/ Adela B /

18-Years-Old and 1800 Finds – A Teen Geocacher’s Journey

By Kara Bonilla

Jeffrey with Geocaching.com Co-Founder and CEO Jeremy Irish at GeoWoodstock VI .

Geocaching teenagers are becoming easier and easier to find as geocaching gains popularity. Harder to find are teenage cachers who  have found nearly two thousand geocaches. Jeffrey Bushnell, 18, from Utah, USA is better known in the caching community as tico jeffrey. He started geocaching when he was 14. Jeffrey has found 1853 caches to date. He’s also discovered a true passion for the high-tech treasure hunt of geocaching.

It all started for Jeffrey as a young Boy Scout, when he won a GPS device after selling tickets at a Boy Scout expo. “I went home after the expo, looked it [geocaching] up online and made an account. Then, less than less than five minutes after creating my account, I got on my bike, grabbed my new GPS, and headed out to find the cache closest to my house.”

Jeffrey loves geocaching because he explores new places he has never seen before, gets to spend time outdoors, and relishes the thrill of finding a cache.

Now a seasoned geocacher, Jeffrey owns 92 caches. He  has gone geocaching in twelve states and two other countries besides the US: Canada and Costa Rica. Jeffery owns 70 Trackables and has moved over 800 Trackables throughout his many geocaching adventures.

Statistics from Geocaching.com: Jeffrey's Cumulative Finds, as of July 20, 2011.

Besides his aunt, Auzzie Dogs, Jeffery’s family is full of muggles. For Jeffrey, geocaching on family outings takes planning  and convincing  his parents to let him find a cache. He has to promise not to take a long time. Having a muggle family often makes the game a bit difficult for him, but Jeffrey never lets this slow him down.

Jeffrey has found so many geocaches that he can’t even pick a favorite. He loves the thrill of a good find and always enjoys finding caches hidden by some geocachers in his area: “Both of my favorite users (Baad Daata and Billionj) have many caches that I have looked right at and even touched without finding it at first, these caches require a lot of thinking and strategy to find the exact cache container.”

Jeffrey at GC10FB, Magic Kingdom, one of many Virtual Caches in Disney World.

Jeffrey  became an Eagle Scout and graduated high school this year. He will be attending Brigham Young University this fall where he plans to major in civil engineering and minor in graphic design and production. He loves to cache in his local area of Southern Utah, where he has many friends who always go out geocaching with him. Jeffrey also loves to take his grandma and other relatives out on geocaching adventures.

One of Jeffrey’s favorite geocaching memories is when he received GeoWoodstock VI 2008 tickets for Christmas and went to the event in Wheatland, California with his aunt, Auzzie Dogs. “We had a great time and enjoyed meeting Jeremy Irish, also meeting a lot of old and new friends.”

As some advice from Jeffrey for new teen geocachers, he suggests taking on one cache at a time, and to have fun with it.  To learn more about Jeffrey’s geocaching career and to see his incredible geocaching stats, check out his user page, tico jeffrey. It is easy for teens to become outstanding geocachers, like Jeffrey. It is as simple as creating an account, getting a GPS, grabbing a group of friends, and heading out to find the first of many geocaches.

 

DISCLAIMER: Underage geocachers should always geocache using the buddy-system! Take a parent, relative, or friend along and remember to tell a responsible adult the exact caches you plan on finding and the routes you plan on taking. Safe geocaching is fun geocaching!

/ Eric Schudiske /

Announcing: Geocacher of the Month Award

You could be the Geocacher of the Month

Groundspeak needs your help acknowledging a geocacher each month that stands out by inspiring other geocachers with their innovation, creative hides and/or logs, respect for the environment, and geocaching etiquette. This person can be your best geocaching buddy, a geocacher you know as a local legend, or a long time geocacher who invites newbies to the geocaching community.

The Geocacher of the Month celebrates geocachers for their contributions and diversity. Geocachers are outdoorsy, technically apt, young, old, parents, single, athletic, intelligent, travelers, grandparents, and more. They are a uniquely eclectic group, unified by their passion for the activity of geocaching.

If you know an outstanding geocacher who should be the Geocachers of the Month, send an email to geocacherofthemonth@groundspeak.com.

Every nomination must meet the following requirements. Please include your name, the name of your nominee, their username, at least one picture of the nominee and description (in 500 or fewer words) explaining why he or she deserves to be the Geocacher of the Month. Please inform your nominee that you’ve submitted them for the award. Nominations for the first Geocacher of the Month must be received by August 4th.

Once we have received all of the nominations, we will choose the top three candidates and post them on the blog. You will then get a chance to vote for your favorite.

We’ll name the Geocacher of the Month on August 20th at the Geocaching Block Party in Seattle, Washington, USA. Each Geocacher of the Month will receive an exclusive special edition ”Geocacher of the Month” Geocoin along with a Geocacher of the Month hat and certificate acknowledging their contributions signed by the founders of Geocaching.com: Jeremy Irish, Bryan Roth and Elias Alvord.

Our goal is to involve the entire geocaching community in this process so as to learn from each other. Let the nominations begin!

/ Eric Schudiske /

Klettersteig Mürren – Gimmelwald GC1DDQ5 GEOCACHE OF THE WEEK July 18, 2011

The view from near "Klettersteig Mürren - Gimmelwald"

This emoticon is used often on the Klettersteig Mürren – Gimmelwald (GC1DDQ5) cache page. Here’s why. The traditional cache involves an extreme form of mountain climbing. Its earned it’s terrain five rating with a breath-taking climb up sheer cliffs and nail-biting crossings on wire thin suspension bridges.  The cache is not for the faint of heart.

Still more than 55 brave geocachers earned the smiley emoticon for logging the Swiss cache.  The geocache has also earned 10 Favorite Points. Spaki placed the cache in 2008.

The pictures posted to the cache page tell the story. Geocachers with only a metal step between them and hundreds of feet of thin air. Safety does come first, especially while climbing. Mandatory equipment for the cache includes a climbing helmet, climbing harness, climbing set specially designed for via ferratas (sling with 2 carabiner hooks).

On the way to
Traveling to the cache site

Continue your exploration of some of the most engaging geocaches from around the world. Explore all the Geocaches of the Week on our blog or view the Bookmark List on Geocaching.com.

 

/ Eric Schudiske /

Groundspeak Lackeys Road Trip to the ‘Greatest RV Event in the World’

The “Greatest RV Event in the World” gets even better. Geocaching.com is sending a team of Lackeys to share the adventure of geocaching with RVers at “The Rally” in Redmond, Oregon. The Rally runs from July 14 – 17.  It draws tens of thousands of RV’ers from around the United States and Canada. Groundspeak Lackeys: Nicole (Louie Bliss), Jessie (Firefox) and Lisa (barendje) will be shaking hands and introducing RVers to a perfect addition to their road trip, geocaching.

Watch this video to see the team launch on their road trip down to The Rally. If you’re attending The Rally, make sure to stop by and say hi to the Lackeys.

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/ Eric Schudiske /

Groundspeak Weekly Newsletter – July 13, 2011

A First Look at “Geocaching in Deutschland”

Take a sneak peek into the new Geocaching.com international video series! Watch this trailer to see some of the Terrain 5 thrills and night caching adventures that are available in Germany. The country holds the distinction of posting twice as many night caches as any other country in the world. The innovative German geocaching community also enjoys thousands of Terrain 5 caches and a choice of more than 185,000 active geocaches.
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The “Geocaching in Deutschland” trailer includes heart-racing scenes from more than ten separate stories. The videos will be released one by one in the coming months. English viewers, select Closed Captioning (CC) to view English subtitles. The first video in our “Geocaching in Deutschland” series will be available at the end of July in the Videos section of Geocaching.com.

Quality Geocaches

In 11 years, geocaching has grown from a single container in the woods of Oregon to an international activity with over 5 million participants and more than 1.4 million geocaches. In the last week alone, Groundspeak Volunteer Reviewers published nearly 6000 caches. Wow. Thanks, Reviewers!

This rapid growth means that almost anywhere in the world, you can walk out your door and find a geocache within an hour. But it also means that geocache saturation is increasing. In some areas, it is becoming difficult to find a location to place a cache.

As the number of geocachers and geocaches grows, we encourage you to make sure that each and every cache you place is of good quality. We know that everyone has a different opinion as to what makes a “quality hide,” but there are some steps that you can take to make sure that others will enjoy your cache:

• Find many caches before hiding one of your own. This will show you how vastly different geocaches can be. We suggest finding at least 20-25.

• Think about your favorite geocaches and why you enjoyed them so much. Was it the location? The container? The story on the cache page? Try to replicate the elements that you enjoyed while adding some of your own creativity.

• Make sure that the geocache container is waterproof and will survive the elements. It is better to use a sealed container rather than a plastic bag.

• Maintain your geocache. This means replacing the logbook when it is full, checking on the cache every so often to see that it’s still doing well and responding quickly to “needs maintenance” logs.

You can see which geocaches others recommend by looking at the number of Favorite Points that each cache has received. Favorite Points can be found on each cache page and in the search results list. Premium Members can award 1 Favorite Point for each 10 caches that they find and can sort the search results list by most-favorited caches.