Phenomenal geocaching community stories from 2017
A golden ammo box full of juicy geocaching secrets travels around France! A beloved German geocaching rock band retires after 10 years! A wheelchair-bound geocacher simultaneously nabs his first T5 and his 1,000th cache!
Geocachers have always done great things and this past year was no exception. Here are some of the most phenomenal geocaching community stories from 2017.
3 countries + 2 geocachers + 1 geocoin = an incredible twist of fate
Two geocachers, one from Germany and one from Canada, meet at an event in Florida in the United States. The German cacher finds a treasured geocoin that the Canadian lost a year earlier on a muddy and flooded trail. At the end, one of them sums up the experience, “Clothing is wet, but spirits are high. Mission accomplished.”
15 geocaches. 15 countries. 22 hours and 25 minutes. Geotrip ’17.
On a single day in April, a group of Finnish geocachers found geocaches in 15 different countries: Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, France, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia, Czechia, and Poland. In 2011, a group of Dutch geocachers did this route in just under 24 hours. This new group beat them by an hour and a half! It should be noted that the Geotrip’17 team drove according to speed limits and took their time to find each cache and log them. In order to achieve this, they preselected low difficulty caches with a few backups just in case.
How do you say, “Golden Ammo Box” in French?
Boîte à munitions dorée. Although not the first to implement the concept of the “golden ammo box,” this French Mega-Event hosting duo pays it forward. The box travels from Mega-Event host to host, and contains coveted tips and tricks on hosting a successful Mega-Event.
Congratulations PodCacher on 600 episodes!
Sonny and Sandy have been geocaching together since 2004 and hosting PodCacher since 2005. We learn more about where they grew up, how they met, what it’s like to do a podcast for over 13 years, and some of their favorite geocaches.
Mission 9 is alive!
On August 17, 2017, Moun10Bike, owner of the long-archived Mission 9: Tunnel of Light APE cache, registered an Owner Maintenance log on the cache page, “The enemy agents thought they had us defeated, but we have persevered. T minus thirty-six hours.” That rescued the northwest APE cache from archival and back into the world.
T5 Klettersteig caching in Austria
Geocaching superwoman and self-proclaimed flip-flop connoisseur Annie Love travels to Austria and nabs her first Klettersteig cache. Klettersteig or via ferrata is a protected climbing route that incorporates cables, iron rungs, pegs, and ladders. Not only did this cache require nerves of steel, it also required carabiners, steel cables, gloves, helmets, and of course, close-toed shoes.
The Dosenfischer — The final curtain
The Dosenfischer was a very popular German geocaching band. That’s right — they wrote and performed songs about geocaching. This past summer, after 10 successful years, they hung up the bass, drums, and guitar and played their last gig. If there’s one country that is absolutely INSANE for geocaching, it’s Germany.
Canadian geocachers rescue stranded camper in remote woods
Two geocachers in Ontario woke early one morning to grab an FTF, locate a previous DNF, complete a cemetery Multi-Cache, and log some trackables. But through a series of events that changed their course that day, they discovered a camper who had fallen two days before in a remote location and helped save his life.
Max enters the tree
Max is a young man living from the Netherlands who is bound to a wheelchair. An avid geocacher, he had always dreamed of logging an elusive T5 cache. To make his 1,000th find memorable, his local geocaching community got together to get him into a tree to log a very special cache.
Are you crazy?!? No, I’m Radu! Geo-cycling through 16 countries in 5 months
Romanian-born geocacher Radu Clapa (Radu C) did the exceptional this past summer: geocaching on a bicycle through 16 countries. Although he focused on T5, Virtual, and Webcam caches, and managed to find an additional 1,400 Traditional caches. His 7,800 km (4900 mi) adventure started in Denmark on July 5th and ended on November 15th in Romania.
We look forward to what the next year brings to the geocaching community. Do you have a good story to tell? Tell us about it on Facebook or Twitter!
