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The modern treasure hunt: satellites lead you to . . . Yogi Bear and a Rubik's Cube By
Matthew Flitton James McMullin hunts treasure. Instead of a whip and a leather jacket, he uses a Global Positioning (GPS) unit to go "geocaching." On a day before the snows hit, he left his home to find a cache, as the treasure is known, in Smithfield Canyon, in the hills above Cache Valley. McMullin, an electrical engineering student at Utah State University, made his way to 41 degrees, 52 minutes, 321 seconds north latitude, and 111 degrees, 45 minutes 17 seconds west longitude. After getting out of the car, he headed northeast. A rock dam provided a path across the creek. He walked up a steep hill about 30 feet. McMullin slipped and scrambled across the slope as he sought ground zero. Finally his GPS unit, a handheld computer that uses satellite signals to triangulate its exact position on the Earth, told him he was at the cache. After some searching, McMullin found a 9-inch-by-9-inch-by-4-inch Tupperware container hidden under a pile of lichen-covered shale in the shade of a juniper tree. Inside were a hoppy taw, a penlight, a finger puppet, an unopened bottle of Tabasco sauce, a staple remover, a toy from a fast-food meal, a golf ball, a key ring, a can opener, a twist tie and a refrigerator magnet. Geocaching etiquette says that a person finding the cache should take one thing and replace it with another. As the twist tie attests, people don't always leave valued items. "They just kind of get full of junk stuff," McMullin said. After some thought, he took the bottle of Tabasco sauce, and left a yo-yo. Geocaching was born May 1, 2000, when the Clinton administration removed a GPS signal degradation called Select Availability. The degradation made it so civilian machines couldn't get readings that were as accurate as military ones. Before that time, GPS units were simply a high-tech alternative to a map and compass. On May 3, David Ulmer hid a bucket near Portland, Ore., to celebrate the enhanced accuracy. He posted the coordinates to an Internet newsgroup dedicated to satellite-based navigation. According to Entertainment Weekly, the first cache was filled with CD's, a can of beans and a logbook. "By May 6, the cache was visited twice, and logged in the logbook once," said a description on geocaching.com. Mike Teague, the first person to find the cache, built a website to tell others and posted it to an Internet newsgroup. The sport has grown astromically. In September 2001, geocaching.com listed 6,867 active caches in 68 countries. As of Feb. 6, the site listed 118,883 caches in 104 countries. The website said there were 557 caches in Utah, from the northern edge of Box Elder County to the Four Corners. Even Hollywood is getting in on the action. As part of the publicity surrounding the release of Planet of the Apes lastsummer, items were placed in geocaches from Australia to California to the United Kingdom. Coordinates were posted on a website, planetape.com, and geocachers could find spoons, clubs and other movie props. Not all caches are in the wild. The same day he went to Smithfield Canyon, McMullin visited the USU campus to find "The Yogi Bear Water Cache." After a fruitless 10-minute search of the underbrush, he pulled out a piece of paper with the cache information on it. He decoded the hint provided to help unsuccessful hunters. It told him exactly where to look. After following the directions, he found a military ammo box hidden among some large rocks. Inside were toys of Yogi Bear figures, bubble-blowing soap, some glitter paint, a Rubik's Cube, a box of sidewalk chalk, a silver dollar, a parachute toy, a logbook and two pencils. McMullin took the Rubik's Cube and left a Pez dispenser and candy. After the trouble he had finding the cache, McMullin took a reading with his GPS and marked a new "waypoint," as the coordinates are called. "I'll put that on the website to help other geocachers," he said. The website is central to the sport. In addition to listing the caches, participants go online after finding a cache, to describe their experience. Each cache is given a rating from one to five stars for difficulty. The Yogi cache had one star. "If it rates a five, you should need rock climbing gear or scuba gear to get to the cache," McMullin said. David Wallentine, an accountant who lives in Spanish Fork, has seen a few of those. One cache he found in Heber was a white sports water bottle tied 40 feet up between two trees, their branches so thick that climbing them was out of the question. Wallentine and his friends cast fishing line over a branch near the cache, and tied twine to it. When the twine was over the branch, they tied climbing rope to it. Someone used ascenders to climb the rope and cut the string securing the cache with a pruner. Wallentine climbed back up the rope after they were finished to put the cache back. Another time, Wallentine and his friends brought scuba gear and a ladder to get a cache from the bottom of a hot water spring in an underground cave near Midway, Utah. They got the cache after some searching, but he said the next person to find it used a pool cleaning net to get the same prize. "If I'm known for anything among the geocachers, it's for doing it the hard way," he said. To participate in geocaching, you'll need a GPS unit, which ranges from about $100 to more than $1000. At the low end are simple units that will show you the direction to go. At the high end are units that Hansel would drool over: an electronic trail on the screen shows where you've been, digital compasses and attachments to laptops and Palm Pilots allow for more options than you would ever need. Wallentine bought a GPS unit last spring and wasn't impressed with it. Then a co-worker mentioned the sport. "I was going to take it back," he said. "When I heard about it (geocaching) I thought, 'that is something.'" According to Wallentine, the sport clicks right away with geocachers. "If someone doesn't say, 'Gee, that sounds fun,' they won't be interested," he said. Wallentine does have a reason for going geocaching. "My favorite thing has to be the exploration part of it, going places I've never been before," he said. Not everyone smiles on this group of treasure seekers. Some have accused geocachers of encouraging people to leave the marked trails and create new ones, contributing to erosion. McMullin said it has been a problem in the past. Wallentine disagrees that trails are made by geocachers. He said each person is unlikely to come from the exact same direction. "Most of the ways I go, I don't think there's another person stupid enough to follow again," he said. Because of concerns about the land, Bureau of Land Management officers have removed some Utah caches. Wallentine said that because geocaching is an unorganized activity, there is no clear leadership to address such issues. Different people step forward to tackle different challenges. "I've written up a formal plan trying to figure out what their problem is," he said. Wallentine said if he does see a cache that causes harm in a sensitive area, he moves it, marks the new waypoint in his GPS and notifies the owner and the website. All caches have owners, the people who originally place and continually maintain the cache. Participants are discouraged from placing caches in areas they're not likely to visit again. "I doubt there's another group out there that takes more accountability and responsibility for their recreation than we do," he said. Because of the problems associated with caches being taken away by authorities or looted by people who stumble across them, variations on the game are emerging. Virtual caches are listed on geocaching.com. In this case, the coordinates are listed along with the description of a specific landmark. The hunters find the site, and must answer a question about the visit to prove they were there. Wallentine talked about another version, called geodashing, where a computer creates waypoints at random. Participants go to the location, take pictures and post them on the website. Because the computer changes the waypoints monthly, impact to the environment is minimal. However, it's not for everyone. "If you don't get geocaching, you'll never like geodashing," he said. On the web:
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