by Wes Skinner (NorthWes)
I’m looking forward to several upcoming events which you may have missed on your notifications.
One is an event being held in partnership with the Anchorage Parks Foundation, while the other is GeocacheAlaska’s annual Geofest party. The first event on our calendar is GCBZPM5 – 2026 Parks + Trails Recreation Fair occurring on Saturday November 14 from 10am to 2pm, at the Kincaid Chalet. This Fair is hosted by the Anchorage Parks Foundation as part of an effort to introduce Anchorage residents to a broad spectrum of nonprofits, clubs, and businesses which give event attendees support in learning about get-outside activities which occur in our city’s parklands. Admission is free, and the event itself is held inside the Chalet. GeocacheAlaska! Inc. will have a table at the event, where we’re going to talk with visitors about our geocaching game. In addition to hoping you’ll stop by our table and sign the event attendee logsheet, we’d love to have you volunteer your time to help speak to ‘muggle’ attendees about geocaching and how it’s one of the best ways to get outside and visit our city parks. Please visit the cache page to learn how you can volunteer to help!
The GCBZPKF 2026 GeocacheAlaska! Holiday Geofest! is being held on Saturday December 19 from 4:30 to 7:30pm. This free event features a full dinner, a Hot Cocoa
bar, a gift exchange, several incredibly fun games, and a fantastic fun fellowship evening with fellow geocachers. Take time now to visit the cache page to see all the
details, and enter your will-attend log so we’re prepared to take care of all who visit the Geofest!
In other news, work on achieving compliance with terms of the Alaska State Parks geocaching permit has continued, with the team performing cache compliance
audits continuing to put in many hours of work to review caches within state parks (especially Chugach State Park) and reaching out to cache owners regarding bringing
their caches into compliance with permit terms. While the list of caches within state parks is now under the 500 physical cache cap, we have at most 158 caches with
Owner Maintenance being logged on or after 1/1/26, of which only 60 have the current permit number shown on the cache listing. If you own a cache placed inside Alaska’s state parks, please strive to immediately perform the owner maintenance permit requirement by November 15th!
Additionally, please edit your cache listing to show the current permit number – LAS-35694, on your cache page Here is the requested cache owner maintenance logging language we’re requesting you to use (either as owner, or as a proxy performing the owner maintenance visit for the owner):
“Annual Owner Maintenance for Alaska State Parks permit number LAS-35694. Cache container inspected and log signed, as required.”
or
“Annual Owner Maintenance for Alaska State Parks permit number LAS-35694 performed by pre-arranged proxy with (name of cache owner). Cache container inspected and log signed by (your caching name) on behalf of the Cache Owner.”
We are very near the deadline where we’ll be recommending archival of caches which do not meet compliance requirements regarding owner maintenance.