My lament over a stolen geocache

Geocaching is about finding hidden containers, most definitely. But a huge aspect of the game is not finding geocaches, but hiding them. Creating a geocache can be as fun, or more fun than going on a hunt. You get to be creative, a tour-guide, cheeky, playful... there are no limits to what can be imagined. And simply creating the geocaches isn't the only fun about being a Cache Owner (CO), receiving messages on your caches is also good fun. Sometimes, people will post lengthy accounts of their hunt, other times they will go off on tangents, and commonly people will simply not write much at all. But getting those logs and interacting with geocachers finding your hides is fun. And there is a special excitement over a new hide. Waiting to see who might go after it first, and what they will have to say. I certainly felt this way about my most recent geocache, GC5Q84J, or Oak Ridge "Power" Trail. A few week-ends ago, I carefully put together the containers for a long multi cache that would take folks the entire length of the 8+ mile North Ridge Greenway Trail in Oak Ridge. I had a nice big final container, with some good swag that runners and mountain bikers should appreciate. Then all the other stages were preform tubes, painted green. I set off with all this stuff and had myself a good little run, stopping every 3/4 mile or so to hide a stage. It was wonderful, and the geocache got published pretty quickly too, which I was surprised about, since I figured I would have at least one proximity conflict somewhere along the trail. The cache was published 3/30/15, just two days after I placed it.

On March 31st, just a day after the cache was published, I checked on the final for the multi-cache while walking with my daughter to find a letterbox nearby. Everything was in good shape.

The next day, April 1st, I received an email from the first geocacher attempting the cache. This geocacher is relatively new to town, and had hiked the entire length of the trail looking for my cache. He had made a transcription mistake at stage 7, and thus couldn't find stage 8. I gave him the correct coordinates for stage , but also went out to check stage 7 just in case I had the wrong numbers written in it. Nope, it was correct, and the stage was right where it was supposed to be.

A few days later, April 5th, we were out of town, but I received an email from another geocacher who couldn't find the first stage. I thought this pretty odd, since the first stage should have been pretty easy to spot. I wrote her back telling her what the stage should have looked like and letting her know I'd check up on it. I wasn't seriously worried that it was gone, the cache hadn't been active for a week yet.

On, April 11th, I receive an email from the first geocacher to attempt the multi. He found the piece of concrete tube at stage 8, where I had hidden the preform, but there was no container to be found. He mentioned that the area looked pretty torn up, like perhaps an animal had been digging around there. Now this was sounding strange, so I decided to take the dog for a run to see what was up with the cache. We started at the end of the North Ridge Trail, and made our first stop the final container. Before I even got close I could tell something was wrong. The rotten tree that the final was hidden in had been ripped apart in many places. Wantonly destroyed is how I would put it. There was no sign of the Plano Ammo container and it was pretty clear to me that this was not the work of an animal, but a person.

I ran over to stage 8 and verified what had already been told to me. The container was gone. There wasn't even a sign of the fishing line that I had used to tie the container to a nearby vine. Everything was missing. I didn't have time to run the entire trail today, but instead drove to the start of the trail, since it is on my way home. After a short jog over to the coordinates for the first stage, my fears were confirmed. The stage was completely gone. This stage had a copious amount of fishing line securing it to a cradled hiding spot out of view. Since stage 2 was less than a half mile away, I decided to run to it as well. This stage was pretty far off the main trail tied to a rock placed in a hollow tree. And it was gone as well. not even the rock remained.

All the excitement I had about someone finding this cache was sucked out of me and replaced with anxiety. Someone has taken it upon themselves to remove my cache. Who would do this? Why would they do it? As I pondered these questions I jogged back to the car and passed by another geocache on the North Ridge Trail, North Ridge Loggers Camp. That cache was present and in good shape. I checked the logsheet on the off chance that someone would have written their name on it in the last few weeks. There was a name on it from last Sunday, but it was the geocacher that had emailed me about not finding the first stage.

Verified stages 3-4 were missing on April 13th. I also checked 4 other geocaches along the trail in this area and all 4 were in place. Those caches were closer to the trail and more obvious than mine. So it seems rather unlikely that whoever took my cache is targeting all geocaches along the trail. Just mine for some reason. Either just happens to be one they stumbled upon, or some other reason, I don't know yet.

On April 14th, I left a note at the stage one location, hidden in a spice-jar where the original stage was hidden. The note is my attempt to reach out to whoever took the cache. It reads:

Hello Stranger,

If you have found this note while looking for my geocache, GC5Q84J, Oak Ridge Power Trail, I’m sorry to say that the geocache is no longer active. Someone has removed all the stages. If you are the person who has removed the geocache, this note is for you. I do not know who you are or why you have removed my geocache, but I would like to reach out to you. I would love to talk or email with you to get your opinions and thoughts on why this geocache should not have been placed here. You can reach me at ...[phone and email]. I hope to hear from you.

Sincerely,

Aaron (aka Fugads)

I'm not very optimistic that I will get a response, but I thought it was worth a shot. EDIT: I checked back on this note on May 22 and it was gone. My hunch is whoever took the rest of the cache took this note too, and never bothered contacting me. Oh well, it was worth a try.

I verified stages 5-7 were missing on April 16th. I also checked two other geocaches in rock nooks along the trail, both of which were present. At this point I've verified all stages are gone and am left to decide whether to try to replace the cache, or abandon the idea. I really like this kind of multi cache, but it also seems like the kind of cache that will require a lot of maintenance checks. I did my best to design the hides that they would last a long time, tethering all of them with sturdy fishing line, and I think if it weren't for someone cutting them out, this method would have worked pretty well. Unfortunately, with someone taking an issue with me placing a cache on this trail, there is really not a whole lot I could do. And even trying something else might just inflame this person more. So right now I am leaning towards archival.

Pictures of the cache stages

Since all the original hides are gone and replacing them i the same locations would be foolish, I might as well post some pictures of how the hides looked so I can remember how this cache was designed. Sorry, there is no picture of stage 6, I must have forgotten to snap one.

Stage 1: "Cradeled" underneath a dead tree

Stage 2: Tied to a rock and dangling in a hollow tree stump

Stage 3: Hard to see, but tied off to part of the hollow tree and dangling inside it.

Stage 4: Maybe the most obvious, but it is well back away from the trail and facing away from the trail. 

Stage 5: Tied to a low horizontal log and dangling behind a larger dead tree, again, well back from the trail and out of sight.

Stage 7: Another dangling hide inside a hollow tree.

Stage 8: Underneath the piece of concrete tube and tethered to the vine with fishing line.

Final Hide: This log was completely ripped apart when I visited last.

Final hide close-up.

Summary

A small recap of the facts:

• Cache was in place on April 1st.
• Stage one reported not found April 5th.
• Final stage and some others verified missing April 11th.
• All stages verified missing with fishing line tethers cut and all signs of cache placement erased.
• All other geocaches along the same trail as this hide were verified to still be in place.,

It seems clear to me from these facts that the cache was removed between April 1st and April 5th. Whoever removed the cache was thorough in removing all evidence of each stage. Also, whoever removed this multi-cache walked right by several other caches along the trail and left them alone. This indicates that the person was only going after my cache and is either intentional ignoring the other caches along the trail, or is unaware of them. Base don this I find it unlikely that this person is using www.geocaching.com to get information about geocaches along the trail, and instead stumbled upon the first stage of my cache and took it upon themselves to remove the whole thing. This person most likely enjoys hiking and wild areas and may have been offended that a geocacher would place so much "litter" on their trail.

Trailbuilding on the CT

I've been wanting to volunteer to help build the Cumberland Trail ever since I started hiking the trail. I had even published a CITO event last fall to try to et other geocachers involved in building the trail. The CITO event had minimal interest, but the CT Rangers ended up canceling trail building for that day anyways due to a snowstorm moving through the area. Still, I wanted to volunteer and help build what promises to be a great trail through the state, so when I saw they were looking for volunteers again this spring I signed up for a day and put it on the calendar. I didn't bother making it a CITO event this time, but I did post about it on the geocaching facebook page in the hopes that some cachers might want to join me. Again, little interest. Oh well...

I showed up at the Ranger Station and filled out some waivers then stood around while a bunch of people showed up. I was pretty impressed by the number of volunteers who were there, and all of them looked like kids. I was just starting to think to myself how great it was that so many kids around here are into hiking and volunteering, when I learned that all of the volunteers were indeed university students, and that they were volunteering as a requirement for their degree programs or courses they were taking.  This diminished my view of them slightly, they were here because they had to be, not because it was something they really wanted to do. Still, I bet they had choices about where they could volunteer and the fact that they chose back-breaking manual labor speaks well of them. I was the only non-student volunteer. This made me both feel old and young. Old because I was over a decade older than all the other volunteers, and had a lot less in common with them. Young, because, hey, I was hanging out with a bunch of young college students! Made me feel like a student again.

The Rangers took us up to a section of trail being built from Woodson Gap, near the coordinates N36 27.512 W84 00.747. We worked on side-hill digging on a 200 ft section of trail, and spent a good 3 hours doing so between breaks and instruction from the Rangers. For the number of manhours we put in, the amount of trail we built was pretty disparaging. At this rate, the CT might never get finished. But I think also that the Rangers did not want to push us "students" too hard, or give us too much responsibility. By keeping us all fairly close, they could keep us under close supervision. The section of trail we built could almost have been a carriage road, it was getting fairly wide from all our digging. I hope it gives future CT hikers the best 30 seconds of hiking they could hope for!

Digging for cache

After spending a day trailbuilding on the CT, I drove down a scenic country road into the Cove Creek Wildlife Management Area to find a few out of the way caches. Two of them were quick easy finds. and have been found quite a bit recently. The last one, GC1H6NH, hadn't been found in over 4 years, and didn't even have a logged attempt. Turns out the cache was buried under 6 inches of rotted wood and dirt, but was in otherwise pristine shape. My guess is that cachers have stopped to look for it during these past 4 years, but not found it didn't bother to post a DNF. Finding a cache like this one makes me especially happy, it's like finding a lost treasure. It also reminds me that caches can and do become buried with time. Just one reason that caches "go missing" in remote locations.

The "6" that now look more like 4

I've already done some serious digging and removing a rotten log at this point,

AHA! The cache reveals itself.

Original logsheet. Last entry January 2011.

Seeing your own cache through someone else's eyes

As a CO I love getting nice logs and hearing about other's experiences on my caches. It's just one of the things that makes placing caches fun for me. What is rare for me though is to actually be with other geocachers who are looking for and finding one of my caches. I got the chance to virtually do this for one of my caches recently when a geocacher took a GoPro video of his experience finding the cache. The cache is Bear Necessities, one of my earlier cache placements but also one of my more popular hides in New Mexico. I placed the cache while out camping with my family, and it is way out in the National Forest, so it only gets a few finds per year, and even went all of 2014 without getting a find. But every cacher that finds it really likes it, it's at almost 94% favorite point ratio right now, which for 17 total finds isn't bad at all. If you think you'll ever be in southern NM and wanting to find this cache without spoilers, then do not click on the YouTube link below. Otherwise, enjoy the spoiler video and see what this cache find is like.

YOUTUBE LINK

One of the things I like about the video is that the geocachers do not find it right off, but search around for a few minutes first, guessing out loud what they think it might be. Also, it is flattering to hear what they say about me as a geocacher. Nice to know I have a reputation out there. I miss geocaching out in NM. So much freedom out there with all the public land at your disposal to explore.

Unexpected geocacher encounter

My wife's workplace hosted a wildflower hike in the Smoky Mountains today and the unexpected happened, I ran into another avid geocacher, Katarina (or Snövit her geocaching name). I've run into geocachers a few times before, but it is pretty uncommon. What made this encounter especially unusual was that the geocacher was also a scientist that had just attended a 3-day workshop with my wife at NiMBioS. We were waiting for hikers to show up at the NiMBioS parking lot and she overheard my wife talking about my geocaching adventures and immediately came over and said "you know geocaching?". I couldn't help but grin from ear to ear. Here was a colleague of my wife, visiting from across the sea, and she was a geocacher! Needless to say we hit it off pretty well. She had already found a geocache in Tennessee, but was shy about mentioning it around non geocachers so had not had a chance to go caching while here. The one cache she had found she had found on her own and was an urban micro near where she was staying. So when i told her there was a geocache out where we were hiking her eyes lit up and she firmly stated "we must go find it". That had been my plan all along. Except up until we met, my plan was to slink off away from the group and find the cache without drawing attention to myself. Now though, with another interested geocacher, I wouldn't have to be so timid and apologetic for fulfilling my geocaching urge.

The cache that we had to find was actually a virtual, since we were hiking in the Smoky Mountain Nation Park. Still, when we got close to GZ, I gave her my GPSr to let her do the honors of navigating us to the correct spot. The question to answer for the virtual was pretty darn easy. But even with the geocache found and no other caches to go after, we still continued to talk about geocaching throughout the hike. I guess that's just something that us cachers do. If she ever comes back to NiMBioS for another conference or workshop, I promised to take her geocaching for real. What a great treat to run into another geocacher unexpectedly! It's like we share a special bond, despite having never met one another before. 

Snövit near the GZ for the virtual cache

4 years strong

April 2nd was my four year geocaching anniversary. I didn't mark it in any special way, but it does offer a good time to reflect on what geocaching has meant to me over the years. When I started geocaching it was a good way to get out and hike and explore on my own (as opposed to climbing which required needing a partner) which made it perfect for my off-work Fridays and other random days that I would have time to do something on my own, but not always enough foresight to plan a trip with someone else. I pretty quickly got sucked into just finding a lot of caches though, especially those in the Organ Mountains. The Labors of Hercules series and TOH series were also instrumental in getting me hooked. The CO for both of those series was about my age, loved hiking and climbing and worked out at WSMR/TDRSS. I found a kindred spirit in this geocacher even though he had moved out of town before I even started caching. And anyone that tackles either of those geocaching series is bound to either abandon geocaching altogether, or become a big fan. I did the latter.

Now four years later, I am still geoacaching at a pretty steady rate. While I like to consider myself a hiker/adventurer geocacher, someone who does geocaching in order to get out and explore new areas, I will admit to being more of an opportunistic geocacher. I have found more than a fair share of urban caches, and strip-mall caches, because whenever I go somewhere, whether it be for running errands, or commuting, I find myself wanting to know if there are geocaches around, and then I want to find them. The one kind of geocaching that I have yet to really get into is high-numbers geocaching, whether it be power trails, or simply finding a ton of geocaches in one day. After 10 caches I've usually had my fill, and I rarely have found more than 20 caches in a day.

Over the years I've hidden quite a few geocaches as well. I currently have 48 caches under my name, and several more that I adopted out I still keep an eye on. And I have to say, I enjoy getting an email whenever someone finds one of my caches. Probably, this is because most of my caches are very rarely found, so when they do get found by someone I'm very interested in who they are and what their experience was like. I've gotten some great stories on my caches, and hope that will continue.

My family still puts up with my geocaching habits pretty well, they even take it into account whenever we are traveling somewhere. The kids love getting new toys, but could care less for micro caches these days.

None of this is really new. Geocaching has just become part of what I do. Kind of like rock climbing used to be for me. Will I still be playing this game in another four years? Guess we'll ahve to wait and see. For now I am about as happy as can be with the game, and am planning to go after some more great caches in the area, explore more parks in Tennessee, and hide more interesting caches for the locals.