend an entire day to just find a single geocache.

The LonelyCacheProject is a website that uses the information from geocaching.com. It utilizes a formula based on the age of a geocache, location, and number of times the geocache has been found.  The results of the formula data create an ever-changing point value. As the cache ages with few people finding the cache the more points it is worth.  The opposite applies reducing the points of a geocache as more people find the geocache.  These players are then ranked in several categories such as the type of cache found; back county rating, first to find, and state and county ratings. Currently, lonelycacheproject.com is focused on the Western states of Nevada, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado.  So, if you find yourself bored with the same old geocache in a lamp post at the Walmart parking lot give back country geocaching a try.

2 Million Geocaches

Geocaching has officially reached its 2 Millionth geocache as of February 28, 2013. This is a huge accomplishment and everyone in the geocaching community is thrilled about it. The 2 millionth geocache was placed just 3 years after they hit 1 million. This shows how fast it is growing.

The 2 millionth geocache is near Alice Springs, Australia and was placed by geocacher rAMPant_1. This geocache is not the easiest of caches with its difficulty and terrain both set at 3.5. The name of this geocache is called Overwatch. I believe it is called this because you get an amazing view of Alice Springs when you reach the cache.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don’t know about any of you but I would love to visit this cache, and it would give me a great excuse to go visit Australia, which is a place I have always wanted to go. What about you?

Getting Started

Up until now I have not really explained to you how you get started in geocaching. Well today is the day. It is very simple for anyone to do.

First, you need to go to www.geocaching.com and sign up for a free account. This only takes a couple minutes. This is the website where you will go to find geocaches to search for, load the information if you placed a cache or just looking around at all the different information they have on this site. I do recommend that you go to the link they have that is “Geocaching 101” under the learn tab. This will answer a lot of your questions you may have. They also have a short video that you should watch that is “Geocaching in 2 minutes”. If you click on these two links it will give you the best information to get started.

Second, you need a GPS unit. You can use your smart phone; they have an app that you can download. Or you can buy your own handheld GPS device. We personally have always used a Garmin and have 3 different styles. It just depends on what style you like and how much you want on it. That is your own personal preference so if you go to www.garmin.com you can search around and see what you like. Just a little note if you are using your smartphone, if you do not have a signal on your phone then your geocaching application will not work. So if you are planning on going out hiking in the mountains, sometimes it will not work because the coordinates will not be loaded on your phone due to the lack of signal.

Third, Once you have signed up for an account, learned how to use your GPS device and how to load the geocache coordinates, whether it be your smart phone or other handheld device, you are ready to go out and search for the geocaches that you would like to find. Are you going to start your new adventure today?

Windy day geocaching in the Spring Mountains

Today my husband and I went out on our ATVs for some riding and geocaching in the Spring Mountains off of Blue Diamond. It was a really nice day until the wind started to blow. And man did it blow! We didn’t let that stop us though and still had a fantastic time while we were out exploring and finding new areas we hadn’t seen yet. First, not only were we fighting the wind but we were worried that it would start to rain on us. It looked like a storm was rolling in. Luckily it did not rain. Since we were out just to explore and didn’t have a set agenda for the day we were able to find all these neat places to park and look at the great views. They were amazing. You also never know what you will find while you are out. Look at this old A-frame house that we found.

Looking a little stormy

Nothing more better than Red Rock
and beautiful clouds

Look real close and you can see
the strip

A-Frame house we found

While we were out not only did we find some caches, we also placed a cache. It is in a great spot that has a fantastic view of Red Rock. We called it a Stick in the Desert. Once you see the picture of it you will understand. Can you try to figure out where it is hidden?

I wish that everyone would get into this hobby and really see how much fun it really is. We even got to see 5 wild Mustangs roaming around. We stopped for a little bit just to watch them and of course take their picture. So, that is what we did on our day off, what did you do? Something fun I hope.