Geocaching an activity
BUTLER TWP — In search of a big score in Punxsutawney, Rhelt100 and RichVFD3 climbed onto a dam where they would end up being cornered by police.
It wasn’t the first or the last time Ray Heltsley and Rich Tallis would be approached by police for reports of suspicious behavior, because although they weren’t arrested for that late-night hunt, geocaching at night typically attracts attention.
Heltsley and Tallis were in Punxsutawney a few years ago for a Groundhog Day geocaching event, where people came from across the nation to search for secrets marked by fellow cachers. Some of the treasures were containers with a log book with signatures from everyone who had found it prior, and others were views and locations found of the beaten path. In each case, the journey itself was part of the reward.
“That has been the biggest thing of the hobby for me is the social aspect, just meeting a lot of people and doing things in groups,” Heltsley said. “I enjoy hiking ... but when there's something to do while I'm hiking, it's that much more interesting, and that's what geocaching is.”
While the social aspect of geocaching is a perk for many who participate in the treasure hunting game, it doesn’t start that way for many. The Butler Area Cachers of Note, a collective Heltsley named so that its acronym of “BACON” would stick, began with just three people in 2007 and now includes a handful of people who meet and go on hunts periodically.
One of the newest members of the group, Angel Barkley, said she geocached alone for more than a year before coming across the members of BACON. Even though she picked up the hunt as a time-filling hobby, she didn’t know it would eventually lead to her meeting some of her favorite people.
“I joined because my daughter was going off to college and I'm not a social person,” Barkley said. “It was, 'What can I do by myself instead of being by myself all the time?' Some of my favorite people I've met are geocachers.”
Geocaching began in 2000 in Seattle, Wash., and now has more than 3 million players around the world, according to geocaching.com, which Heltsley said was one of the original websites for the game.
The game starts with a “cache.” Players mark a cache on a GPS map, which represents a real item hidden there, which other players track down to then mark it as found for themselves.
While geocaching has changed over the years — some cache types are out of circulation and others have risen in their place — Tallis said the concept is pretty simple to pick up on.
“It is using multimillion dollar satellites to go find Tupperware in the woods,” Tallis said. “Nowadays, it's all app-based, but back in the early years of it, you literally print out MapQuest directions to a parking point, and then from there it was using a handheld to narrow it down to 30-some feet.”
Players can hunt for caches and leave caches of their own, all of which are checked by reviewers before they go live on the geocaching apps. Heltsley said the reviewers are players themselves and often go on to be geocache celebrities.
“Those guys are kind of legendary, too, I mean when you run into them at events, everybody knows who they are,” Heltsley said.
Caches and cachers are all over the country — and the world — which makes the game essentially endless. Players can check the phone application anywhere for nearby caches, and they can leave some in a place they are visiting. People can even mark their favorite caches on the app, which is viewable by others.
“When you are in a new area and you are a geocacher, you can look at caches in that area and you can look for favorites,” said Christina Moss, a member of the Butler Area Cachers of Note. “You can award favorite points to caches for the ones that have a lot of favorite points and know that that's a good cache to go to.”
Heltsley said many people keep the app on their phones just in case they want an interactive activity to take on during a trip, or just on a day off.
“Certain people just try to pound numbers, and there is a competitive aspect to it,” Heltsley said. “Some people will go through like finding a cache in every state, or if you're a world traveler, maybe every country.”
Seasoned cachers gain skills through years of exploring. Around 2010, members of BACON volunteered to help find survey markers around Moraine State Park, some of which had been hidden by overgrown brush that had covered them up over the course of years.
The cachers were able to locate most of the markers, some of which were “in the middle of nowhere,” in one day.
“We had 15 or 16 maybe, and we were given five or six survey markers and we dispersed and found as many as we could for the park,” Heltsley said. “I was told at the time that they had gotten a quote from a survey company; it was going to be like $30 grand, so we just did it for them.”
Heltsley was originally looking for an outdoor activity he could do with his children when he stumbled upon geocaching. He said the game helped him to be more active, leading him to lose 40 pounds in his first year of playing.
The social aspect of the game is somewhat of a side effect of the physical game, because cachers can run into one another on searches. Heltsley met Tallis when Tallis was looking for a cache on Heltsley’s property, and accidentally locked himself out of his car. That began a yearslong friendship, and not the only one built on a shared love of geocaching.
“I've been camping all over the country with him. Our kids grew up together because of geocaching; his daughter calls me dad,” Heltsley said of Tallis. “When you go out with people and you make memories and have experiences, that's how you kind of create a relationship.”
Heltsley said he also met his fiancé through geocaching. Moss said she still keeps in touch with people she met geocaching, and Barkley said she has had social events attended exclusively by geocachers.
Barkley, who described herself as socially awkward, said the game has been great in building her social circle, even into her mid-40s.
“Had it not been for caching, I wouldn't have run into any of these people,” Barkley said. “I'm not a social person, which is funny because most cachers are socially awkward, and when we get together, you get to know each other.”
