Cache and Carry: Geocaching a quirky game of hide-and-seek

Monday, April 22, 2002 | 8:27 a.m.

Seeking a hidden treasure, Scott Seegmiller drove his gray Lincoln Navigator sport utility vehicle to the end of a dirt road in Cottonwood Valley recreation area.

Bearing 50 mph winds at the remote spot 15 miles southwest of Las Vegas, he hiked through a ravine and climbed a rocky hillside. On a small plateau, Seegmiller finally spotted what he was looking for: a Tupperware container buried under a pile of rocks.

He sifted through the rubble, peeled off the container lid and examined the contents: a bumper sticker, a logbook, a hair scrunchie, a coffee cup and a Handy Heat chemical hand warmer, among other items.

Seegmiller swapped out the Handy Heat with a set of headphones, signed the logbook and headed down the mountain.

Odd as this excursion may seem, the 48-year-old Henderson resident is neither land pirate nor anthropologist. He is merely a geocacher, a man who is party to an international game of hide-and-seek.

In geocaching a term that combines the words geography and caching a person hides a cache, often in an obscure and remote location, then uses Global Positioning System units to mark its coordinates.

The player then invites others to find the cache by posting its location coordinates on the website geocaching.com.

There are more than 16,500 caches hidden in 119 countries. Local players say that there are roughly 50 stashed in Southern Nevada.

Anyone with a GPS unit and access to a computer can geocache.

GPS units sell for as little as $100 at sporting goods stores and will bring users within 20 feet of their destination.

Caches are usually filled with novelty items and a log book. When a player discovers a cache, he or she takes an item, then replaces it with something of equal value.

Some caches are short story caches, in which a player is required to continue a story that has already been started. Some caches contain disposable cameras that players use to take a picture of his or her self at the site. When the film is full, a player has it developed and posts the pictures on the website.

There are event caches, in which several people punch in GPS coordinates to meet each other.

In such urban areas as New York City, micro-caches made from 35-mm film containers or Altoids containers and magnets have been attached to the bottom of park benches.

Geocachers say that the appeal to the game is in visiting an area that one would otherwise never come across. Sometimes it's even in their back yards.

"You could live somewhere all your life and geocaching opened your eyes to areas you weren't really aware of," said 28-year-old Seattle resident Jeremy Irish, who founded geocaching.com.

"The idea is that the world is our game board. We need to get out more."

When Irish launched the website in September 2000 there were roughly 75 caches hidden mainly in the United States.

New caches are continually being added to the website, followed by comments and photographs from players who hunted them down.

According to Irish, there are 350 Nevada residents registered on geocaching.com. There could be more geocachers living in Nevada who are not registered on the website. (Registration is not required to play the game.)

Cache prizes

Some keep the "prizes" in the caches moving, meaning that they bring a prize that was found in one cache to another. Others, who refer to themselves as "cache cows," have created shrines of the objects that they have picked up.

Travel Bugs (dog tags with serial numbers) purchased off geocaching.com can be placed in a cache then monitored as it travels across the country.

Some players just sign the logbook, then leave. Taking nothing. Leaving nothing.

"It's kind of an organic game," Irish said. "Caches change. They become challenges.

"A lot of people have signature items. They create their items out of their hobbies."

A woman from Western, N.Y., who is known on geocaching.com as "DxChallenged," is responsible for creating "geoquilts" by having quilt squares placed in caches.

A quilt that she had created as a tribute to Irish was made from quilt squares that had been found in caches, then signed by geocachers. The quilt was presented to Irish three weeks ago in Kirkland, Wash.

Some caches are covered in reflective tape and require being sought at twilight by players toting flashlights. Some caches are puzzles in need of solving.

Cache caution

Placing caches in federal parks is illegal because they violate park policy that states that nothing can be left behind. The park service considers caches to be abandoned property.

Caches hidden in places with heavy traffic have drawn suspicion by those not in the know.

One rumor on geocaching.com is that shortly after Sept. 11 a geocacher in an SUV pulled up to a Las Vegas cache near the KLVX Channel 10 station on Channel 10 Drive and caused alarm in an onlooker who allegedly reported the incident to Metro Police.

The cache is no longer there.

"We ask that people really mark the containers," said Irish, who carries a trash bag when he's within 40 feet of a cache and picks up trash on the ground so that he doesn't arouse suspicion.

Irish suggests others do the same. Otherwise, he said, you appear to be just walking around in circles.

Nevada_Mike

Mike Arment, a local geocacher who is known on geocaching.com as Nevada_Mike, said that he prefers to hide his caches in areas that require a workout. He has hidden six of them.

"I make it so you have to hike at least two miles," Arment said. "I want people to see places that are new and different."

He spends an average of $20 on each cache: $4 for a plastic ammo box with hinges and another $16 on the eight or nine items that he puts in the box such as marbles, work gloves or rubber snakes.

One cache named "Mystic" was filled with items that he spent two months handcrafting, such as a necklace made out of skulls, a half-moon trinket and a voodoo doll. He even made the boxes that contain the items.

Arment surveys geocaching.com twice daily to see what is new and who might have found any of the six caches he has hidden in Southern Nevada.

He has found about 20 caches within 50 miles of the Las Vegas Valley. Because he doesn't have a four-wheel drive vehicle he has ridden his mountain bike up dusty back roads and mountainsides as far as 20 miles in search of a cache.

"And I'm not a 'super biker,' " Arment said. "It takes a lot out of you.

"The biggest challenge is looking at the map and trying to figure out what's the best way of getting there. You have to do some figuring."

Seegmiller said that the only time a player runs into trouble with geocaching is when they think that they already know where the cache is hidden and don't use the GPS unit.

He said that he seeks a cache once or twice a month, sometimes with his wife or kids. Mostly he geocaches when traveling. He's found more than 25 caches hidden throughout the United States.

Seegmiller found his first cache in December 2000 under an inch and a half of dirt at a park in Miami. He's found four caches in Utah, including one in Provo while he was in town attending the Olympics.

A cache that he found while visiting his brother-in-law in Alabama was within walking distance to his brother-in-law's house.

Seegmiller hid a cache in Venezuela that geocachers have not yet found. He has hidden four caches in Southern Nevada, including his "Happy New Years" cache that was hidden Jan. 1, 2001.

The "Happy New Years" cache, hidden in the McDonald Ranch area of Henderson, has drawn handfuls of tourists who have come to Las Vegas to gamble and make a side trip to geocache, Seegmiller said. Seegmiller prefers to find new caches.

"When they're brand new," he said, "the prizes are better."

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