Groundspeak Weekly Newsletter – August 24, 2011

What’s that in the geocache?

One of the original geocaching guidelines is “take something, leave something.” This means that when you find a geocache containing swag, you are welcome to take a piece of swag as long as you replace it with something of equal or greater value. Trackables are the exception to this rule.

Trackables are geocaching gamepieces owned by geocachers. Each individual Trackable is etched with a unique tracking code and given a goal by its owner. The goal may be to travel to another country or to visit as many beaches as possible. Trackables are placed in caches to be picked up by other geocachers, who help move them to their goals. If you find a Trackable in a cache – identifiable by the tracking number and often the text “Trackable at Geocaching.com,” please remember that this is someone’s property. They placed it in a geocache because they want to see it travel! You are welcome to take the item from the cache as long as you are willing to help it on its journey by placing it in another cache. You do not need to put anything into the cache when taking a Trackable, since you will not be keeping the item.

To find out what a Trackable’s goal is, you can look up the tracking number here or on one of Groundspeak’s mobile Geocaching Applications. If you are interested in owning your own Trackable, check out the selection at Shop Geocaching.