Cache and carry

Geocachers use GPS and the area around them to take the treasure hunt into the 21st century

DISCOVERING MONTREAL’S TINY CORNERS:
Jason Nadeau

by ERIK LEIJON

Hidden in trees and underneath benches throughout the city, over 2,000 suspicious-looking containers are waiting to be found by anyone with a GPS navigation device and a computer. Right under our collective noses, geocachers are placing small caches in ingenious places, uploading the GPS coordinates onto the official geocaching Web site and competing with each other to be the first to find these hidden treasures. The sport of geocaching has over 3,300 official participants in Quebec (each with their own unique nickname), and caches in every corner of Montreal.

It’s a sport that began with the improved accuracy of GPS devices in 2000 after the removal of U.S. government rules on selective availability. With retail GPS devices able to locate landmarks within a few metres, the game quickly exploded into a worldwide phenomenon via geocaching.com.

“I’ve discovered parks I never knew existed in my own neighbourhood because of geocaching,” says Jason Nadeau, aka DigitalMind. “I’ve met new friends through geocaching and even found neighbours who do it.”

Inside every geocache—which is usually the size of a small tupperware in forests, but considerably smaller in urban settings to prevent detection—is a logbook the geocacher must sign, and occasionally small trinkets that serve as mementos. Players are encouraged to put something back in the cache before returning it to its hiding place if they snatch a prize. A popular practice is to leave a travel bug—a special tag with a tracking code attached to it. The person who leaves the bug can then follow the tag as it moves from cache to cache when players upload the code onto the Web site.

OBJECTS OF THE EXERCISE: Well hidden caches and Nadeau’s Oak Leaf Geocoin (R), now somewhere in California

Coordinated positions

When visiting geocaching.com, players receive the coordinates and usually a clue as to where to look. GPS devices are precise, but even the correct destination covers a few square metres. “Once you get around 20 metres to the cache, you need to look with your eyes, not your GPS,” says André Vandal, aka AV Design, who previously was a director of Geocaching Quebec and designed the organization’s geocoin memento. “In the forest, it’s easier because no one is ever going to find it accidentally, but in the city, it can’t be much bigger than a 35mm film container. You have to look in places where the cache can be hidden all year round.”

Vandal, 46, has hidden around 56 geocaches in Montreal, including one at the Old Port that has remained in its original hiding place since 2004. The Old Port (dubbed “Tourist Trap” on the geocaching Web site) and nearly every other green space on the island contains at least a couple of caches. Vandal’s Old Port geocache comes with the hint: “I’m six feet tall and have quite a reach, so stop looking on the ground.” It took Nadeau, a geocacher for two years, only a few minutes before he noticed the well-camouflaged can dangling from the underside of an evergreen like a Christmas ornament. Inside the cache was the logbook filled with signatures (Vandal says over 300 people have found his cache), and a maple-leaf-shaped travel bug. “Before I started thinking like a geocacher,” says Nadeau, “I used to look for hours, even in the freezing cold. I would have to go back home and e-mail the owner, just to make sure the cache was still there.”

In order to keep caches hidden in busy public spaces, the containers must be removed and returned covertly. Nadeau, 28, says he occasionally has to explain himself to geomuggles (meaning non-geocachers) and police officers, although their reactions are typically positive. “People wonder what you’re doing,” he says. “Sometimes they come up and ask, other times they’ll see you lingering at a spot and they’ll do the same from across the street, looking at what you’re doing. Then we get stuck because I’m waiting for him to leave so I can put away the cache, while he’s waiting to see if I’m doing anything bad.”

SPOT FINDER: Magellan Explorist 500 GPS

Always on

Geocaching could be considered the first true 24-hour sport. At any given moment, the official checkers at geocaching.com could approve a new cache, giving Nadeau or Vandal a new challenge to tackle during a free moment. Nadeau has a 10-kilometre radius he routinely checks, and finds there’s something new every other day. Vandal will often pick a different metro station on weekends and search for cache locations he downloaded earlier. “It’s all about the FTF (first to find),” says Nadeau. “It’s not uncommon to get an e-mail at night saying there’s a new cache in your neighbourhood, and when you get there, there’s already a couple of people looking for it with flashlights.”

Another, more structured version of geocaching is the geo-rallye, a day-long scavenger hunt where competitors try to find as many caches as quickly as possible. There was one last April at the Old Port and there will a large event this August in Quebec City in conjunction with the 400th anniversary celebrations, where over 500 geocachers are expected to attend. The Montreal geo-rallye gave local cachers the opportunity to pick some creative hiding places, including using Nadeau as a prop. “I volunteered to pose as a street person,” says Nadeau, “and I was sitting on top of the cache. Some people just walked by, not sure what to do. Others gave me money to move out of the way.”

Going off-road

FIND AND SIGN:
Nadeau with logbook

As more people procure GPS devices for long road trips, or pick up snazzy new cellphones like the iPhone 3G, it’s expected that geocaching will only increase in popularity. Vandal cautions that although phones with GPS software can introduce someone to the technology, it’s necessary for a geocacher to have a GPS with off-road capability, not just turn-by-turn navigation specific to streets.

“By the time we meet a new geocacher, they’ve bought a handheld GPS,” says Vandal. “If the software doesn’t go off the rails, it means you’ll hit a corner and just stop.”

Most geocaching is also done in forests and away from urban areas. “The more downtown, the more the buildings interfere with the signal,” says Vandal. “Instead of being six metres away, your GPS will say it’s 30 metres.”