Photo by TLMazzy.
Scott Fee 2014
To find the last geocache on a multi-cache called Earth, Wind, Fire and Water puzzle cache, Scott Fee had to propel underneath a bridge and create a system of loops to maneuver to the final hidden geocache.
Every pirate knows “X” marks the spot for treasure, but step aside, Blackbeard — treasure maps have been updated.
The new name of the finding game is geocaching.
Geocaching is a global, real-world treasure hunt with a network of about 2.5 million active geocaches and about 6 million geocachers internationally. In its most basic form, geocachers hide a geocache for other geocachers to find.
Although the untrained eye might not notice, there are geocaches all over the U.S. 280 corridor in some of the most unlikely places. About 350 of them are in Oak Mountain State Park alone.
“It’s gotten a lot more popular here in the last couple of years,” said Park Naturalist Emily Cook. “I think there should be caches in the majority of the state parks here in Alabama, but I know we have quite a few. It’s basically a treasure hunt with GPS coordinates as the trail map.”
What it is
A traditional geocache is a container than can be any size, from the size a No. 2 pencil eraser to as big as the geocacher wants, although the bigger the geocache, the harder it is to hide. A typical geocache is about the size of an ammo box.
Scott Fee, who describes himself as an aggressive geocacher, has found about 28,000 geocaches in 48 states and three provinces in Canada.
Fee said the treasure-hunting aspect of geocaching is one of the most popular draws to the activity, because the geocaches can be very well camouflaged.
“One of the more creative ones was a peephole in the back of a business — the peephole in the door — well, the peephole itself was the geocache,” Fee said. “You would never normally touch that. In geocaching you have to touch a lot of stuff because you have to see if it is real or if it is fake.”
Fee said fake objects are common hiding places for geocaches. There are fake logs, sticks and even acorns that can contain the mini logbook for those who end up locating the cache.
Each cache is rated on how difficult it is to find in addition to how difficult the terrain is on a one-to-five scale. A 1-1 would be a cache that could be reached by a wheelchair and is the easiest to find.
Each geocache has its own webpage that explains the difficulty rating along with, possibly, clues provided by the hider. From there, the cache can literally be hidden anywhere.
Right now there is a geocache hidden on the International Space Station and in the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean.
How to play
It all starts at geocaching.com or the geocaching app, free through the iPhone App Store.
Once you have a geocaching account, the website will provide you with a map filled with icons at the locations of the caches. The GPS will navigate you within 30 feet of the geocache, and the rest is up to you.
Once you find the cache, you get to unlock the treasure within. Fee said each cache will have a logbook or sheet, depending on the size, for the finder to sign before logging it into their online logbook. The caches also might contain small knickknacks for trading.
“You can have anything you want in it as long as you trade for equal or greater value,” Fee said. “So if there is a little soda koozie, you could have the koozie as long as you leave something that is equal.”
The game doesn’t stop with single-faceted geocaching. There are also challenge caches, mystery caches and multifaceted geocaches that lead you to multiple points.
Each geocache turns into a smiley face on your map once you have found it, and the more places you geocache, the bigger your map gets.
Where to find them locally
About two years ago, Oak Mountain State Park only had about two dozen geocaches until a geocacher who goes by the username January14, a friend of Fee’s, and Fee himself decided to place more.
Now if you were to go for an hour-long hike on a trail at Oak Mountain, Fee said you would probably pass about 10 of them without knowing it. Fee alone has placed about 175 caches in the park.
“Oak Mountain, I think, is getting a lot more popular because now there are so many more,” Fee said. “Before, you had to do a pretty significant hike.”
One of Fee’s most recent additions is a cache he placed 45 feet high in a tree at the park, but not all of them require that level of vertical training to locate.
For more information or to sign up for your own geocaching account, visit geocaching.com.
