By Louise Kempker (freeweez)

We cachers who live in and around Anchorage think nothing of traveling 1 or 2 hours —either north or south –to find some smileys! So why not just fly north (only a little over one hour flight) for some caching adventures —Hyfolks26 (Heather) and Freeweez (Weez) asked ourselves? Sure—why not? So plane reservations were made and on a very lovely Saturday morning—we were on a north-bound Alaska Airplane headed for Nome!!

There is only one puzzle cache in Nome, Algerbraic!, and Freeweez asked the math-teacher-grandson help in solving it. It was the first stop after securing the rental (car)—which turned out to be a very big, white 8 passenger van! Yes—For just the 2 of us!! After signing that log, we lucked out, however, and half of the RSPace team… Sarah… was available and willing to ride with us on the hunt for smileys! It was a perfect day in all ways, as Sarah was able to provide the special tour-guide insights to all of Nome for us!

We found 13 caches in all –some in town and some just outside of town. Some on the hills—and some near the beach! We even got the FTF on a newly published cache, Powerful View in Line of Site, by SailorGirlRN. Thanks for placing that one just for us!!! Freeweez was sure, after hearing from other cachers who have visited Nome….that she would see Muskox roaming the streets! Well—that didn’t happen! But some were seen on a nearby hillside anyway!

One special cache, Ode to the Coffee Crew, was in a perfect location where the other half of RSPace was helping with building construction for the radio station KICY. Isn’t that a neat name for a radio station up north? After a yummy lunch, we headed for the beach where Weez picked up some very pretty colored beach glass, and Heather was able to share some of Andy’s Ashes into the Bering Sea in a quiet, reflective moment. We won’t talk about how Heather (almost) got that big, huge van stuck in the soft sand at the beach!!

We laughed a lot, had a ton of fun, and surely made Nome Memories! Near the end of our journey—the van was returned along with Sarah to her hubby, and Heather and Weez flew back home. Wanna go caching someplace for a day? Just ask HyFolks26 or Freeweez —they are game for another caching adventure! Sure—the Nome caching adventure may have cost just a bit more than driving a couple of hours for some smileys—but they would do it again in a heart-beat!

By Emily Accipiter Stewart (eaccipi)

This month, I had the (un)lucky incident of being too obvious to muggles. I was retrieving a cache that I had solved the multi-puzzle for and thought I was being so stealthy when I grabbed it. I walked roughly 15 feet away from the cache location, and wrestled with getting the log out of the container. After a few minutes of trying (it was rolled so tightly in there even tweezers were struggling to free it!), I was able to jot my
initials and then return it. Easy right?

As I was walking away from GZ, a man walked up to me to ask what I’d been doing. Apparently, I looked suspicious. After explaining that I wasn’t doing anything nefarious and was, in fact, geocaching I was met with a small nod and a warning to “not be weird when there are problematic people out there.” Fair enough, sir.

I really thought I had done everything right in my attempts to not be noticeable to muggles, but apparently I was wrong. I know that I’m much better at stealth than I was when I first started caching, but practice makes perfect and we can always use a refresher whether we’re caching in the middle of the woods (don’t let the moose or bears see you!) or the middle of an urban area.

1. Take your time. Before approaching ground zero, look around to see if people are nearby. If there are enough people that you can’t make the grab without it being obvious, circle back in a few minutes to give the area time to clear. Maybe even coming back a different day or time is necessary if there’s a major event going on at GZ.
2. Blend in. When I had my incident described above, I was wearing a bring yellow and blue sundress and had wandered between 4 different metal poles checking them out before making the grab. Wearing a less bright outfit and adding in a safety vest could have helped me blend more easily.
3. Carry a clipboard. No one questions someone with a clipboard and I’ve found they actually avoid eye contact in case they think you’re going to talk to them and ask them to do a survey.
4. Use your phone for decoy. Pretend to be texting or talking on the phone if you need to loiter in a spot; many of us aimlessly stand or touch things when on a phone call and it makes you not as obvious as just standing and looking at the people passing by.
5. If all else fails, be prepared to explain what you’re doing. Since all caches need to be placed with some sort of permission, you’re not doing anything illegal. If someone asks what you’re up to, explain at a high level that you’re geocaching and playing a worldwide game using GPS units to locate items hidden around the world. At worst, they’ll think your kind of crazy. At best, you may introduce someone to a sport they’ve never known about!

All tips aside, please be safe out there! Always be aware of your surroundings and be prepared to take a DNF if it’s not safe or there are too many muggles to grab it. In Anchorage, we’ve had two bear maulings within a week, both at spots that have geocaches near them.

Enjoy this hot Alaskan summer,

Emily Accipiter Stewart
eaccipi
President, GeocacheAlaska!

Upcoming Events

July 30 – GCB8GCE Mr. Smith goes to Alaska (Denali) 

August 2 – GCAYQF6 2025 Community Celebration: Poker In The Park II (Anchorage)

August 4- GCBA4K2  iowaPete Wonders if He’ll Be The Only One… (Juneau)

August 9 – GCB9C33 Caching on The Kenai – 15th Annual Picnic (Kenai)

August 21 – GCBAC46  Stroop waffles at Lake Louise (Lake Louise)

Upcoming Souvenirs:

Celebrating 25 Years: no time limit

     (Find all 5 treasures in “Celebrating 25 Years” Treasures collection to qualify)

International Geocaching Day – August 16

Cache In Trash Out® (CITO) 2025 – Season  September 1 – November 30 

September Equinox: September 19-22

For a full list of upcoming souvenirs, visit: 2025 Confirmed Souvenirs on the Geocaching Blog

by Michael Malvick (Greatland Reviewer) and Sarah Pace (RSPace)

Hello Fellow Alaskan Cachers:

It has been way too long since I have posted about what I am doing with respect to cleaning up the Alaskan gameboard.

Owner Attention Requested (formally known as “Needs Maintenance”): I posted Reviewer Notes on 203 caches with the “Owner Attention Requested” attribute showing for which I had not previously posted a note. There are a total of 509 caches with “Owner Attention Requested.”

Cache Owners are requested to check their Dashboard at www.geocaching.com/play/owner to quickly view which of their cache pages have the “Owner Attention Needed” attribute set, which cache pages are “Temporarily Disabled,” which cache pages have recently had a “Reviewer Note” posted to them, and which cache pages have a low “Health Score” as calculated by the Groundspeak algorithm.

There are currently 186 temporarily disabled cache pages in Alaska. Alaska is well into summer, so now is a good time to perform cache maintenance while the most people are in the field looking for your caches and the caches are accessible.

Overlapping the temporarily disabled caches are caches with a Low Health Score. Many of these caches are already temporarily disabled and those that aren’t are tracking toward being disabled unless the Cache Owner performs maintenance, posts an “Owner Maintenance” log on the cache page, and enables the cache page (if applicable).

Some cache pages receive a Low Health Score due to a growing string of “Did Not Find It” and “Owner Attention Requested” logs because they have a high degree of difficulty, NOT because there is a problem with the cache. Cache Owners can “reset” the Health Score by periodically checking on their difficult caches and posting an “Owner Maintenance” log assuring the local Reviewer and cachers that all is actually well with the cache and the cache is still ready to be found.

The “Temporarily Disabled” and “Low Health Score” cache numbers are about half of what there were in late 2021, so the playing field has improved, but can be better when compared to other regions.

Regular communication with the local Reviewer and the caching community using the appropriate notes on the cache pages goes a long way toward maintaining a healthy playing field. Let’s all do our part!

By Michael Malvick (Greatland Reviewer) and Scott Aleckson (SSO_JOAT) 

Interested in the quickest and easiest way to build a series of Pocket Queries to gather all of Alaska’s cache information? Well here it is in 8 easy PQ’s…

Note that you can run up to 10 PQ’s per day, so you can get the full set for the state in one day. You can manage this by going to your Pocket Query control panel and checking the day of the week you next want each one to run. Follow these steps to create your full state PQ set:

Start Building a Pocket Query from your geocaching.com Premium account.

Give it a name. I use AK-1, AK-2, AK-3, AK-4, AK-5, AK-6, AK-7, and AK-8 for mine out of pure simplicity. At the very bottom of the page, I also check the “Include PQ Name” box so that name tag is part of the filename, making ID of which is which so much easier.

Unless you want the query to run automatically every week, pick the “Uncheck the day of the week after the query runs” radio button. When you want a PQ set, just go down the list and check the day box for each PQ you want to gather and it will run once and then wait for the next time you call for it. If you want them now, make sure you use the day shown on the “server time” label just above the PQ list.

Change the “Show me… caches of” box to the maximum of 1000 caches.

Scroll down to the “Within” box and select the radio button for “States/Provinces”. Scroll that list down a few entries and select “Alaska”.

Go down to the “Placed During” box (just above the attributes pictures boxes). Select the radio button in front of the “between date range” fields. For each of the 8 separate PQ’s, set the dates to match the following:

AK-1 = May 03, 2000, and December 31, 2008 (983)

AK-2 = January 1, 2009, and June 30, 2011 (975)

AK-3 = July 1, 2022, and July 31, 2013 (996)

AK-4 = August 1, 2023, and May 15, 2015 (974)

AK-5 = May 16, 2015, and September 30, 2017 (999)

AK-6 = October 1, 2017, and August 31, 2020 (970)

AK-7 = September 1, 2020, and May 15, 2023 (978)

AK-8 = May 16, 2023, and December 31, 2025 (738)

The current total of Geocaches in Alaska is 7613!

You need to keep an eye on the size of the last query and as the number of caches generated approaches about 980, you would set the end date and build a new PQ for the next series (AK-9). Leave a larger buffer in the most recent pocket queries to allow for unpublished caches which cachers may still be editing and may show up under an older “hidden date” when they finally do get published.

Do not change any other settings on the page. Except for the above, all the remaining query fields should be blank or inactive.

Go to the bottom of the page and click the “Submit Information” button. Take a look at the results # at the top of the next page. It should be a little under 1000 caches (as of the latest edit, the above ranges generate 999, 999, 999, 1000, 997, 997, 999, and 787 caches). You can now check a day of the week button at the top of the page and then hit the submit button at the bottom to trigger the pocket query to active. 

Headed for a bit of Aloha?

Since Greenland Reviewer is also the regional reviewer for Hawaii, and so many Alaskans vacation there, here are the date ranges to get all Hawaiian caches in just three Pocket Queries:

HI-1 = May 1, 2000, and March 31, 2015 (997)
HI-2 = April 1, 2015, and February 28, 2025 (990)
HI-3 = March 1, 2025, and December 31, 2026 (106)

By Louise Kempker (freeweez)

News of the week:

Some of our local cachers have found out that Dogliest will be leaving the state
sometime this summer. He would like for some of his caches to be adopted—or he will
archive them all when he leaves. There isn’t a date as yet, but if you would like to adopt
any of his quality caches, please reach out via the caching website and let him know—–
he would very much appreciate it!

By Bill Van Couwenberghe (AlaskaVans)

We went with our church (St. Benedict’s) on a pilgrimage to Europe. There were 35 of us on the trip. We traveled to Belgium, Germany, Austria and Czechia. Along the way, during our free time, we were able to do some Geocaching. Since we were on a group tour, we could only find caches that were within walking distance of where we were at. Below are some of the highlights of the caching portion of the trip.

The two best finds were when we were in Brugge, Belgium. The first one was GC4XMCM RV 5.08 : Brugge. It had over 7,200 favorite points when we found it. Two weeks later, it has over 7,300 favorite points. It was featured as a cache of the week back in February 2019 (RV 5.08 : Brugge — Geocache of the Week – Official Blog). After finding it, I now know why. The second one was GC7B940 ♥ Pont d’Amour ♥ (point of love). They note in the cache page that “If you kiss your beloved one on this bridge, you’ll stay together forever!” My eldest daughter received a marriage proposal on the bridge. She said yes!

In Cologne (Köln), Germany, we did a virtual that was created by Moun10Bike, GC5B4A Portal to the Past (Köln). Moun10Bike is a lackey that has classic geocoins (see the Treasures – Classic trackables). So finding one if his caches was great.

While we were in Munich, Germany, in one of the squares, there was a webcam: GCHNBF The heart of munich. We were gathering to take a group picture. I happened to look to see what was nearby and saw the webcam. It made it easy for me to identify where I was in the picture of the square.

While in Mariazell, Austria, I finally was able to locate a 25 to use for the Where’s 25? Locationless Cache (GCA2025). I was doing some souvenir shopping in the town near a Benedictine Abbey and saw the sign. I remembered that I hadn’t done this cache yet. So I snapped a couple of pictures and logged the find.

In Prague, Czechia, there were two caches next to each other that were fun to do: a traditional cache that was in a visitor center, GC7V42P PRAGUE TOURIST TOUR: Staromestske namesti, and a virtual cache, GC89130 Pražský orloj / Prague Astronomical Clock – VR2.0!. The traditional cache has over 4,150 favorite points. The virtual was an Astronomical clock that we were able to watch it at the top of an hour.

By: Louise Kempker (freeweez)  

This story began in August of 2023, when a group of geocachers from Germany descended on Alaska. Through a comedy of errors (it’s a long story!), Dogliest and I ended up driving 6 of them: Ralf, Uve, George, Volker, Chris, and Volkmar –to various caches in Anchorage after their event in the evening. It seems that when German cachers come to visit our city, they take public transportation instead of renting a vehicle. They politely asked if we could take all of them to the oldest cache in Anchorage 2 days later. Dogliest and I cleared our calendar and picked them up on a Friday morning.

We headed to Kincaid Park aiming for GCA4D – Cooks Nook, placed in 2001. (Please read their logs on this cache dated 8-18-2023)! The trek was definitely a long hike, and a couple in our group of 8 headed a different direction, thinking the route to GZ would be shorter. After they all excitedly signed the log and took photos, we headed to a local place for dinner. It was during dinner that Ralf suggested that he and I partner and create an ‘Exchange Cache’.

Well folks—that has been almost 2 years in the making—but it has finally happened! There are 2 Exchange Caches—one from Anchorage – Cologne – Anchorage……and another from Cologne- Anchorage – Cologne. Here are the GC codes for each: GCAGN3J…..and GCA5XZA. There is a bit of adding and subtracting involved…but you can do it! The stages here in Anchorage are easily approachable. Please check them out—there are quite a few German cachers who are anxious and eager to partner with a ‘local’ to complete the Exchange Caches. This only one of the German logs from Cooks Nook:

“We are a group of 12 German Geocachers on our Tour “Wild West and Alaska” and log as WW2023. After our tour to Ukpiaġvik/Barrow we returned back to Anchorage and today once again our new friends freeweez and Dogliest took us on a fantastic tour through the western part of Anchorage. We enjoyed it so much and we had the best possible caching experience at this last day of our 2 weeks travel in the United States! Definitely this oldie was the highlight of the day! Not an easy one – I would say D 2.5 or higher, depending on the condions of moisture and the season – please be careful if you are not prepared! The path was quite steep and the vegetation made it difficult to walk. Ater more than 30 minutes of hiking we were very happy to find this oldest cache of Alaska in good condition – Geoklatti could find the box and log for our entire group., Thank you very much for the fun with this great cache, Captain Cook, says Seidenflamingo from Potsdam, Germany.”

Upcoming Events

June 30 – GCB8C6K Parking Lot Party  (Sitka)

June 30 – GCB8HHW Meet, Greet, and Check out the GCAK! Mobile Store  (Anchorage)

July 4 – GCB8F3P Happy Birthday USA (Anchorage)

July 4 – GCB8JX7 Independence Day Coffee Cheers from Arizona! (Sitka)

July 6 – GCB91TJ How About An Event In Skagway Alaska? (Skagway)

July 7 – GCB6NXN Teamwork Required: Montague Island (CITO Event) (Montague Island)

July 8 – GCATMC3 2025 Community Celebration Event  (Anchorage)

July 14 – GCB7CG9 Cornhusker’s visit Alaska (Ketchikan)

July 16 – GCB8HK4 Coffee, Donuts, Meet, and Greet (Hoonah)

July 30 – GCB8GCE Mr. Smith goes to Alaska (Denali) 

Upcoming Souvenirs:

Celebrating 25 Years: no time limit

     (Find all 5 treasures in “Celebrating 25 Years” Treasures collection to qualify)

International Geocaching Day – August 16

Cache In Trash Out® (CITO) 2025 – Season  September 1 – November 30 

September Equinox: September 19-22

For a full list of upcoming souvenirs, visit: 2025 Confirmed Souvenirs on the Geocaching Blog

By Emily Accipiter Stewart  (eaccipi)

Cheerio from the beautiful Welsh countryside! Rstewar and I are on a 10 day holiday along the Mon & Brec canals in southern Wales. We’re spending a week on a 45’ long narrowboat moving around 2 mph through 30 miles of canals. It is incredibly slow paced, and lends a lot of time for chatting, reading, checking out all of the pubs, and geocaching.

Amazingly, there are over 100 geocaches hidden along the tow path (trail) beside the canal. Several beautiful series, hidden by CanalCruisers, line the area, which was a pleasant surprise when were getting into the planning stages of this adventure. Overall, I found about 50 caches over our week on the water – some of them clever, some of them convenient, and all of them well maintained. 

One of the funniest parts, and that shows me what a small world we live in – is that I saw fellow Alaskan geocacher AlaskaTim had found several of the caches in the area where we were going!

I love traveling, and getting to geocache in a new place often adds a layer of exploration for me. Since caches have to be hidden by locals, I’m often taken to places off the beaten path, or through parks I wouldn’t have found otherwise. I’ve been fortunate to cache in 17 countries and each time, my family has agreed that we’ve found cooler spots because of where geocaching takes us.

Something incredibly special about Alaska and Alaskan Geocachers is I think we do the same thing. We’ve got one of the highest concentrations of caches in our cities, and offer a variety of terrain, difficulty, and urban/wild opportunities to find. Caching in other places always reminds me of what we’ve got and how special it is.

Tourist season is in full swing here in Alaska, and, with everything going on, it looks like there will be fewer visitors to our state – both national and international. Let’s use this as a chance to discover new things in our own backyard. Place geocaches in interesting spots that you want to share. Highlight a trail or viewpoint you love. Include a story of why you hid the cache there in the description. Include parking waypoints for those who aren’t familiar with the area. Write logs on caches you find that tell about the day, the adventure, the find. 

Enjoy the journey this month!

Yours,

Emily Accipiter Stewart | eaccipi

GeocacheAlaska! President