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October 05, 2005
Geocaching in Reno: High Tech Treasure Hunt
It's easy to get hooked on geocaching. Recently, I purchased a GPS (Global Positioning System) unit, which is the electronic device tht guides you to a geocache, and decided to see what I could find in my own backyard.
If you're not familiar with it, geocaching is a relatively new sport that involves using a GPS unit to search for a metal or plastic container (known as a cache) that is filled with inexpensive trinkets. The person that stashes the cache in some hidden place lists the location coordinates on the official geocaching website, www.geocaching.com. Other folks try to find the cache, using their GPS unit as a guide.
Geocaching etiquette is that if you find something in the cache that you want to take, you should replace it with some other trinket. There is also a logbook in each cache for you to record the date of your find and any other remarks or observations.
The challenge in geocaching is that most GPS devices are only accurate to around six to 20 feet of the coordinates and that the person or organization that hid the cache probably put it somewhere that is not always obvious or easy to see.
To date, I have only gone on a half-dozen geocaching expeditions with my new toy, so I'm no expert on this new game. In fact, on our latest, my daughter and I actually failed to find the cache we were searching for.
The way it works is fairly simple. I went to the geocaching website and began looking for geocaches within a mile of my house. A dozen or so sites in the vicinity of Huffaker Hills in Reno quickly popped up on the screen. The cache names were intriguing and had names like: II can see where I used to live from here, Reno High Roller, The Riddlers Lair, and Indiana Jones Fortress of Doom.
The latter was not only about a half of a mile from my house but also had the coolest sounding name or so my ten year old daughter thought. So, we decided to make that our first geocache. We looked up the Fortress of Doom site on the computer. The site was thorough, offering comments from folks who had previously found it as well as a nice photo of the Fortress of Doom, which overlooks south Reno.
We inputted the site coordinates into the GPS unit, and embarked on our journey. My daughter kept on eye on the GPS, barking out directions, like, Go east now, Dad. and telling me our distance. We finally parked at the base of a big hill located behind a new condominium project in South Reno. The GPS indicated that the Fortress was straight up the hill.
We began to climb through the sagebrush and tall grass. The terrain soon became rockier, dustier and steeper. The GPS prompted us still farther up the hill. Eventually, we could see a wall of dark rocks in a semi circle near the top. We could see it was the Fortress of Doom.
We scampered over the rocks and made our way to the fort. The GPS told us we were within five feet of the coordinates but where was it? We searched inside the rock walls but found nothing. We climbed to a series of boulders in front of the fort and scanned the surrounding hillside. The view, here, was spectacular, with the south Truckee Meadows spread out below and Mount Rose in the background.
My daughter stood on top of one large rock and sighed. After all our hard work to climb to the top of the hill, she feared we wouldn’t find the cache. I turned to reassure her and noticed that in the rock wall right behind her head was a metal container. It was the cache.
We pulled out the box and found all of its treasures. There were several pens, toy cars, luggage locks and other gee-gaws. She took the luggage locks and, in return, placed a clip on clock that we had brought with us into the container. I entered our names in the log.
Mission accomplished.
Of course, not all of our adventures have been so successful. A few days later, my daughter, my 17 year old son and I journeyed into another part of Huffaker Hills to attempt to find a pair of caches said to be located there. We easily found the first one, known as the Reno High Roller cache. There, the little bugger was a metal army-style canister tucked into a crack in the rocks. We took an extension cord and left a little screwdriver set we bought at the Dollar Store.
The second, however, proved more elusive. Despite three sets of eyes and a GPS reading that said we were practically standing on top of it, we could not find the other cache, located about a third of a mile from the other one. But we're not giving up. We'll be back.
While much of the fun of geocaching is in the hunt, for us the real reward was having an excuse to do something together as a family. We certainly don't do it for the luggage locks and extension cords.
For anyone interested in geocaching, the GPS unit itself will cost between $100 and $400, with the more expensive ones having such bells as whistles as color screens, more memory and computerized area maps, none of which is essential. The two main manufacturers are Garmin and Magellan.
More information about geocaching can be found at the official website, www.geocaching.com, or the Nevada geocache website, nevadageocaching.com.
-Richard Moreno
Posted by Rich Moreno at October 5, 2005 09:45 PM