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“Even Hamilton police explosives experts say the device looked like a homemade bomb from a distance.” — The Hamilton Spectator

Today I had a conversation with a fellow local cacher (The Mighty Canadian Juicepig) about some caches in our area that are either too easy or in spots that may not be appropriate. He send me a link to a recent article that may give even better reasons to place caches with more thought.

This article from the Hamilton Spectator tells the story of a Hamilton cache being mistaken for a home-made bomb. The Explosive Devices Unit of the Hamilton Police used a robot to get close to the suspicious container and take a photograph — later discovering it was only a Geocache.

An article posted on the Nature Conservancy web site points out;

First-of-its-kind global study shows “a real and fundamental shift” away from nature”

Researchers found that people - especially children - were spending less time outdoors than before.

Read the Article

I know personally that since we started Geocaching we have spent way more time outdoors. I think Geocaching is a great way to get out there! Spread the word!

Yesterday my wife Sandra and I went out to do a couple of geocaches. It is the middle of the winter here and we have had record snow falls. This makes caching interesting in a couple of ways:

1. Caches get buried -  we had someone report a DNF on one of our caches yesterday just because of the massive snow - luckily they found two others hidden by us and still had a good day out.

2. Snow makes for good geotrails - We did a cache yesterday that was hidden by the person who introduced us to caching. I knew the area pretty good and drove right up to it. From the car I could see a trail leading to a potential cache location. Leaving the GPSr in the car we walked the trail and found the cache - the geotrail kinda took the fun out of this one

A story coming out of Portland Oregon features two men who lost there way during a white out while climbing Mount Hood. The climbers were not able to get down from the mountain after a storm hit. They decided to make a snow shelter and stay there for the night. While digging the snow shelter they discovered a Geocache - this Geocache had their exact location. This allowed them to tell rescuers exactly where they were!

Read the article and see the video coverage 

I woke up this morning feeling s little chilly. Once I got into our kitchen I looked at the thermometer - wow!  -23 degrees Celsius! Ok -no Geocaching today!

There are many things that could make a Geocache memorable to me. It might be a very creative or interesting location. It could be a difficult find that challenges your finding skills. Sometimes it is the level of stealth required in order to make the find and not look too out of place. In a recent cache it was the container that made it memorable - in fact - out right funny! I can’t divulge the actual part that made us laugh out loud - you will have to go find it yourself. I can tell you however that we will remember this cache adventure for some time. Thanks for a great laugh DRMOO!

DRMOO is a couples team that are very active cachers in our area. They have hidden some great caches that are most often very creative. When we met - Mrs. DRMOO confided with me that it was her with the ideas and Mr. DRMOO (an enginer by trade) who helps bring them to life. If you are ever in the Barrie Ontario area be sure to check out some of their great hides!

This is our first winter doing Geocaching. There are some obvious differences for us who live in the great white north (also known as Canada) - there is snow. With snow come snow tracks - footprints that sometimes can lead directly to the cache. This can be an advantage for the finder or possibly boring - the snow hints sometimes make it just too easy.

I have seen it a lot in the logs of our caches recently:

GC17K55: Nice little winter geo-trail to follow! - So grateful for large footprints in the snow!

GC17Q5J: It looks like somebody shoveled a path to the cache…

GC16Z1T: Must have been there a few min after Avanar, I followed the tracks in the snow.

While snow-caching can be easier in some ways - hiding a cache that is winter friendly might pose a few challenge. I posted a question in some local Geocaching forums to get some good hints on hiding winter-friendly caches. This is what I learned:

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