By: Emily Accipiter Stewart (eaccipi)

Over the weekend, I got to participate in my kid’s Cub Scout Campout. 27 kids aged 5- 10 all gathered for a weekend with their parents to sleep in a tent, shoot archery, try their hand at fishing (5 fish were caught!), and work on their knife skills for their Woodchip badge. All incredibly exciting things for a young kid. But they also got to find a geocache!

I’ve been involved in Pack 409 since it’s inception almost 3 years ago, and have brought my love of geocaching to the Pack – looking for an idea for a den meeting? Let’s go find the geocache in the park behind the school! Need to talk about practical use of technology? This is a GPS and how we use it to find designated coordinates. Good manners about give and take? Let’s talk about SWAG and how you can only take an item if you leave an item.  As we were planning the campout, we asked each Cub Scout to let us know three things they hoped we would do at the campout, and my geocaching heart was filled with joy at how many kids asked to have a geocache hidden.

That’s not the only programming with the youths of today – BirkenstockReport recently started a geocaching club at the high school they teach at – helping bring our game to a new cohort of players. Even at events I’m attending, I’m meeting young players who are in high school or freshly out who are excited to discover and join in a game many of us have been playing for a while. It’s exciting, and the enthusiasm they’re bringing makes me excited to go find caches too.

As Geocaching celebrates 25 years of finding things in the woods, it’s imperative that we continue to share our passions of the game with the younger folks today. Whenever I’m on a hike with kids, I casually mention there are geocaches on the trail. JagerBar’s friends who have hiked with me before eagerly start asking if we brought “the swag bag” along, and new hikers are introduced to the game. Here are some of my suggestions for sharing the game with new/young players:

• Casually ask if they want to find treasure on the trails. This always piques the interest of young kids.
• Let the kids hold your phone. While nerve-wracking, I always trust the kids in our Pack to hold my phone and follow the compass line. They get to practice seeing distance, looking for trails instead of going in a straight line, and the excitement of discovering it together.
• Keep a SWAG bag for them in your car. Mine is filled with unopened happy meal toys, cool items from tradeshows, and small items from the party section at  Walmart. Let the kids pick an item to hold at the beginning of the hike so they can decide if they want to trade it or keep it when caches are found.
• Focus on large geocaches. When I know I’ll be with kids, I only look for caches big enough to have trades – I remove micros and Other from my search parameters. While it’s fun for adults to find well-hidden and tricky caches, kids don’t seem to get the same enjoyment.
• Share it with the parents. I’ve got a little sheet that I’ll give the kids after a geocaching day that has a picture of the Geocaching app icon, the website, and a quick “this is what geocaching is” synopsis. When I see the parents (if they weren’t on the hike), I let them know their kid enjoyed the activity and it may be a great family bonding experience.

Thank you for sharing your geocaching passion with the future geocachers of tomorrow!

Emily Accipiter Stewart
eaccipi
President, GeocacheAlaska!

Upcoming Events:

September 30 – GCBCKBJ  School Year Coffee Series: Jittery in September (Eagle River)

September 30 – GCBBENQ Join Us For World Postcard Day & Earn A Souvenir Event Cache (Juneau)

October 4 – GCATKJ7  World Postcard Day & Stammtisch – Community Celebration Event (Achorage)

October 11 – GCBCBXK  Campbell Creek CITO – Cache In Trash Out® Event (Anchorage)

October 11 – GCBCVVW School Year Coffee Series: Chugiak October (Chugiak)

October 12 – GCBDB1T Meet & Greet from Anchorage Event Cache (Fairbanks)

October 13 – GCBDDC7  School Year Coffee Series: Indigenous Peoples’ Day (Anchorage)

November 21 – GCBB6CX  Team_Conway Visits Anchorage  (Anchorage)

Upcoming Souvenirs:

Cache In Trash Out® (CITO) 2025 – Season  September 1 – November 30 
      (attend a CITO event to qualify)

World Postcard Day – October 1
       (attend an event between September 28 and October 4 to qualify)

International Earthcache Day – October 10-12
      (log an Earthcache to qualify)

Adventure Day – October 17-19
      (log any 5 Adventure Lab locations to qualify)

Geocaching Intentional Film Festival (GIFF) – November 6-16

      (attend a GIFF event to qualify- details about upcoming GIFF events in Alaska will be announced soon!)

Celebrating 25 Years: no time limit

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

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

Upcoming Events:

September 2 – GCBB29V  Did Juneau we’ve been here before? (Juneau)

September 7 – GCAW0EF Everybody Loves Trackables: Community Celebration Event (Eagle River)

September 7 – GCBAZGK The Buttermilk Invitational 6 (Super Soaker Series) (Wasilla)

September 16 – GCBBY7F Brits on tour from Cyprus (Sitka) 

September 18 – GCBAF4K  Meet and Greet – Anchorage AK (Anchorage)

September 25 – GCBC0N3 Celebrating 25 on the 25th: Events for Introverts (Eagle River)

November 21 – GCBB6CX  Team_Conway Visits Anchorage  (Anchorage)

Upcoming Souvenirs:

Celebrating 25 Years: no time limit

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

Cache In Trash Out® (CITO) 2025 – Season  September 1 – November 30 
      (attend a CITO event to qualify)

September Equinox: September 19-22
      (find any geocache or attend an event to qualify)

World Postcard Day – October 1
       (attend an event to quality)

International Earthcache Day – October 10-12
      (log an Earthcache to qualify)

Adventure Day – October 17-19
      (log any 5 Adventure Lab locations to qualify)

Geocaching Intentional Film Festival (GIFF) – November 6-16

      (attend a GIFF event to qualify- details about upcoming GIFF events in Alaska will be announced soon!)

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

Happy August, fellow cachers! The night is starting to come quicker and I noticed the trees around my house are starting to change colours and will start to fall soon. I think we can officially recognize that summer is coming to an end sooner than we’d like. If you’ve got any caches on your list to find before a blanket of snow begins to cover them, now is your chance!

Also coming too soon: GeocacheAlaska! Board Elections! Are you passionate about geocaching? Love sharing it with others? Have ideas for great events or ways we could engage with the community more? We’d love to have you join us!

There are two ways to become more involved with the GeocacheAlaska! organization:

1. Join a committee. We’ve got a variety of committees looking for members from our geocaching community who can volunteer their time and ideas to making us better:

• Advocacy Committee – handles blanket permits and works to improve outdoor access
• Education Committee – supporting geocaching and outdoor education with youth
• Events Committee – Plans engaging and educational events for the geocaching community
• Fundraising Committee – Finds creative ways to fund our organization
• Communications Committee – Monthly newsletter and social media
• KMTA GeoTrail Committee – Supports our GeoTrail on the Kenai Peninsula
• Membership Committee – Grow our membership and find what adds value
• Nominations Committee – Prepares for the annual election
• CACHE Committee – Recognizing our members and their accomplishments

2. Join our board! We’ve got 5 positions up for election this year: President, Secretary, Webmaster, and two Member-At-Large roles. The committee meets monthly to plan and review what we’re doing on your behalf. If you’re interested in joining us, please reach out to Wes Skinner, our Vice President, to get on the ballot. His email is SkinnerWesley@gmail.com

Looking forward to cool nights and the return of night caching!

Yours in Geocaching,
Emily Accipiter Stewart (eaccipi)

By Bill Van Couwenberghe (akvans)

We took a trip to Texas for a bowling tournament in Fort Worth. We added a few days before and after so that we could do some caching. Due to the heat (upper 90’s low 100’s), we mainly did park and grabs or virtual caches that did not require to be outside for long periods of time.

One of the caches we wanted to grab was the Odyssey Cache – Texas (GCAZV9M),which was less than two hours away. It was an easy grab. It is at the Audie Murphy/American Cotton Museum. After logging the find, we paid admission and went into the museum. It is a small museum, and worth the price. Nearby, there are two other caches, a traditional and a virtual that are easy to do.

On our way back to the hotel room, we stopped at a Buc-ee’s (exit 79 off I-30). We had heard of these but had never been to one. Now we know what all the hype is about. Think of a gas station on steroids. There were four fueling stations with six lanes each (48 gas pumps!). On one end of the parking lot was a Mercedes charging station and a Tesla charging station on the other. Due to the size of the campus, there were three traditional caches there, along with an adventure lab in the store (The Greatest Gas Station on the Planet). The store was the size of a grocery store. Their food was very good. I had a three-meat sandwich (sausage, brisket and turkey). I could not believe how big it was! We even met Buc-ee!

Another fun cache that we did was GC6WV4R Fire Station 17-Little Big House. We saw the number of favorite points (currently at 300), so we went out of our way to grab it. The cache is a replica of the fire station. One must figure out where the key is for the lock.

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)