Stay fit and get swag by geocaching
Quest for hidden goodies is a cheap, challenging way to have an outdoor adventure
WICHITA, Kan. — Geocaching, the pursuit of finding “treasures” hidden by others and found with the help of GPS devices, has grown tremendously in its very short history.
According to geocaching.com, the official site for the game, 191 of the world’s 193 countries have caches, including more than 40 on Antarctica and one on the International Space Station.
Bryan Roth, president and co-founder of Groundspeak, the company that runs the online site and most things geocaching, said the game got its start with improvements in civilian GPS devices around 2000. It wasn’t long before people were hiding caches — a box or similar package, often containing a trinket — and posting the GPS coordinates online, with some hints, and challenging friends to find them.
Roth and his partners launched the website in mid-2000 as a place to list, or find, the coordinates.
“We’ve always loved the idea of using technology to get people off their couches and outdoors,” Roth said. “It’s an easy way for people to have fun, together, outside.”
Early growth was steady as participants used hand-held GPS units. Roth said interest exploded when free applications became available for cellphones around 2010.
“That meant people could play the game with a device that was already in their pocket nearly all of the time,” Roth said. “It took us 10 years to get to 1 million caches listed. Three years later, we reached 2 million, and in April we reached 3 million caches.”
He said it’s estimated that 7 million people geocached in some part of the world last year.
Most apps for cellphones are free, as is access to many cache coordinates. Roth’s group charges a $30 annual premium membership, which gives people access to coordinates for all cache locations.
“I spend more than that to go out to dinner, and not even a good dinner,” said Ryan Semmel, an avid geocacher from Manhattan, Kan. “At least geocaching helps me get into better shape. That’s not much money for all it provides. This is about as inexpensive of a hobby as you can find.”
Caches may be as small as tiny metal pill tubes, holding just enough paper for finders to log their geocaching handle and date. Others are larger, like gallon plastic bags wrapped in camouflage tape or metal ammo boxes. Traditional caches contain trinkets, known as swag, an acronym for “stuff we all get.” Most geocachers carry their own swag and swap for something they find in a cache. Many spend a few minutes looking over the log sheet, to see when, and by whom, the cache previously has been found.
Sometimes the cache isn’t found, either because it’s too well-hidden or it was stolen. Rotz once climbed to near the summit of Pikes Peak, outside Colorado Springs, looking for a cache she never found.
“It was a lot of work … climbing to where it was supposed to be,” she said. “We didn’t find it, but just sitting up there and looking at the view was amazing. One of the things I like best are the places (geocaching) takes me. There are all kinds of great places I would never have seen otherwise.”