It’s a small step for geocaching and even a smaller step for geocaches. Field tested and geocacher approved, a new geocache size has entered the adventure of geocaching. Just be sure to pack your magnifying glass, tweezers and a metric ton of patience. The new geocache size is named “T.I.N.Y.” It stands for Teentsy Infinitesimal Nucleic Yocto Geocache. Just how small are they? Take a look at this: . Right here: . Yeah. The T.I.N.Y. geocaches are smaller than that punctuation mark. Or this one: .
Interested? Curious? Don’t know what Yocto means? There’s one way to find out. Check out the latest Geocaching Presents video: t.i.n.y. geocaches. Interested in purchasing a 100 count of t.i.n.y. geocaches? They’ve been sold out recently, but for a limited time you might find one in your Shop Geocaching order.
Geocaching HQ has a history of releasing blockbusting geocaching ideas on April 1. Check out the Geocaching Workout Video you might need to practice before you search for your first t.i.n.y. geocache.
A little geocache frustration from geocacher The Wumpus, with Leaderdog and Tape Worm in the background, while on the search for A Real Challenge.
Editor’s Note: Updated in September 2013 with additional DNF numbers.
Another Editor’s note: Updated August 2014 to include the second find!
In this week’s Geocaching Weekly Mailer, we talked about logging DNFs (did not find). While no one yearns to log a DNF, they’re a necessary part of the game. DNFs can mean all sorts of things: the geocache has been moved, needs maintenance, or in the case of A Real Challenge (GC1764C), it could mean that it’s incredibly hard to find.
With 247 DNFs and only one find, A Real Challenge lives up to its name. In fact, it took nearly four years for the FTF. This geocache was hidden near Peoria, Illinois, USA by geocacher Fuzzy B, who set out with the goal of creating something he’s never seen before, which, with nearly 46,000 finds, is hard to do. “I have felt a little guilty that so many people have spent so much time searching for it,” he said when asked how it felt to be the owner of such a difficult geocache.
In the geocache description, Fuzzy B writes, “Please, to hold down the level of frustration, anger, etc., just put this on your ignore list, it’s not very findable.” But he goes on to reassure us, “Yes, its there. It’s a shelter Cache, a log in a container. Cache is not in, on, or touching any part of the electrical equipment. It’s not on the roof, or under the shingles, nor the drip edge. Cache is exposed to light and air. Cache is within the footprint of the roof. There is NO reason to damage or destroy Park property.”
BransonAdventure after their find.It’s there somewhere…
A Real Challenge has only one find so far by geocacher BransonAdventure. “We found at 8:07pm, but waited to log so we could confirm with owner it wasn’t a decoy or mistake. All the way from Nebraska on vacation we extended the Eastward travel just for this cache,” they said in their log, “I will say we spent just a little under 2 hours looking when my husband found it and then to unroll the log, being so excited and shaking felt like it took about as long. The husband and kids did a little jig.” After the find, Fuzzy B came to meet the lucky geocachers.
Even if it’s a little discouraging, DNFs are an important part of the game. Just think, if all the people that had searched for A Real Challenge hadn’t logged their DNFs, the FTF wouldn’t have been as special.
There’s only one way to find out where this geocache is located, but in the meantime, we can speculate. Where do you think it’s hidden?
UPDATE, August 2014:
On August 11, 2014, a second intrepid geocacher made this nearly impossible find. This makes only two finds after nearly 7 years and 327 DNFs. Congratulations to wcs24fan for being only the second geocacher to conquer the odds and sign their name on the logbook. In their log, wcs24fan writes, “As the sun was retreating behind the clouds and beginning to paint them hues of various pinks, we were still searching for this well hidden treasure. Hope has a way of making one think they can achieve the unachievable. On this evening, for us, the unachievable was struck down as we made the find! Upon opening the container and seeing the log of the BransonAdventure team in the FTF spot, it was confirmed that we had found what we had hoped for. Excitement and elation bathed us for several minutes as we signed the log and pondered what we had just accomplished. The first to find in 3 years and only the second to find overall! Those feelings would travel with us for hours to come as we made our way through the winding back roads to the interstate and our way home. Thanks Fuzzy for giving us the hope that we could pull this off and the great adventure!”
Geocache owner Fuzzy B meets the only geocacher to find A Real Challenge, BransonAdventure.
Join the race to the 2013 Geocaching Block Party in Seattle, Washington. Enter a Travel Bug® meeting the requirements below into the “The Great Geocaching Block Party 2013 Travel Bug Race” bin by the Geocaching Museum at the 2012 Geocaching Block Party.
One new Travel Bug entry per Geocaching.com username
Name your TB: GBP2013 (Your TB Name)
Race Limit: 200 Travel Bugs
On your Travel Bug page include the text:
“This Travel Bug (insert name of TB) is racing in the The Great Geocaching Block Party 2013 Travel Bug Race. This TB must travel at least 2013 miles before returning to Geocaching.com HQ.Please move to another geocache to meet its goal of (insert specific goal). Thank you!”
Travel Bugs will be simultaneously released into the Geocaching.com HQ cache following the Geocaching Block Party. Updates on The Great Geocaching Block Party 2013 Travel Bug Race will be updated on the official Geocaching.com Blog “Latitude 47”
All Travel Bugs must travel a minimum of 2013 miles before being eligible for prizes
All Travel Bugs must return to the HQ prior to the 2013 Geocaching Block Party to be eligible for prizes
Categories:
Fastest TB back to HQ (after traveling the minimum mileage)
TB with the most mileage
TB to travel to the most countries
TB with the best picture*
TB with the best log entry*
TB with the most geocachers who moved the TB
TB with the most creative Hitchhiker (item the TB is attached to)
Prizes: Each winner receives a great grab bag of Geocaching.com swag and merchandise
Belterra, Brazil seeps back into the rainforest. It’s a small town on the wrong side of progress. It’s getting smaller. A few thousand people now call the community home. The population has fallen from more than 10,000 when Belterra was at its peak as a rubber production hub.
At the beginning of 2012, a cache placed in Belterra in 2002, “Belterra” (GC3DF7), had never been found. The FTF (First to Find) on the cache remained unclaimed. The cache was without a log, without a DNF. No one logged even an attempt to find the cache for a decade… until this year.
German geocacher Frank Dornberger FradoMedia made his intentions clear to find the cache at the end of 2011. He wrote a note on the cache page. “I will try to get to the cache in January, when I am in the area. I am really keen to find out if it is still there…” The jungle had crowded around the cache since it was placed. Frank still thought the cache was worth an attempt while traveling through the Amazon on vacation.
He wrote, “I found out that I was going to pass by close enough to try to get to this place. Some research about the area and even more proper preparation of the equipment was necessary to make sure that I could really get to this 1,5 star rated cache. Almost 13 hours on the plane and two days on the river Amazon, plus another hour in the car and a 15 minutes walk later, I was finally there.”
Frank at the geocache location in 2012 (courtesy FradoMedia)Geocache location in 2002
But the “there” Frank saw in person was much different than the “there” he saw on the cache page from ten years ago. He wrote, “I was completely astonished what the place looked like. But after the first shock I thought, what could I have expected after 10 years of that temperature and humidity.” The open air building where the cache had been placed had completely collapsed. His only clue was that the cache was hidden inside a drawer.
His log reads, “… the building was almost completely rotten. So I went closer and into the rest of what was formerly an old house. I had my concerns that some of the wood would fall down and crash on my head, but I couldn’t resist. I had to look for the drawer… after about 45 minutes of searching and dragging I found a box that probably once was the cache.”
Frank new location of replacement cache (courtesy FradoMedia)
Frank says, “As I figured out that the drawer was still in one piece and I saw the old glass bottles and then this black box I got pretty excited, of course. What was inside was a lump that looked more of coal than a logbook. So I cannot be 100% sure. But the location and everything makes it very probable that I had a find.”
Frank logged a smiley and decided to keep the adventure alive for someone else to potentially be the STF (Second to Find) for this cache, “The hut is almost gone completely, but archiving the cache would be a pity. So I decided to place a new [cache] box nearby.”
FTF’s for Frank will now have to occur closer to home. He’s currently geocaching on the German island of Rügen but says the trip to be FTF revealed a new piece of world, “Belterra is far away, that is true. But it is a little nice town nowadays, which is definitely worth a visit.”
The last Project APE Cache is there... somewhere...The journey began in Peru
UPDATED July 5, 2012: Read the comment from Brad Simmons (MonkeyBrad) about his journey to the APE Cache in comments below.
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You can track a geocaching team live as they attempt to log a smiley on one of the rarest and most sought after finds in all of geocaching. The team is attempting to find Mission 4: Southern Bowl (GCC67). It’s the last of the Project APE Caches.
For some geocachers, Mission 4: Southern Bowl is the most coveted geocache in the entire world. The cache was hidden deep in the Brazilian Jungle in 2001. Only about 50 geocachers have logged it in 11 years.
Four American geocachers accepted the challenge to find Mission 4: Southern Bowl to mark major personal geocaching milestones. The four geocachers combined have accumulated more than 50,000 cache finds. For Monkeybrad, the last APE Cache will mark his 20,000th smiley, Southpaw‘s geocache tally will reach 18,000 and 6Lindseys and MLRS1996 will each reach 7,000 finds.
Project A.P.E. Cache Icon
The team left the United States on Thursday June 14. They landed in Lima, Peru the following morning. They’re planning to make their way to Sao Paulo, Brazil and to the Project APE Cache. You can track their progress by clicking on the map above.
The Project APE Cache as found by ZobelMex on June 3, 2012
The Mission 4: Southern Bowl Project APE Cache was part of a promotion for the 2001 film Planet of the Apes. Thirteen A.P.E. caches, each with props from the movie and a story that tied into the movie, were hidden all over the world. Those who found the caches received a unique icon. Mission 4: Southern Bowl is the final active cache in the Project A.P.E. series.
Two German geocachers, ZobelMex and TC-Rudi last found the Project APE Cache in early June. The team of American geocachers is expected to land in Sao Paulo on Friday, June 15. They’ll begin their 300 km drive into the jungles of Brazil over the weekend, where they hope to log a smiley, receive the rare Project APE Icon, and make a memories that will last a lifetime.
