Cache maintenance and other such activities

I started placing caches since 2003 and of course some of them are more exposed to muggles or forestry activities and weather than others. Some years ago I had caches up to 300 km from home for various reasons but now I think the farthest one from home is about 100 km away, but as that is the most visited (1259 finds at the last count) I am trying to keep it alive. It is also in the most muggle intensive place imaginable Upptaåget #13 – Uppsala so the maintenance needs are quite high. Recently a cacher reported that the plastic bag and log needed replacing. I know that a couple of years ago someone placed a second ”cache” at the location as they couldn’t find the one I had placed. I replaced the missing cache with a new green PETling but couldn’t find the temporary cache. The temporary cache is still there but it needs removing. That sounds like a new trip to Uppsala with the hope that I can find it so I can remove it. That’s for the near future but what have I done in the near past?

This week I have been busy as I have replaced a couple of caches that were muggled and discovered that at Hemlingby Trail #8 – Perspective (now disabled) the construction at GZ has disappeared and it wasn’t a small item! A new home will be needed to be found for my cache, which in itself was quite special.

Perspective’s hiding spot has gone

Another form of maintenance is needed for my caches with padlocks on them. I don’t know if the padlocks are just bad or if people enjoy altering the code after logging their find. Today I had to reset a padlock code Hemlingby Trail #9 – Numbers and as you can guess that means a brute force attack by starting at 0000 and working upwards towards 9999. My fingers are sore from rotating the number rings on the lock and I was lucky to only need to get to 5137 before the lock opened.

Cache, the cracked code lock and sweets found next to the cache

I had to check a letterbox cache Hemlingby Trail #15 – ATM were it was reported that there were some occupants in the birdbox housing the cache that the cacher didn’t want to remove, so could I please do it? I knew roughly what to expect so had gloves and a plastic bag with me as well as full body armour! A wasp’s nest is not something to be played with. Luckily, I saw no wasps flying round the birdbox and when I carefully opened it I was relieved to find an old empty wasp’s nest. Had it been occupied I may have been tempted to leave it well alone as it was rather large.

A big wasp’s nest

Wasp’s nest removed

I then moved on to another of my caches Hemlingby Trail #12 – Pinball Wizard where it was reported that the cache was missing. I won’t go in to details as it’s a gadget cache and I don’t want to spoil the fun. The cache was still there but the mechanism had got a little rusty. After some work all is functioning again.

Hemlingby Trail #4 – Jannes fäbod had been muggled and only the lid of the old container remained. A new container is in place and I hope that it lives a lot longer.

Jannes fäbod, new container and remains of old one

I have been forced to archive a cache that is on Limön a small island close to Gävle. It was a multicache but someone decided to vandalise the sign that gave clues to the final location. I wondered if I could convert the cache to a trad but today I heard that there will not be any boat traffic subsidized by the local council to the island next year. A trip was very cheap at 50 SEK return. Apparently the subsidy was 600 SEK/traveller so I can understand why it is disappearing. No doubt the other caches I have on the island will be archived in due course as I have no means of getting to the island any longer.

So all in all an intesnive week but it feels satisfying to have revived a number of flagging caches and hopefully can fix a fitting location/container for Perspective.

Time to hide some caches

The last time I hid a cache was over a year ago but after a visit to England earlier this year where I found a number of very Creative caches I decided that rather than just place a traditional tupperware container somewhere or even worse, another puzzle cache, I would borrow and develop the ideas presented by JJEF.

As a consequence my garage has looked like Santa’s workshop for the past few months and a handful of caches were ready for placement in June. That was when the question arose. Where was I going to place them all? That question remained unanswered until a couple of seemingly unrelated events occured a few weeks ago. Firstly, was the release of the Björsjön series of caches followed on my birthday by a surprise present – a bag full of plastic screw bottle tops. Someone knew that I had bought a bag of PET preforms at the Hedmora event in Norn and needed tops for them. It seems as though there is a wish from my fellow geocachers in the area that a new trail is created in or close to Gävle. 🙂

That was what I needed to get out into the nearby Hemlingby leisure area and the start of a mapping and placement exercise. I mapped out where I want to place the caches a couple of weeks ago and have started to place caches in the wild.

The first two caches Hemlingby Trail #11 – Dunk and Hemlingby Trail #12 – Pinball Wizard are now in place and activated. We had one of the grandchildren staying with us and of course he wanted to go out and help me. He’s been caching nearly as long as I have but it does help when they start young – 7 months in his case. When other family members heard about our planned activity they wanted to come along as well.

That meant we were seven people in the woods to hide the two caches. I think that the prospect of having a picnic was just as attractive as hiding the caches.

This is how many people it takes to hide a cache

Of course, even though I had my camera with me I forgot to take photos of both of the caches in their new surroundings so this picture will have to suffice.

The first cache is now in place and has been found

Hike from Valbo to Hemlingby – and several visits to a field puzzle

There is a long hiking trail in Gävleborg called Gästrikeleden. It’s a loop track with a total length of over 270km. I have walked on various parts of it over the years but there are still many kilometers that I haven’t visited. For more information visit Gästrikeleden.

The reason for walking a 15km stretch of the trail last weekend was because I was participating in the geocaching event organised by Bisko called Vandrings längs gästrikeleden. Valbo – Gävle.

Enthusiastic caches at the start of the trail

As it was raining lightly and the weather forecast wasn’t too promising it was good to see that a number of people turned up at the start. After a half hour of talking we were given the coords for the three new caches that were placed on the trail. We set off as a bunch but after a couple of kilometers some branched off to find other caches that were not part of the event. SR88 and I walked on slowly expecting the others to catch up before we reached the first event cache Viloplats vid en lada. We arrived at GZ which was some way off the barn and at a couple of trees in the middle of a very wet field. After a fruitless search we walked over to the barn where the others had turned up. SR88 went off to water the horses and came back saying he had spotted the cache location. We walked over and opened the false bird box that housed the cache. I made a note of the coordinates and mailed them to the CO as they were a “bit” off.

We continued on to the next cache and again lost a couple of persons on the way so SR88, Indiana Jonas and I worked as a team with the field puzzle Ord i skogen which consisted of finding several signs dotted around the area, making sense of the words, then calculating the final coordinates from the words we had arrived at. It was great fun despite a rough and wet terrain.

The highlight of the day was when we arrived at Björktrollens skatt. This was again a field puzzle that had us running around searching for fifteen very elusive film canisters and scratching out heads when we read the contents. After solving the first part of the puzzle hunger got the better of us and we walked on to Hemlingby where we met up with Bisko and others to grill sausages, hambergers and so on. After spending over six hours in the forests we were all ravenous.

Hungry cachers at the end of the 15km forest walk

As I only live a couple of kilometers from Hemlingby leisure area I walked home. In all I had walked 20km before I could take my boots off and have a hot shower.

As the last cache was left unfound I decided to see if I could solve the second part of the puzzle. I did, but also discovered that some minor bugs had crept into the information we found. Anyway I shot off to the coords I had calculated and spent a good half hour searching without success. Back home I contacted the CO who confirmed I had solved the puzzle and that because of the bugs I should adjust my northing slightly. I decided to visit the cache again the day after. When I got to the area my GPS packed in so I had hunt blindly and the result was that I found nothing.

This is starting to become a long story!

The day after I had debugged my GPS and got it working again. Downloading a PQ via a macro from GSAK had malfuntioned and no coords had been transferred. My Oregon didn’t like that and crashed every time the welcome screen had been loaded. It took quite a lot of fiddling to get it working again.

I made another trip to the cache site after work and met up with Indiana Jonas on his way back from a hunt for the cache. Had he found it? No! A relief for me. We compared notes and found that he was using the “brute force” method for finding the cache. I let him into the secret of the final part of the puzzle and a sigh was heard “Was it that simple?”. After about 20mins of searching at the multitude of places our GPS’s were pointing to I hear a shout and there was Indiana Jonas with the cache in hand. The GPS accuracy was terrible, presumably due to the solar activity we are experiencing so good eyes and the right approach got us to the cache. What a relief!

Finally found Björktrollens skatt

There is some kind of satisfaction in solving a tricky field puzzle so thanks to Bisko for giving us a challenging cache. It deserved the favorite point I gave it.

Vårevent i Gävle

When I started geocaching nearly nine years ago there were less than a handfull of us in the Gävle are who were active. Now, compared to Uppsala or Hedemora I can still say that the level of activity is not all that great although in the last year a lot of new user names have turned up in the logs and the number of active caches in the 10km radius from home is around 190 and in a 20km radius 270.

Very few events have been held over the years, mostly of the meet and greet types until last years Höstevent i Gävle. As a consequence I said to myself “How difficult can it be to organise an event?”. Looking back over the past few weeks I can say that there is some work involved but most of it is around placing a reasonable number of (hopefully) interesting caches in the area around the event venue rather than the event itself.

If it may be of any help to readers this is the checklist that I used:

• Grab the coordinates for the event
• Grab the coordinates for parking, food etc
• Write HTML description of the event
• Announce the event on geocaching.com min 2w before the event date
• Buy/make an event log book
• Container (2l ice-cream) for travel bugs and geocoins
• Geocaching logo (A4 laminated)
• Geocaching information www.geocaching.se
• Place caches in the area around the event location
• Printout of cache locations and descriptions
• Food and equipment at the event

The best thing about the event was the fantastic support given by the reviewers who gave me valuable advice and a cache release that was exactly at the time asked for. An eloge to them!

What I would like to do better next time?

• Take my laptop with me (3G connection)
• Download PQ and let cachers upload to their GPS
• Don’t forget to take the printouts of the caches to the event

The last item on the improvements list could have been a showstopper but (thanks to SR88 for letting me borrow his geobike) I was able to bike home and back in record time with the missing papers.
The event was on the day we put the clocks forward an hour but only one person who shall be nameless (read the event logs) forget to check.

The weather was fantastic -sunny and really warm – unlike the weather that we usually get in March so I was extremely lucky with that. The release of the new caches was an hour after the start time so there was plenty of time to “meet and greet” the others who were there before all disappeared off into the forest on their cache hunt. It was better to have some time together before the hunt rather than afterwards.

Vårevent i Gävle

I placed eight caches in the Hemlingby friluftsområde and aimed for some variation without realising that if the cache event was included it was possible to grab five different types of caches (Event, Traditional, Multi, Mystery and Letterbox/Hybrid). I think that was appreciated by quite a few of those who attended the event.

I am toying with the idea of repeating the event on the same Sunday next year but I am sure it will be impossible to get such good weather.