Friday, March 30, 2007
Say goodbye to the old map and compass and hello to a new, high-tech way of treasure hunting called Geocaching.
Geocaching is an adventure game for Global Positioning System users. The user gets on the Geocaching Web site, www.geocaching.com, and puts coordinates into the GPS unit. The basic idea is to have people set up caches all over the world and share the locations of these caches on a the Web site.
Since 2000 when the “sport” was created, the Web site lists 1,217 local users who have found lockboxes in Lawrence.
Mollie Osborne, Tonganoxie, freshman, has been Geocaching twice with a group of friends, one who has a GPS. Although the concept may sound easy enough, the hunt can actually take hours.
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I’ve had Geocaches hidden at drive-up telephones and others where I had to hike half a mile, find the opening to a cave, tie a rope to a tree, rappel 98 feet (alone) into a vertical cave and find the cache.
-Jay Kennedy, geocaching enthusiast
“Even if you are right on top of it, you still have to search,” Osborne said.
The process is a lot like playing hot or cold with children; telling them they are freezing when they are looking in the wrong direction and steaming when they are getting close.
“We just walk in the direction that is says,” Osborne said. “And if it says we are going the wrong way we turn around.”
Searchers can log their experience on the Web site, rating from one to five stars how difficult finding the cache was and how rugged the terrain. They can also leave hints to future Geocachers.
A cache titled, “Rock Chalk Jayhawk,” most recently found by Dr. Jay Kennedy, a cacher under the screen name “Caverdoc,” was lead by his GPS to the picnic area behind Carruth O’Leary.
Kennedy said he has been Geocaching for a little over a year but has found over 200 caches, most in Kansas but some as far away as British Columbia.
Kennedy said he has found lots of neat toys but Geocoins, metallic coins specially minted for use in geocaching and trackable on-line, are the coolest to find.
“I’ve had Geocaches hidden at drive-up telephones and others where I had to hike half a mile, find the opening to a cave, tie a rope to a tree, rappel 98 feet (alone) into a vertical cave and find the cache,” Kennedy said. “Then climb out with my ascenders.”
Kennedy said he is a “very seasoned caver,” practicing for over 30 years. The cave cache was found in Kentucky which he recalled as his favorite.
“It’s called “Plunge Extreme” if you want to find it on the Geocaching site,” Kenneday said. “Only two finds to date.”
Kennedy either goes alone or with his 5-year-old son Nicholas, or the entire family (wife and 2 year old daughter Natalie) if the cache is very easy. Sometimes he goes with friends.
“I’ve been caching with Cap’n Chris, another local Lawrence cacher, out on Clinton Lake,” he said.
Kansan staff writer Bethany Bunch can be contacted at bbunch@kansan.com.
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