Hunting for treasure

I've finally sat down to read the May issue of Wilderness magazine and was thrilled to see an article about the growing interest in geocaching. It really appealed to my techy side and my love of the outdoors.

So what is geocaching?

It's kind of like a hi-tech treasure hunt outdoors. You'll need a GPS, some good walking shoes and a desire to go looking for something. The NZRGPSS describes it as

a hi-tech game of hide-and-seek. [...] it is your mission to try and find [caches] using only your GPS and any clues you are given.

Essentially, a cache (which could be as small as a film canister or up to the size of a bucket) is hidden somewhere outdoors. Occasionally a cache is hidden in an urban setting, but it's usually in a non-urban environment. It could be up a hill, on a beach, under a rock, or up a tree. The GPS co-ordinates of the cache are posted online. It's then up to you to go and find it, write on the log sheet and bag the cache. There are sometimes multi cache options, where there's two or more locations involved - the first cache gives you a clue for the second and/or third locations. Kind of like a bread crumb trail to the treasure.

It might sound simple, after all you've got the GPS co-ordinates, but as the article in the Wilderness magazine clearly shows, GPS co-ordinates aren't exact to the nearest millimetre, so you'll still have to hunt for the cache once you are in the right place.  

If you are already spending time outdoors, then why not add an extra dimension to your adventure? You might find that the thrill of the chase pushes you to explore places you never thought you'd go.

There's some good books to get you started, including The geocaching handbook : the guide for family friendly, high-tech treasure hunting. You can also search for geocaching and/or Global Positioning System in the library catalogue. I'd also recommend the geocaching section of the website of the New Zealand Recreational GPS Society (NZRGPSS) to start you on your journey, they have great links to online geocache directories. Happy treasure hunting.

Climbing high across the world

At the top of my summer reading is Wind from a distant summit by Pat Deavoll, who is "New Zealand's leading woman mountaineer". I'm hoping it'll land on my desk just before the Christmas break.

This biography was released by Craig Potton Publishing in October, and it documents Deavoll's adventures as a world-class mountaineer. She has climbed mountains throughout New Zealand and across the world, including the Canadian Rockies, the Himalayas and the Karakorum.

As well as being inspired by her adventurous life, I'm also intrigued to read how she has achieved all this alongside a lifetime of clinical depression.

I'm tentatively picking this book as a winner, or at the very least a finalist, in next year's NZ book awards. And that's without even having read it yet!