How an idea from the East Coast, with the help of a few sourdoughs, became Alaska’s most beloved geocaching tradition
AN ORAL HISTORY WITH BLAZINGPATHWAYS, TOMANOBLE & VALERIESEAKER · INTERVIEWED SPRING 2026
BLAZINGPATHWAYS
Victoria Noble
Geocaching since 2007 · Co-founder of the Golden Ammo Can Awards · Known for the extensive “AlaskanCachers” series hidden with her husband, Tom. · Hider of the Archangel Road letterbox series
TOMANOBLE
Tom Noble
Geocaching since 2007 · Former board member, Geocache Alaska · Longtime supporter of community events and inclusive outreach, one of the first to hide Challenge Caches in Alaska.
VALERIESEAKER
Valerie Manfull
Golden Ammo Can recipient · Active member of the Geocache Alaska community · Regularly brings her can into the field at community events · A puzzle-master
It started with a story someone heard from back east. Famous Alaskan Cacher Douglas Leiser (Cohofive) had a daughter, IDAKrew, who was living out there and building up her find count, and when she hit one hundred caches, the local community gathered together in a café to celebrate. They gave her an ammo can. Simple as that. Victoria heard about it, told Tom, and the two of them took the idea to the Geocache Alaska board.
“The board said, well, we don’t want to do it for a hundred [finds],” Victoria recalls, “but why don’t we do it based on an Alaska theme?” And that’s exactly what happened. The milestone numbers were anchored to Alaska’s identity: 1959, the year of statehood, and 49, for the 49th state. A committee- the Celebrating Alaskan Caching Hallmark Experiences, or C.A.C.H.E for short– was formed, and the Golden Ammo Can Awards were born.
The 2013 Awardees with their new ammo cans at the 2013 event at Uncle Joe’s pizza.
A Surprise in the Beginning
The very first Golden Ammo Can ceremony wasn’t advertised as an award night. Guests arrived not knowing what they were walking into. “It was a surprise,” Victoria says, laughing. “Uncle Joe’s.” The recipients didn’t know they were about to receive anything, just that there was an event worth showing up to. By the second gathering, word had gotten around, and the tradition began to take its recognizable shape.
A screenshot of the original cache page for the inaugural Ammo Can Awards in September 2013. GC463RA
At each event, the committee would research recipients in advance — counting hides, noting milestones, finding something genuinely specific to say about each person’s geocaching history. They’d read clues aloud to the crowd and let attendees guess who was being described before the can was presented. “We would look up what they’d done,” Victoria explains, “talk about their badges, where they’d placed, name a couple of things that were special about their finds.” It turned a simple handoff into something closer to a roast and celebration: warm, community-centered, personal.
Over the years, the program expanded to include multiple can sizes. The standard large ammo can covered the baseline milestones; a bigger one came at 100 hides; and for those reaching truly remarkable numbers — 10,000 caches — there’s the Project-A.P.E.-sized can, roughly the dimensions of a small carry-on bag. Victoria has one of those in her shed. Tom counted at least four between them. Past recipients of the 10,000 find can include Karma!, Lilgray, and Cavyguy.
“We said, if somebody has a can, then what else are we gonna do? And we said, we could keep the activity going by having badges they could earn.”
— Victoria (BlazingPathways)
Earning Badges Keeps the Cans Fresh
The badges were developed shortly after the first Golden Ammo Can awards. Cachers wanted more ways to display their achievements, so the board added stickers that could be earned and put on the cans. Nowadays, recipients can earn badges by hosting events, hosting CITOs, planning EDUEvents, serving on the board, passing 10,000 finds, and advocating for Geocaching statewide, such as negotiating the state parks permit biannually. The C.A.C.H.E. committee is currently reviewing new ideas for badges to be earned. Eaccippi (Emily Stewart) can be contacted via geocaching.com if you have ideas on good badges to be earned.
Over the years, the committee has also modified requirements for earning the golden ammo can, including requiring two years of Sourdough level membership with GCAK, to help offset the costs of the cans.
The second round of awardees, photographed at the second CACHE event in 2015. GC62AD8The Golden Ammo Cans await their new owners at the 2015 event.This selfie by Farmergang is the only photo from the event logs with the 2017 awardees. Oops! Thank you to FarmerGang for documenting this historic event with the caption “I know them!!”
Keeping the Can Alive Through COVID
Like most community traditions, the Golden Ammo Can program had to adapt during the pandemic years. Indoor events gave way to outdoor gatherings, and some cans were handed out in quieter, more improvised ways — the Taco King near the Midtown library, at scattered outdoor meetups, shipped to recipients in Juneau and Fairbanks. Valerie mentioned Eaccipi, Emily Stewart packing some in her carry-on to deliver to Kodiak. The geography of Alaska, always a logistical challenge, made individualized delivery feel oddly fitting. “I think we got them different ways,” Tom says simply.
“My goal was to try to make it easier on people who didn’t know other people — how to start something, if it wasn’t easy to just say hi.”
— Victoria (BlazingPathways)
What the Can Means
Ask any of the three where their ammo can lives, and you get a window into their relationship with the hobby. Tom and Victoria’s cans are in the shed now — a recent house reorganization moved everything into boxes — but Victoria says hers used to live next to her shoes, ready to grab for events. Valerie’s can has made public appearances at the community Trackable gatherings, stuffed with trackables and geocoins. You might find other notorious Alaskan cachers with theirs if you ask nicely. Recent awardees include Eaccipi, RSPace, and GeoFootstomper. To find a golden Ammo Can in the wild, you’ll need to visit ilikebuttermilk’s in Wasilla. It is featured in the hide at New Haven Little Free Library GCA26T0. Bring something gold to add to the swag!
Bob Hazlett, aka Pentrek, receives his Golden Ammo Can at “Farewell for now, Pentrek” on Apr 23, 2026
The most recent awardee was PenTrek, who received one at his goodbye event in April, GCBMN0C. He plans to move “home” to Michigan this summer. He was honored at the most recent Ammo Can Awards event, but couldn’t make it, and the CACHE committee didn’t want to send him off with the can still in GCAK storage.
The program, at its heart, was never just about numbers. It was about finding a reason to gather, to look someone in the eye and say: we see what you’ve done out there, in the rain and the dark, on the side of a mountain or in a grocery store parking lot, and it matters. “The goal was to try to bring as many people into the club,” Victoria says. “To foster membership, and to give back to those members who had been around for a while.”
As the 2026 Golden Ammo Can Awards approach, the tradition enters its latest chapter — one still rooted in those original values. If you see a beat-up, gold-painted ammo can sitting on someone’s shelf at the next event, now you know the story of where it came from: a café, somewhere back east, a family celebrating their daughter’s hundredth find, and two Alaskans who thought, why don’t we do something like that?
The Golden Ammo Can Awards have been held across at least five major events since the program’s founding, with additional cans distributed individually during the COVID years. Recipients have been recognized across Alaska, including Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau, and Kodiak. The CASH Committee — Celebrating Alaskan Geocachers with Heightened Recognition — continues to coordinate the awards program through GeocacheAlaska! Contact CACHE Committee Chair Emily Stewart at eaccipi@geocacheAlaska.com for more information and keep your eyes peeled for the next event announcement!
A springtime visit to Homer gave me some time to get out and perform owner maintenance visits on geocaches I’ve hidden around the community. As usual, the most common need was or a new logsheet in the cache. However, one cache site a few miles out on East End Road towards the head of Kachemak Bay gave me an opportunity to perform a CITO site cleanup that recovered 16 glass & plastic bottles and 27 aluminum cans, as well as a slew of other garbage. The trash was all collected within 50 feet of ground zero, at the edge of a small pullout alongside the road. It appears some travelers stop here to slam down a drink (or two) long with cannabis products and then throw the evidence out their vehicle window, based on he trash I collected. After crushing aluminum cans I was able to fit all the debris inside a single paper sack I had along with me. The CITO activity took me only 20 minutes to perform, with very little physical effort required. Leaving the outdoors in better shape than how we found it is perhaps one of the most positive impacts we can make on our community through the get-outside game of geocaching. Sharing that CITO effort helps underscore our ommitment to the “Leave No Trace” ethic we support in our game.
This particular cache is located on the paved East End Road at 1,400 feet of elevation above Kachemak Bay, and the dramatic view here of the head of the bay to the east and Halibut Cove and the bay to the est are simply incredible. It’s especially lovely when fireweed is in full bloom, as they carpet the hillside descending down to Kachemak Bay. If you’re headed to Homer this summer, be sure to come out to GCA57GC East End View for this easy to find micro cache as well as the incredible view!
This spring, GeocacheAlaska! Inc. (GCAK) was again able to complete negotiations for a new permit from Alaska State Parks (ASP) allowing geocaches to be placed in state parks. In past years, the ASP permit was fairly simple and very inexpensive, with the only major requirements being that containers were labeled as geocaches in compliance with the ASP permit, and that the cache owner would perform an annual cache maintenance visit and log that visit both in the physical logsheet and in the online cache page.
The 2026 permit has many new requirements. The most significant changes require that no more than 500 geocaches total be placed on parklands statewide, that geocaches within Chugach State Park would have containers no larger than micros (preforms allowed), and that no caches may be placed in ASP campgrounds. The permit emphasizes the requirement for an annual owner maintenance visit, and requires immediate archival at year end for any cache without an owner maintenance visit. The permit cost came to a total of $1,350 in order to allow geocaching on ASP lands in all five regions across the entire state of Alaska. Initially, the permit was only for 2026, but our Advocacy Committee was successful in negotiating extension of the permit to 3 years (to the end of 2028) for the same cost. However, hundreds of caches must be archived to meet the new limits.
We’re engaged now in efforts to comply with the new 500 cache limit statewide, and the new size restriction on caches located within Chugach State Park. Please take time to visit our GCAK website’s Advocacy section to learn more about the new permit and its requirements. It is imperative for cache owners with caches on ASP lands to come into compliance by the end of August 2026, in order to help us with reports due to ASP by year end! We are working very very hard at keeping our geocaching game alive on state park lands, and need everyone’s help in bringing their cache placements into compliance.
As president, I’m calling on cache owners to archive immediately those caches which are outside of the current permit’s size requirements for Chugach State Park, and/or which haven’t had an owner maintenance visit in the past year.
Finally, I want to acknowledge the tremendous workload the terms of this new permit has placed on our Groundspeak Community Volunteer Greatland Reviewer. Mike Malvick is striving to help cache owners achieve compliance with the new permit, at a cost of countless hours of communication with cache owners. Additionally, GCAK’s webmaster Scott Aleckson has poured dozens of hours and tons of creativity into establishing our information pages on our website regarding the new permit.
Watch notifications for upcoming Eduvents which will walk attendees through the permit requirements, and how we can meet them effectively by the end of August 2026.
GeocacheAlaska! Inc.’s 2026 permit for geocaching within Alaska State Parks
GeocacheAlaska! Inc. applied near the end of 2025 for the annual permit to place geocaches within Alaska State Parks for the year 2026. New permitting processes and requirements and a newly revised assessment of the impact of geocaches on Alaska State Park lands has led to major changes in gaining permission via a permit in order to continue geocaching activities across Alaska State Parks (ASP). Please read all the way to the end to see how GeocacheAlaska! Inc. is proposing to meet ASP requirements so we can continue to geocache across Alaska State Parks.
Geocaches placements are now described as noncompliant use of public lands,
because the geocache container is private property being left on public lands. The new Permit details are listed here for your review. I’m going to draw attention to significant changes, and how GeocacheAlaska! Inc (GCAK) plans to help meet the new permit terms. While GCAK has negotiated the permit and paid its expense so we can continue to play our game across Alaska’s State Parks, it remains the responsibility of individual cache owners to conform to the terms of the permit. GCAK is asking cache owners to comply by August 31, 2026, to give time to prepare year-end reports.
There are eleven special stipulations, in addition to the new $1,350 three-year permit fee.
1 – Caches are prohibited in all State Historic Parks (such as Totem Bight and Independence Mine); a full list of such ‘historic’ parks is under development now and will be shared soon.
2 – Geocaches are no longer allowed in any designated campgrounds, meaning existing caches in campgrounds must be archived and removed immediately.
3 – Inside Chugach State Park new size restrictions limit caches to preforms or smaller; anything larger must be removed or replaced with compliant sizes. We suggest archiving large caches now.
4 – There is a new exclusion zone within Chugach State Park’s new Wilderness Zone (shown on an attached small-scale photo), where caches are prohibited (and any existing caches must be archived and removed immediately).
5 – The fifth stipulation reinforces the exclusion of food or scented items from geocaches.
6 – ASP is prohibiting caches from being placed on, in or tied to bear boxes, latrines, cabins or any other park facility or structure. Current caches placed like this must be archived immediately. 7 – This is going to get perhaps the most attention – it requires an annual cache inspection to be documented on the cache log and online by the cache owner – and violation of this provision is grounds for immediate archival at the end of year reporting date if it hasn’t been done. 8 – GCAK is going to be conducting EduVents to train cache owners and users regarding proper caching behavior. The first of these EduVents will occur in mid-June.
9 – This is a desperately critical requirement that limits the number of caches allowed across all state parks to not exceed 500 caches total – meaning more than 650 caches must be archived by year’s end. This is one of our most challenging requirements to achieve.
10 – This reinforces the ammo-can as a maximum cache size (except in the already-stated Chugach State Park zone where preforms or smaller are required).
11 – The eleventh provision requires an end-of-year report from GCAK to ASP.
12 – Item twelve reinforces the need to inform all cache owners of the new provisions, with a target of compliance by the end of August so as to give GeocacheAlaska! Inc time to review compliance.
13 – Item 13 was added by the state to encourage geocachers to become members of GeocacheAlaska! Inc. – the permit holder – in an effort to support permit costs and compliance. However, this item is invalidated by Groundspeak Inc. legal policies which don’t allow regional permit holders to require organization membership to be involved in geocaching on permitted lands.
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How is GeocacheAlaska! Inc. going to attain compliance with the new permit?
The biggest challenge lies in getting cache placement numbers below the 500-cache limit. This will be accomplished in a number of ways – all of which depend on individual cache owners for action. Here’s a list of suggested actions for individual cache owners to help us get under 500:
1) Caches inside Chugach State Park? If they’re inside the Wilderness Zone, they must be archived and removed immediately. All other caches larger than a preform should be archived and removed to help reduce cache numbers and build compliance no later thanAugust 31st (note that downsizing and editing the cache page will affect Challenge and Treasure statistics). Any caches in a designated campground must be archived immediately and removed.
2) Caches placed on ASP facilities and structures must be archived; this in preference to trying to relocate the existing cache placement due the cache quantity limit.
3) Owner maintenance visits must occur and be logged on ASP caches by August 31st. This is a major issue with caches placed in state parks – inspections by park rangers are revealing a very low compliance rate with previous permit requirements to inspect and log owner maintenance on cache placements in ASP. Rangers will be holding individual cache owners accountable for this requirement. It’s suggested that if you own a cache that you have a hard time getting out to for the owner maintenance requirement, archive it!
Let’s keep ourselves accountable for the best effort possible to keep our geocache placements in excellent condition. There is no shame in self-archiving geocache placements which have become too difficult to maintain.
If you own geocaches inside State Parks, this summer must find you getting your caches into compliance with our permit or getting your caches archived.
GeocacheAlaska! Inc. volunteers already have dozens and dozens of hours invested in this project and are expecting to spend hundreds more in follow up and reporting. We’ll be reaching out cache by cache as needed to try and gain compliance with permit requirements. Contact Wes Skinner if you have questions ( president@geocachealaska.org ) and be watching for EduVents coming soon. Note that our state park rangers are genuinely interested in seeing geocaching happen across Alaska State Parks – but it has to happen in compliance with the permit! Individual cache owners could be subject to fines as high as $350 for noncompliance!
Alaska State Parks has issued this permit with its stipulations in order to make it possible for geocaching to continue to be played across Alaska State Park lands. Please help us continue access for geocaching by helping achieve compliance with the ASP permit provisions!
A springtime visit to Homer gave me some time to get out and perform owner maintenance visits on geocaches I’ve hidden around the community. As usual, the most common need was or a new logsheet in the cache. However, one cache site a few miles out on East End Road towards the head of Kachemak Bay gave me an opportunity to perform a CITO site cleanup that recovered 16 glass & plastic bottles and 27 aluminum cans, as well as a slew of other garbage. The trash was all collected within 50 feet of ground zero, at the edge of a small pullout alongside the road. It appears some travelers stop here to slam down a drink (or two) long with cannabis products and then throw the evidence out their vehicle window, based on he trash I collected. After crushing aluminum cans I was able to fit all the debris inside a single paper sack I had along with me. The CITO activity took me only 20 minutes to perform, with very little physical effort required. Leaving the outdoors in better shape than how we found it is perhaps one of the most positive impacts we can make on our community through the get-outside game of geocaching. Sharing that CITO effort helps underscore our ommitment to the “Leave No Trace” ethic we support in our game.
This particular cache is located on the paved East End Road at 1,400 feet of elevation above Kachemak Bay, and the dramatic view here of the head of the bay to the east and Halibut Cove and the bay to the est are simply incredible. It’s especially lovely when fireweed is in full bloom, as they carpet the hillside descending down to Kachemak Bay. If you’re headed to Homer this summer, be sure to come out to 
This spring, GeocacheAlaska! Inc. (GCAK) was again able to complete negotiations for a new permit from Alaska State Parks (ASP) allowing geocaches to be placed in state parks. In past years, the ASP permit was fairly simple and very inexpensive, with the only major requirements being that containers were labeled as geocaches in compliance with the ASP permit, and that the cache owner would perform an annual cache maintenance visit and log that visit both in the physical logsheet and in the online cache page.
