Geocashing at Ruthven Park
News
Posted By NICOLE AMBROSE , CHRONICLE STAFF WRITER
Updated 3 months ago
John Robb, geocacher, visited Ruthven Park last Sunday to demonstrate the adventure sport of Geocaching to roughly 20 onlookers. May is the sports' 10 year anniversary, which the park kicked off by placing their own geocache on the park's grounds. Photo By Nicole Ambrose
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Last Sunday, a group of roughly 20, decided to spend a part of their long weekend at Ruthven Park, in Cayuga, participating in the park's first geocaching event.
The group of "cachers" was given a step-by-step demonstration by well-known geocacher, and webmaster for the Ontario Geocaching Association, John Robb.
The sport of geocaching began 10 years ago as a scavenger activity and gained much momentum a tightly-knit community of followers.
Today, there are over one million caches placed around the world with 20,000 of those in Ontario - now including one at Ruthven Park.
Geocaching is, "an adventure sport," explains Robb. "You hide a container [of various sizes] somewhere, ideally, of some kind of interest.
Either it's an interesting place to visit for the geography, or it's a lovely area, or somewhere historic like here [Ruthven.] You hide it with the hopes that other people will come and find it."
Robb says that after hiding the "cache" the hider will post the coordinates of its location on the sport's official website [ www.geocaching.com]and when other geocachers are looking for one to find, they simply search the area being visited to find if one is present, enter the co-ordinates into a handheld GPS device and the search begins.
"Sometimes inside the geocache is some kind of trinket or treasure, and the kids like the treasures." says Robb. "From the kid's point of view it's great, because if you're going to drag them out into the woods, they get to find something and it's all about the finding something."
Robb explains he himself has placed over eight geocaches, including the one at Ruthven, and generally when you find a geocache and taking whatever is inside it, the finder will place something back into it for the next geocacher to discover -in a sense, a geocache is like a time capsule.
When asked what kinds of things are put into the caches, Robb says some people have signature items, like Sharpie pens, but it's generally items that a child would appreciate like small toys or coloured pencils.
The day's events also included a game called "closest to the pin" where participants program co-ordinates into their GPS devices, follow them and when the co-ordinates reached zero, a flag is placed, with their signatures on it, into the ground where they believe is closest to the assigned location.
"It's a way to get people familiarized with the sport, because sending them straight out into the woods to find a geocache when you don't necessarily know what you're looking for can be frustrating," says Robb.
The event drew those who are familiar with the sport along with the curious. May is the 10th anniversary of geocaching and Ruthven Park marked it with their introduction and the community's introduction to the GPS-enabled adventure sport.
