By Emily Accipiter Stewart (eaccipi)
Well, GeocacheAlaska! Members, I think I can say it was a successful winter for finding geocaches that would normally be hidden under 4 feet of snow. I often struggle with caching in the winter because of how hard it is to get to some of the more trail-based ones, but this was a good year for exploring our parks while the snow level wasn’t too high.
With the upcoming cuts to the federal budget affecting a lot of our park organizations we need to make sure we are doing our part as geocachers to help preserve our game board (the Earth), and working to make sure that our caches are making our public lands better – not worse.
For those that are interested in hiding under our Alaska State Park permit, there are rules that need to be followed in order for us to keep our permit. Not following these guidelines, can potentially ruin our chances at renewing the permit, which would mean we would have to have all geocaches in the Alaska State Parks removed. We’ve got a lot of park land here and I love how accessible it is to geocaching while hiking here – I love looking at my map of smiley faces and remembering the fun trails I’ve hiked to get them. To find the qualifications to hide under GeocacheAlaska!’s Alaska State Park Permit, please reach out at contact@GeocacheAlaska.org or visit
https://geocachealaska.proboards.com/thread/2913/alaska-state-parks-permit-2021
.
As we start to enter the warmer season, start thinking about the maintenance you want to do to your caches and how you can help the geocaches that you come across.
- Make sure that your logbooks are dry and ready for signatures.
- Make sure that the container is fully sealed and it’s not easy for water to get in.
- Make sure that there is no food or other illegal items .
- Have some identifiable feature on the geocache or logbook whether it’s the GC code a contact email address for anyone to reach out to for questions or a Geocaching handle that someone can be reached at if a park Ranger finds your geocache they need to be able to get in touch with you about it.
- Be sure to log Needs Maintenance on caches that aren’t in good shape so owners can make repairs.
- If it’s too hard for you to maintain your geocache, or you no longer want to, feel free to archive it so that way a new geocache can be hidden in that space, continuing the adventure and fun for years to come!
Let’s make sure that we have quality geocaches so we can have quality experiences.
See you on the trails,
Emily Accipiter Stewart
eaccipi