Posted on 12/01/2002 7:38:19 PM PST by lewislynn
Sunday, December 01, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Cache Them If You Can
Geocaching, using GPS coordinates, Internet clues to find treasure, growing in popularityBy MICHAEL SQUIRES
REVIEW-JOURNAL
In the far southwest valley, where Rainbow Boulevard dissolves into a rocky gravel route, two Las Vegans and a guest from Washington were playing a high-tech game of hide-and-seek on a recent morning.
Armed with an inexpensive hand-held global-positioning system and a few clues downloaded from the Internet, they set out seeking a stash of items hidden in the Spring Mountains.
The hunt had them scrambling across rocky slopes, around cactus and through ravines. As they hiked, they frequently paused to take in vistas of Las Vegas on one side and green-walled canyons on the other.
"To me, it beats the hell out of sitting in a smoky place pulling slot machines," said Todd Spradlin, a visitor to Las Vegas from Washington. "This is the other half of Las Vegas."
A growing number of Southern Nevadans are using the same game, known as geocaching, to see Las Vegas' other half.
Geocaching involves finding hidden items, sometimes as large as a bucket or as small as a mint tin, using coordinates and a few clues downloaded from the Internet and a GPS unit. It also involves creating and hiding new caches and posting their location on the Internet.
"If you like electronic gadgets and have an interest in the outdoors it's really an attractive sport," said Jason Creager, a production electrician for a show on the Strip who began geocaching several months ago. "It's kind of magnetic."
When the game began to gather a following in 2000, the first geocachers were generally people with an affinity for electronic gadgets and the Internet.
But over the past two years, as the cost of GPS equipment has fallen, its appeal has broadened.
Meanwhile, caches have proliferated.
When Seattle Web designer Jeremy Irish founded the Web site to catalog the coordinates and clues for geocaches, www.geocaching.com, there were only 75 caches, most of them in the United States. That was in August 2000.
Today, there are more than 35,000 caches stashed in 150 countries, which can be searched by zip code, state or country.
"We say, `If you hide it, they will come,' " Irish said in a phone interview from his home in Bellevue, Wash.
In Southern Nevada, there are about 300 caches. Some are in places as accessible as the New York-New York or The Orleans parking garages or locations in Sunset and Angel parks.
Others, like the one Spradlin and his friends found atop a butte in the Spring Mountains hidden beneath some stones Friday morning, are decidedly off the beaten path.
Similar to most traditional caches, the one Spradlin found contained a small notebook, which serves as the cache log for finders to sign. It also held about a dozen other items, including Silly Putty, coupons for local restaurants, fishing gear, a compact disc, small chess set and antenna ball.
One of the few rules to geocaching is those who take something from a cache must also leave something behind.
Enthusiasts, like Rich Surguine, a local computer programmer, say geocaching's lure isn't apparent when they describe the game to friends. But once someone tries it, it's a different story, he said.
"After finding their first cache they're hooked," he said. "Time after time people have said they've taken a friend and now their friend wants to get into it."
For some geocachers it's inexpensive entertainment the entire family can enjoy. All that's needed is access to the Internet and a GPS unit. The units sell for as little as $100.
Geocachers said the game provides an excuse to explore their surroundings and see places and things they likely wouldn't see otherwise. They speak of seeing wildlife and discovering petroglyphs on their treks.
Others mention less exotic, but equally welcome, discoveries. A specific type of discovery has given rise to the acronym, YAPIDKA, which stands for "yes, another park I didn't know about."
Irish believes another factor behind geocaching's growth is it caters to the psyche of a goal-oriented society.
"A lot of people don't go hike because they don't have a goal in mind," he said. "This (the cache) becomes the destination, it becomes the task at the end of the trail that might motivate you to climb the 1,000-foot peak when you might otherwise have given up."
There's also an element of competition to geocachers, Surguine said.
"There seems to be a little friendly competition to see who can be the first to get to a cache once it's posted (on the Web site)," he said.
Over the past two years, geocachers have developed several variations to the traditional cache.
For instance, travel bugs are items that are carried from cache to cache until they reach a stated destination. As geocachers move them from site to site they log the location on the Web site, where the person who created the travel bug can track its progress.
In some cities there are geocaching clubs that hold regular get-togethers, Irish said.
But the local geocaching community remains, for the most part, virtual. There's a Web site where they tell of their latest finds and exchange information using screen names.
One of Southern Nevada's most active geocachers, who goes by the name Dr. Webe, said the anonymity adds to the mystery of the game and makes it no less of a community. Working with a fellow geocacher, who goes by the moniker Ski Bum, Dr. Webe has hidden 40 caches over the past 18 months.
"Everybody takes care of each other's caches," Dr. Webe said. "It's like one big happy family, even though we don't know each other."
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