[GeoStL] From Boise Weekly: Geocaching
- From: Glenn <GLNash@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "St. Louis Area Geocachers" <geocaching@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2006 20:22:51 -0600
-
Am guessing that you have already seen this, but just in case...
You might find this interesting.
The sport of geocaching is experiencing growing pains as it adapts to a
post 9/11 world.
By Bingo Barnes
[image-1] While conducting a routine inspection on September 27, an Idaho
Department of Transportation inspector noticed something strange on the
Rainbow Bridge, located 13 miles south of Cascade on Highway 55. A green
bucket held in place with a system of ropes and wires was suspiciously
perched underneath one of the struts of the bridge. To be safe, the Boise
bomb squad was called in and the highway was closed, stopping traffic for
almost seven hours.
Around 2:15 p.m., 33-year old Scot Tintsman from Meridian showed up at the
scene to tell police that the object was a "geocache." The bomb squad was
called off, the bucket removed and traffic resumed just before 4 p.m. with
travelers wondering, "What the heck is a geocache?"
Geocaching is a popular sport--some call it a hobby--where players use
handheld Global Positioning System (GPS) units to locate containers stashed
in the wilderness and secret urban locations. With technology prices
dropping and companies making smaller hand-held GPS units, more and more
people are enjoying this modern technological version of a scavenger hunt.
But a sport this young still experiences growing pains and players still
struggle to learn the rules of the game.
The sport of geocaching, and civilian use of GPS technology, has only been
possible since the year 2000 when the U.S. military descrambled their GPS)
satellites, allowing citizens to access the signals to pinpoint their
location on earth through triangulation. The technology was previously
reserved just for military use in tasks like pinpointing troops in the
field or tracking and guiding missiles.
President Bill Clinton, in a statement on May 1, 2000, announced the
cancellation of the intentional degredation of the signals, based on a
recommendation from the secretary of defense and coordinated with the
departments of State, Transportation and Commerce and the director of
Central Intelligence. This change gave civilians access to a mapping tool
accurate within two to three meters. Previously, the signal would only be
accurate to a football field-sized area.
Clinton said his intention was to improve worldwide transportation safety,
scientific research and commercial interests. It could also allow emergency
responders to have pinpoint accuracy to locations, as long as someone at
the location had the GPS coordinates.
Just two days after President Clinton officially deregulated the signal, a
container was hidden outside of Portland, Oregon, with the coordinates
posted online on a satellite navigation newsgroup. According to the
logbook, the cache was visited twice within three days. Mike Teague, the
first finder of the cache posted the information to his personal Web site.
In July, Jeremy Irish approached Teague with a proposed name, geocaching,
and a redesigned Web site. By September, Irish was running the site by
himself, and he is now the developer and Web master of geocaching.com, the
mother of all geocaching Web sites.
Geocaching Web sites have varying guidelines as to how they approve the
caches posted to their databases. While Geocaching.com is perhaps the best
known site, there are others like navicache.com, Buxley's Geocaching
Waypoint (www.brillig.com/geocaching), which focuses on mapping geocache
locations, and opencache.com, a community-run site that keeps an
open-source attitude toward geocaching, avoiding the individual-ownership
approach of the other sites by. But by far, the most visited one is
geocaching.com, and is still growing in popularity.
While distinctly grass-roots and with an air of anti-commercialism, in the
last year, the sport has dipped into the capitalistic pond. The Jeep 4X4
Geocaching Challenge involved the company hiding 5,000 miniature Jeep
travel bugs in caches across the lower 48 states. When a geocacher found
one of the little Jeeps, they had the opportunity to sign up for the
challenge and have the opportunity win not only Garmin GPS units (another
sponsor of the contest) but ultimately a new seven-passenger Jeep
Commander.
At a recent Treasure Valley Cacheaholics Anonymous (TVCA) meeting at Ben's
Crow Inn (the event could only be found via GPS coordinates posted to
www.idahogeocachers.org), a small group of geocachers gathered to discuss
new caches, share information and listen to a guest speaker. Geocachers
signed the log book for the meeting using the nicknames from their profiles
on geocaching Web sites. Founded by BOOMHWR653, IDTIMBERWOLF, IDN8IVS and
ZEROEDIN in 2003, TVCA now has about 30 active members. Captain Mike, a
retired National Guard reservist, manned the logbook and has placed about
41 caches around the area he maintains. One, called "A Walk on the Wild
Side" is series of eight caches spread over a four-mile area around
Tablerock. But the real excitement of the evening was the guest, Sergeant
Dave Hambleton.
Hambleton, commander of the Boise police bomb squad unit, came in talk
about geocaching and how the geocaching community should have more open
lines of communication with local police so that incidents like the one at
Rainbow Bridge don't occur again. Hambleton told the group there had been
only one other incident involving a geocache in the last five years--out on
Pleasant Valley Road--and explained what they consider a suspicious or
possibly dangerous package: basically, just about anything.
"When we get a call on something suspicious, we have to treat it like a
loaded gun," he said. Something as small as a film canister (a favorite
container for "microcaches") can be turned into a small grenade, so they
have to take every call seriously.
He added that the location is important when determining the danger to life
or property. "I just learned Sunday a friend of mine was geocaching and he
was thinking of putting a cache over near the Caldwell airport. He has
permission from some folks but I told him it was a really bad idea, because
someone is going to think it's suspicious and the Nampa bomb squad will get
called out on that," Hambleton explained.
One geocacher at the meeting said, "It probably wouldn't be approved if it
were at the airport."
Another replied from the back, "There are already three at the Caldwell
airport." Everyone laughed.
Hambleton added, "It's all in the placement. If it's in a high pedestrian
area, obviously it is going to be more suspicious. An airport will be a
high-target area, infrastructure--power, gas, water--any of those things."
Because geocaching is a free sport (except for the cost of a GPS unit), and
because there is no overseeing authority establishing the rules of the
game, geocachers tend to police themselves and set up their own rules and
ethical guidelines. To have a cache approved and listed on geocaching.com
so that others may find it, there are several guidelines that must be
followed.
First, geocaching.com states there is no precedent for placing
caches--meaning, just because someone else has done it and it was once
accepted doesn't mean it will be in the future. Second, a person must have
permission to place a cache on private land. This guideline is a little
more vague on public land. Depending upon the governing authority, cachers
may need to have permission. Many governmental agencies like the Bureau of
Land Management, state land authorities or federally managed areas do not
have a stated policy and it may be OK, but geocaching.com will not list
caches on land maintained by the U.S. National Park Service or U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service (typically wildlife refuges). Third, caches are also
not supposed to be buried, and they cannot deface public or private
property to be hidden. Caches should not be placed in close proximity to
active railroad tracks, military bases or public structures such as dams,
bridges, elementary and secondary schools or airports.
Finally, caches are not supposed to be placed within one-tenth of a mile
(528 feet) of each other, except in rare exceptions. With more caches being
placed, more guidelines to the sport are likely to be created.
Since August 14 of this year, 50 new geocache sites have been placed in the
Boise area, according to Buxley's Geocaching Waypoint. As of December 12,
geocaching.com identified 220,384 geocache sites around the world (16 are
in Antarctica) with 66 percent of them (135,075) in the United States.
Idaho contains 2,955 with over 692 in the Boise area alone. Geocaches tend
to be concentrated in and around population centers. However, even in
Tuscarora, Nevada which has a population of about two to three people per
square mile, there are over 30 geocaches within a 45 mile radius.
With catchy names like "Token Ring," "Garrett's Treasures Redux," "Mira
Frosty" and "You Must Be This Tall to Cache This Ride," the numbers of
geocaches is increasing dramatically. However, leaving goodies hidden in a
special location is considered littering by some. Federal guidelines state
that burying or abandoning personal property in national parks and forests
is prohibited. Geocachers, however, say that caches are maintained by the
cache owner and therefore not abandoned. Regardless of the details, many
parks and forest rangers recognize geocaching as a legitimate recreational
activity and accept it. Some government officials, however, believe that
geocaching should not be allowed in certain areas, such as designated
wilderness. The Wilderness Act of 1964 established these areas as being
untouched by human presence or development. By those rules, however,
virtual caches or earthcaches are allowed there (see Glossary on page 16
for definitions).
The geocaching community is adamant about their leave-no-trace philosophy
and have set up a global cleanup program called Cache In, Trash Out, or
CITO. The first CITO event was held in April, 2003 and geocachers around
the world participated. Since then, the event has grown and in 2004, there
were 160 cleanup events in 41 states and 10 countries where geocachers went
to a specified GPS location and picked up trash along the way. The overall
attitude of geocachers' leave-no-trace philosophy is that if you find trash
while hunting down a cache, pick it up. The overall effect may be a cleaner
environment in areas that don't see as much foot traffic.
Captain Mike said he recalls only one incident in Idaho when another
organization, the Idaho Grotto Society, a spelunking group that catalogs
and voluntarily oversees the protection of Idaho's caves, got upset about a
geocache inside a well-known cave. Once the groups talked it out, and TVCA
explained their leave-no-trace policy and concern for the environment, all
was well.
[image-2] This attention to conservation, protecting the environment and
creating opportunities to share unique places has caused some geocachers to
become obsessed with the sport. One local geocacher, BENTHEREFOUNDIT, is
known among the TVCA group as having the most found caches of anyone in the
group and allegedly doesn't plan on giving up his title. Others do it only
part time.
Dan Driscoll, a member of the TVCA, has been geocaching for just over a
year and maintains nine geocaches. "I wouldn't say it has taken over my
life," he said during a phone interview. "It's just a fun pastime,
something I do on the weekend. It's just a family-friendly hobby that is
interesting. It ends up taking you places you normally wouldn't have seen."
While government agencies may look the other way or accept geocaching as a
legitimate sport, it doesn't mean that Big Brother isn't paying attention.
Outreach efforts like Sergeant Dan Hambleton's visit to the TVCA meeting
and open lines of communication between police and the geocaching community
could prevent another incident like the September one at Rainbow Bridge. At
the meeting, TVCA members even offered to create a local database of known
geocache locations, so that owners of the caches could be contacted if a
suspicious package is reported close to a geocache site. But it is likely
as the sport grows, more and more regulations about where people can put
caches will be handed down by government agencies, despite self-policing by
the enthusiasts.
[image-3] Still, with so many new geoenthusiasts, mistakes are bound to
happen. Scot Tintsman had been geocaching since April of this year and had
found many geocaches near high traffic areas and even one underneath a
six-lane bridge in California. So when he wanted to put up his first
geocache, he didn't think it was out of the ordinary to try to direct
people to a part of the Payette River they don't normally see. "I've driven
over that bridge a thousand times, but I really liked that portion of the
river and wanted people to see it," he said.
However, his timing couldn't have been worse. The very next day, Tintsman's
cache was discovered by the Idaho Transportation Department. He was heading
back up to the bridge to finish putting it all together when he noticed the
roadblocks and police. Now, he realizes that should have been a little more
thoughtful about where he placed it.
Since then, Tintsman has placed two more caches, this time following the
guidelines. His advice to new geocachers is to "hook up with someone who's
done it before. Get on the forums and meet someone who knows what's going
on." That way, he said, it might make it easier to understand what the
sport is about.
[image-4] While Tintsman violated geocaching guidelines by placing a cache
underneath the Rainbow Bridge, this week he will be charged with breaking
the law, too. Valley County Prosecutor Matt Williams is charging Tintsman
with violating Idaho statute 18-7031, placing debris on public or private
property, a misdemeanor punishable of up to six months in jail or a $300
fine. Tintsman may also be held responsible for costs involved in shutting
down the highway and calling the bomb squad up from Boise. Boise Police
spokesperson Lynn Hightower said because the overtime for the Boise bomb
squad is paid for by Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), they would be the
ones asking for restitution. Julianne Marshall, special agent and
spokesperson for the ATF in Seattle, said that they usually leave it up to
the local prosecutor, so it is uncertain at this time whether Tintsman will
be required to pay additional restitution.
Except for the occasional accidental misidentification of geocaches, the
sport is generally safe. There has only been one death associated with
geocaching. Last winter, 64-year-old James Max Chamberlain was on a
geocache hunt with his new GPS unit near San Antonio, Texas when he fell
off a cliff and died. The moral: While watching your GPS unit can be
exciting, as you get closer and closer to the cache, it is important to
remember where you are stepping and to keep your eyes on the trail.
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