How
does it work?
You
register with a geocaching website,
say www.geocaching.com
. Membership is
free, but for a small monthly fee you can take out
premium membership, which comes with additional
benefits.
Having chosen a geocaching identity and a password, you
provide some details about your home location. This
enables Geocaching.com to display the coordinates of
all the geocaches near your home location. You can also
enter a zip or post code into a search box to display
geocaches near that location; useful if you’re going on
holiday or planning a day trip.
Now click on a geocache in the list to display its web
page. This web page is created by the person who hid the
geocache. It contains the coordinates of the geocache, a
short description of the cache, an encrypted hint and other
useful details, such as level of difficulty, size of cache
or terrain. There is a converter to display the coordinates
in other formats, and usually a .loc location file that can
be loaded into some GPS units. This saves typing the
coordinates into the device.
You load the coordinates into your GPS device, either by
keying them in or by loading in the .loc file. You take a
copy of the cache description and hints, either by printing
out a paper copy of the web page or loading it into your
personal digital assistant (PDA), and you head off to find
the cache.
When you find a cache, you open the container, take a look
at the contents, sign and date the log book and re-hide it,
taking care that no non-geocachers or ‘muggles’ see you
doing this. Usually, you may take some photos of the
location or the experience. When you return, you go back to
the geocaching website, access the cache web page and log
your find. This ‘logged’ find appears against your
geocaching identity. Many geocachers have logged thousands
of finds.
You can also upload photos you’ve taken and you can leave a
short paragraph describing your experiences of the geocache
– funny encounters, surprises, the state of the cache if,
say, it needs attention because it is deteriorating. Photos
that give away the location are called ‘spoilers’. They are
permitted, but they need to be noted as such so others do
not accidentally see them and spoil their geocaching fun.
To get started, you can simply create and ID for yourselfe
on geocaching.com (for free) and look up the geocaches
nearest your home location and head off to find them. It's
easiest with a GPS device.
Another form of virtual geocache is the earthcache. These
are coordinated through the earthcaching website, which was
created to provide an exciting way for geocachers to learn
how the earth has been shaped by geological processes.
Earthcaches are created by geocachers with knowledge about
geosciences that they would like to share. All earthcaches
are verified by the Geological Society
of America before they are posted
on the website.