CachingCentral

PITTSFIELD Hikers and bushwhackers will have a chance to win prizes for walking in the woods this summer under a special geocaching event organized by the Berkshire Natural Resources Council.

Weve hidden 10 caches on our properties around the Berkshires, said BNRC President Tad Ames. Its a Berkshire treasure hunt. Find all 10 caches, and youll win a collection of prizes, and youll have a chance in the grand prize drawing for a kayak.

Geocaching is a growing adventure sport for Global Positioning System (GPS) users, Ames said. GPS units small, self-contained satellite receivers have become a common accessory for outdoors people and land managers. The GPS user downloads geographic coordinates from satellites, allowing for relatively easy navigation to sometimes obscure locations.

We use GPS all the time in our work, and we thought the geocaching event would be a fun way for recreational users to get out and explore our land, Ames said.

BNRC owns 53 properties totaling approximately 6,400 acres, Ames said. The caches are scattered around the county.

Most of them should be fairly easy to get to, he said, but weve mixed in a couple of sadistic sites too. Anyone who wants that kayak is really going to have to hunt. Its going to take a good combination of heart, brains and muscle to find all 10 caches.

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By KATHY PORTIE

Tired of the same old humdrum scenery? Hiking trails getting you fast on the road to nowheresville? Maybe now is the time to try the latest in outdoor recreation fun-geocaching.

For those not in the know, geocaching is an adventure game for global position satellite (GPS) users. It’s a treasure hunt using big electronic toys, hiking boots and a few hints from the Internet on where to begin a search.

Geocaching is a worldwide craze that had its humble beginning in 2000 after the Clinton Administration removed Select Availability, GPS signal degradation. To celebrate the removal of the regulation, an unknown person hid a cache of goodies outside Portland, Ore., for fellow hikers to find using GPS devices.

Mike Teague was the first hiker to find the container, and to celebrate he built a Web page to document the game. Soon, the activity caught on and a new Web site, geocaching.com, was created. A new sport was born.

Today there are caches hidden in all 50 states and more than 100 countries. In the Big Bear Lake area alone, there are more than 3,500 caches posted on the geocaching.com site.

Deanne Berry is one local hiker who has enjoyed geocaching for the past year. She’s found caches as far away as Hawaii and recently returned from locating the Santa Ana River Road Cache. While in Hawaii Berry signed in at 15 sites.

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