The Geomate.jr is a geocaching only device that comes preloaded with 250,000 caches. But it was sold to another company and the support has been iffy. Plus, you’ll likely need an update kit to go along with it, so I’d stay away from this one. MSRP $69.99.

Garmin eTrex 10

Stepping up to the eTrex 10 will get you paperless caching support, meaning you can load recent logs, hints, descriptions, etc. to the device. The downsides to this model are its monochrome screen and very poor basemap. On the plus side, it’s good for hiking too as long as you don’t need a map, since it will navigate waypoints, tracks and routes. MSRP $109.99

Magellan eXplorist GC

The eXplorist GC is a geocaching-only unit that has a detailed and nearly world-wide basemap of roads. It also has a color screen and supports paperless caching. The biggest downsides are a hard to read screen (especially in bright light) and an interface that could stand some improvement. Still a good deal for the money though. MSRP $149.99

Garmin eTrex 20

The eTrex 20 is my choice if you can swing it. It has a bright (although small) color screen, supports paperless caching and can accommodate a full range of mapping options (and there are many sources of free user-created maps available for Garmin devices). It’s a great GPS for hiking too. MSRP $199.99

For the truly committed

If you’ve spent some time geocaching and are really ready to dive in, you may want to step up beyond these entry-level models. My current favorite is the Garmin GPSMAP 62s, but the soon to be released Oregon 600 series is worth taking a look at. For Magellan fans I like their eXplorist 510.

Here is an important tip if you keep a flashlight in your pack but rarely use it.   Consider using either alkaline batteries or low self-discharge rechargeable batteries such as the eneloop brand.    Typical NiMH rechargeable batteries lose 1% of their storage capacity per day of storage.  They are almost unusable after 30 days.

For the last few years I’ve been the webmaster for the association.   Last year I decided I wanted to bring my passion for geocaching to a leadership position.  I believe that excitement is catching and I hope to get others interested our game in ways that are sustainable for all.   Geocaching continues to gain in popularity; it is very close to mainstream now.   While this increased popularity is good for the game overall it does bring with it some challenges, most notably, land use issues.

The last year has seen a number of land managers, land owners and trail management groups take exception to geocaching.   In some cases the issue was just a simple misunderstanding that was easily resolved, in other cases the issue led to the removal of geocaches.   The OGA has been active in helping resolve some of these situations as they arose.  I believe that going forward we will have to be proactive in our approach to land manager issues.   It is for this reason that we have already started meeting with conservation authority managers and plan on doing that throughout the year.  I have found the better someone understands something the easier it is to find a compromise in a contentious issue.   Members of the executive will continue to be a voice for geocaching within their communities and across the province.   We have already had a meeting with the Toronto Region Conservation Authority.  They are very receptive to responsible geocaching.   We hope build on this relationship and others that we’ve created in the past.

During my mandate I plan on focusing on three areas:  Outreach, Education and Operations.   I believe these are areas that we can have the most impact in helping keep geocaching a sustainable activity.  How we’ll be working on those areas will have to be decided in consultation with the executive and you our members.

We had our first executive meeting recently and I’m excited by the willingness of the executive to work to improve geocaching in Ontario.  We’ll be sure and report back to you on what is discussed and how you can be a part of our plans.  The members of the OGA executive are very approachable people.  If you see us on the trails or at an event feel free to talk to us.   You can also engage with us on Facebook, Twitter, our forums or in emails.

I’m looking forward to the next two years.

Sincerely,

John A Robb
President

We have been asked to participate in the tourism panel that is taking place on Monday afternoon.  John Robb from the OGA will be representing the association.

You may want to attend the conference or just subscribe to the Ontario Trails Council newsletter.

President – John R.
Vice President – Ralph S.
Treasurer – Lucas C.
Golden Horseshoe – Gregory P.
Northern – Steve B.
Southwestern – Donny M.
Central - Mark H.
Eastern – Joe T.

Secretary – Vacant
Webmaster – Vacant

There is currently very little member only content but we’ll be adding more soon.   Stay tuned.

The trip began early in the morning of Saturday, November 3, with an Ontario cache in Grimsby, followed by a few difficult ones in the Buffalo to Rochester area of New York. Then we visited the highlight of the day, GC39 The Spot, the oldest cache in New York. We continued on and found a few in Syracuse while stopping for lunch, then a quickie in the northwest corner of Massachusetts, and one more in each of Vermont and New Hampshire before settling in for the night. We had found caches in Ontario plus 4 states which covered all nine difficulty and terrain levels, in order to accomplish several challenges in the Hamilton and Detroit areas.

After a brief sleep in a Brattleboro, Vermont, we got up at midnight and commenced our trip. The first cache was GC3QXAC The Circle of Stealth, an easy one just west of the border to New Hampshire. We then travelled across the southern edge of New Hampshire to Nashua, stopping briefly along the way for a webcam cache. Our goal for the second state was GC9E NH #1 – Mines Follies, New Hampshire’s oldest cache, which the CO nashuan had recently serviced and re-enabled so that we could include it on our itinerary. While in New Hampshire, the clock turned back an hour, so it was now only 1:20 a.m.! We continued eastwards to the border of Maine, the third state, and found a great cache in Kittery, GC11D9 Fort McClary Cache, which had 73 favorite points. Then it was back on the highway towards Boston, and our goal was GC74 First Mass, in the Boston suburb of Woburn. We hiked up the small mountain here in the dark and after searching for a half hour finally found this tricky cache, Massachusetts’ oldest, at 4:50 a.m. to claim state number 4.

Southwards now past downtown Boston to Newport, Rhode Island, the dawn greeted us and we stopped for a breakfast break. Newport was a beautiful town, and the sunny skies were gorgeous overGCEC Brenton Point. After logging the oldest cache in state number 5, we paused for a group photo overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, and I dipped my finger in the cool water. We then crossed the bridge to rejoin the freeway in Connecticut, and headed towards GCE4 Another Brick in the Wall. We met a jogging nun in the woods and then found the oldest cache in Connecticut, state number 6.

Shortly after leaving Connecticut, we crossed into New York and were within about 10 miles from the Bronx. We detoured to the north to avoid the traffic-cluttered city, and crossed the Tappan Zee bridge towards Harriman State Park and GCBF Boston Cache, the third oldest in the state, the 7th of the day. Then we headed south into storm-ravaged New Jersey. Our goal cache was GCC8 gerbiL cacHe in the Ramapo Valley Reservation. Sadly, the park was closed due to flooding and the cache was inaccessible, and so we substituted an easy one nearby, GC1A31Z Deep Fried Rocky Mountain Oysters, for state number 8. We were noticing that even in this northwest corner of New Jersey, over 20 miles from the coast, there were power lines down and power outages, and most of the gas stations were closed or out of gas. We made a strategic decision to not chance running out of fuel in our route through Philadelphia, and took a detour to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to refuel, eat lunch, and find a local geocache. For our 9th state of the day we found GC3PA8H A view of the Stacks.

Next we stopped briefly for a very interesting cache in a southwest suburb of Philadelphia, GCZY69 Psycho Suburban Cache #1: Abandoned Springhouse, but even our 8 searching eyes couldn’t come up with it. So we noted our first DNF of the day. As we resumed our trip southwestwards, dusk made the skies dark, and we needed flashlights once again. We found GC3E76 Dela Where? in, obviously, Delaware, our 10th state of the day. An hour’s drive into Maryland and across the city of Baltimore found us at yet another oldest cache in the state, GC1FD Jusef’s Cache. A steep downhill hike on slippery leaves brought us to this cache, the 11th state accomplished.

The highlight of the day was next, Washington, DC. We found a traditional cache GC3F0DM Stanton and Deliver on our way towards Capitol Hill. Then a brief tour of the Mall and a glimpse of the White House, and two virtuals, GCDE1 Capitol View, and GCEB2 The view of an “Honest Man”, the latter of which was DC’s oldest cache. We considered the District of Columbia a state-equivalent, and counted it our 12th of the day. A short hop over the Potomac River to Arlington, Virginia, brought us to state number 13 and GC29F4B M’s Memorial Day Cache. Then we took a wee spin northwards to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, a beautiful town overlooking the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers. Our goal cache was GC1H9T3 A house on a hill top, which had 103 favorite points, but we just couldn’t locate it, even with four bright flashlights. So we grabbed an easy one around the corner, GC1WNR6 Haunting Hides “Screamin Jenny” to claim our final cache of the day, and our 14th state, and ended the day at 11:40 p.m.

We stayed over at a cheap motel in Hagerstown, Maryland, and the next morning headed home. We did a bit more caching on the way back, finding a cache in each of WV, MD, and PA within 20 minutes, across the Cumberland gap where Maryland narrows to a few miles across. The Pennsylvania one, GC2BCKX Mason-Dixon Line Marker, was the site of our group photo for the day, posed across the Mason-Dixon Line with our left legs in Maryland and right legs in Pennsylvania. We cruised through Pittsburgh, stopped just inside Ohio for a cache there, GC17PGK Tiny Tots Freeway, and then two oldie western Pennsylvania caches, GCFF Stone Wall Stash and GC184 State Game Lands #109. We found one more quickie cache in New York and then a much-needed supper of chicken wings at the famous Anchor Bar in Buffalo, and a final quickie cache in Fort Erie, Ontario to make it 5 states plus Ontario for our final day.

Our trip was a wild and crazy long weekend, and we were able to find a few challenge caches and qualify for a few more, but the best part of it was that we had a blast! We’re already planning our next trip, 14 more states starting from Kentucky and looping around through the Virginias and the Carolinas, across Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, Illinois, and ending in southern Indiana. Maybe this winter or spring….

Avernar hands out BFL Boot Camp launch kits. Photo by: Gregory Pleau

This past weekend saw another BFL Boot Camp, the seventh.  Over 200 geocachers enjoyed some night caching.   When it came time to explore a theme the organizers thought that perhaps the seven sins and seven virtues of geocaching might make for some interesting caches.   This year for the first time there were two series of caches each with their own final.   There were seven sin caches which were slightly harder than the seven virtue caches.   The sins and virtues in this case were all related to geocaching.  You might even say this BFL Boot Camp was educational.

In the event you are unfamiliar with the term BFL it stands for Big FlashLight.   As in previous years you need to bring more than a good flashlight to a BFL Boot Camp.  To start with you need to bring your wits.   The caches in this years’s Boot Camp forced the cacher to think about the cache listing.  Even though there was a cache called Read Thy Cache Listing it is still surprising to see so many logs from the evening that state “we had some trouble so we actually read the cache listing and were soon on our way” or words to that effect.  In addition to your problem solving skills at this year’s Boot Camp  you needed a head lamp of fire tacks, laser for hitting targets, UV for clues (and the Sin clues really popped if you had a 365nm UV light).  One cache incorporated fibre optics another included a home built lamp post and one even required you to use your hearing.   There was also a Wherigo based cache that incorporated many other technologies.

The best way to get a sense of evening is to read the logs from other cachers.  Here is a bookmark list of all the caches from this year’s BFL Boot Camp: Midnight in the Garden.

Participants in the evening’s activities received a bit of a surprise when the Midnight at the Oasis event was published, not surprisingly, at midnight and only lasted for one hour.  Even the event organizers were surprised when they found out about this event, it was not part of the regular planning that went in to the event.

As the launch time neared the cachers who had assembled at the pre-event dinner were getting restless.  The group had swollen slightly after the food was served as other cachers arrived in anticipation of the launch kit release.   In an attempt to distract the group prizes were draw from items donated by sponsors.  The lackey coins donated by Groundspeak were very popular.  The youngest attendees in the audience were lucky enough to leave with a Plush Signal.   The Australis version of the official BFL Boot Camp t-shirts donated by Cache At Night were also a hit.  GPS City donated some swag that added to the overall festivities.  Some of our friends at COG also made an appearance and brought along some coins and travel bugs that were also raffled off.

After reading many of the logs it would appear that this event continues to offer Ontario’s cachers something you don’t see anywhere else.

There was a general lack of knowledge about geocaching but some clubs had more experience.   One local club has enlisted   veteran cacher to help keep an eye on the trail they manage.  All attendees were made aware of the OGA and were encouraged to contact the executive if they had any questions.

It was learned that some sections of the Bruce trail want to remove all caches while others seemed to be okay with geocaching.  It is clear that the OGA has a great deal of work to do with the Bruce Trail clubs in order to build a more cooperative relationship.  Shiloh pointed out that all parties can work together to help identify problem caches and address those as they arise instead of when a complaint from a landowner comes in.  An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.