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With Global Positioning System devices and a sense of adventure, players hunt for the coordinates of a hidden treasure of trinkets and a log book. It's called geocaching.
By DAVE GUSSOW
© St. Petersburg Times, published July 8, 2002
Tim Zickus gingerly steps into a thicket of palmetto trees, moving fronds back gently so he can peer into the underbrush for his elusive quarry: a Tupperware container filled with trinkets and a notebook.
After a few minutes of fruitless searching, Zickus peeks at a computer printout for a clue. Soon he finds the container hidden in John Chesnut Park in north Pinellas County.
For Zickus, also known as Infosponge, it's another successful venture in geocaching, a high-tech version of hide and seek. It starts on the Net, ends in the great outdoors and requires Global Positioning System devices and a sense of adventure.
"It's somewhere between a hobby and a sport," said Zickus, 36, a computer consultant from Tarpon Springs. "Finding the things that people put in caches isn't that important. It's more the process of finding places people have identified as special."
In geocaching (geo for geography, caching for hiding objects), the organizers of a hunt assemble inexpensive items, such as the Tupperware container, which included a bungee cord, a toy talking watch and a tape measure.
They post the coordinates in longitude and latitude on a Web site (www.geocaching.com), along with a clue or two. Players use their satellite-guided GPS units, which usually get them within 30 to 35 feet of the item. It's the last stretch that provides a lot of the challenge, Zickus says.
"There's that moment when you all of a sudden realize (where it is) and the 'aha' comes out," Zickus said. "You've spent a lot of time looking in the wrong place."
Getting to a cache can mean more than a drive to a park. Some hunts require diving or climbing equipment. One in Maine was accessible only at low tide, and one that Zickus ran in Tarpon Springs required people to find a series of concrete sprinkler "donuts."
"A couple spent five consecutive evenings at the park after work searching, and then wrapped it up on a Saturday morning," Zickus said. "They must have put at least 10 hours into it."
Some ideas go too far for the operators of the geocaching Web site, such as hiding the cache near a train track or burying it. Some places are off limits, such as national parks, which ban geocaching.
Because of increased security concerns about suspicious packages, players are marking many of the containers with geocaching, including a written explanation of the game and providing a phone number.
Zickus says some nonplayers who find the containers take them, and some have been destroyed by animals.
Once a cache is found, the player logs in a notebook when it was found, what he took, if anything, and what he left -- an honor system to keep the game going. The caches are rated on a 1-to-5 scale, with 1 being the easiest and 5 the most difficult.
"Geocachers are generally concerned with keeping this sport green," Zickus said. "There's a lot of community policing around to make sure people maintain their caches and are responsible environmentally. This is especially important for park personnel to understand, because a lot of times their first thought is 'Oh no, these people are burying containers in my park!' And that's not it at all."
It's a relatively new activity, started about two years ago on the West Coast after the government stopped partially scrambling GPS signals, which originally were developed for military use. That made consumer GPS devices more accurate. Since then it's estimated that more than 100,000 people participate, according to Jeremy Irish of Seattle, who runs the geocaching.com site.
Participation is free, with the Web site making money from ads and selling GPS products. It has 60,000 accounts around the world, and about 6-million page views a month. It is the largest site for geocaching activities, though local and state groups have been creating their own sites.
(It's not the only Web-based activity involving GPS. The Degree Confluence Project at www.confluence.org is collecting photos of spots where latitude and longitude lines meet around the world.)
The median age for geocachers is about 38, according to a survey cited by Irish. About half have children between 6 and 12, he said, and "the other half are people who need an excuse to go outdoors."
It doesn't take much to get started. Irish suggests visiting the Web site to understand how it works, and to find a cache before hiding one. GPS devices start around $100, and Zickus says some people use only compasses.
People do geocaching on vacation, on business trips, after work -- it's almost an anywhere, any time activity. Some trinkets are called "travel bugs," which are numbered, moved from cache to cache and tracked online. Zickus recently had one that started in Oklahoma.
Zickus, who enjoys the outdoors and who "always just liked maps," discovered that geocaching is a good way to learn the area. He moved here about 21/2 years ago and often is accompanied by his son, Dan, almost 3, and wife, Wendy. "Kids love it because they find toys," Zickus said.
"We found everything from ammo clips to rare coins to $2 bills," said Antoinette Bartley, a Web designer from Port St. Lucie who is helping form the Florida Geocaching Association (www.floridageocachers.com). "We find a lot of kid stuff, children's toys, because they try to make it family oriented."
The Florida group is considering competitive events, Bartley says, though geocachers say it's the hunt and discovering special places that are important. Scores and rankings are kept online, based on the number of caches found and placed. Zickus has been ranked as high as No. 3 in Florida, and three of the state's top five players were from the Tampa Bay area.
"Some people like to compete with each other," said Irish of geocaching.com. "It becomes competitive. They like to get there first and report it, be the first log in a cache log book."
It also is habit forming, say those who participate. "I'm addicted," said Mark Henry, a first class petty officer in the Coast Guard in St. Petersburg. Henry, who recently shipped out for two months, said he planned to do geocaching at various ports of call along the East Coast.
"In the past two weeks, I've done more tourist things than I've done in my life," Henry said. "I crossed the Sunshine Skyway seven times just doing cache hunting. I'm just going everywhere. I don't know how much gas I've burned."
- Dave Gussow can be reached at gussow@sptimes.com or (727) 445-4228.