Table of Contents

Cover Page

Cache Across Utah

What the Heck is an Earthcache?

Geocaching in the 6th Grade

Magnet Safety

Regular Features

Chuckles

Credits

As we were just about to head off to Logan to do some power-caching in Aggie country, we got an e-mail from Fire Elemental saying that we shouldn’t miss an awesome Earthcache up Logan Canyon, Ancient Worm Trails (GCGWVG), by dino_hunters. FE added “… you’ll get one of those cool Earthcache symbols on your stats page”. We had no idea what it was all about but we put it on our “to do” list.

Since that trip we’ve learned a lot more about Earthcaches. For one thing we were astonished to find that despite all the National Parks and geological wonders around us, Utah has only one Earthcache.

420 Million year old worm trails in the Swan Peak quartzite.
Photograph copied with permission from the geocaching.com page, GCGWVG, courtesy of Jeremiah Burton, aka dino_hunters.
Jeremiah tells us that this photograph was taken at night, illuminated by automobile headlights.
Move over, Ansel Adams!

An Earthcache is a special kind of virtual cache. It is a virtual that is still “legal” according to groundspeak).

You visit an Earthcache to witness and learn about some spectacular feature of Old Mother Earth.

One major difference between an Earthcache and a traditional geocache is that Earthcaches are reviewed by professional, card-carrying geologists associated with the Geological Society of America, headquartered in Boulder, Colorado (you don’t have to be a geologist to develop an Earthcache though).

Another difference is that folks are actually encouraged to place Earthcaches in National Parks! (Never be surprised if Ranger Rick hasn’t gotten the message yet!)

Still another difference from traditional caches is that there are so few Earthcaches in existence. This can and should be remedied IMHO. (Mrs. Minerals said to me the other day … “When did you ever have an “HO”?”)

A year ago we visited an Earthcache called Earthcache Central (GCHY1E) by geoaware located on the grounds of GSA headquarters,. At the time we didn’t realize it was an Earthcache or that it had been placed there by Gary Lewis, (glewis@geosociety.org) the father of Earthcaches. Gary is an educator from Australia who works for the GSA to promote geological awareness.

Gary [was] in Salt Lake in mid-October for the annual meeting of the GSA. He has a paper on the program. The abstract reads “Earthcaching is an exciting educational offshoot of the already popular sport of geocaching … The aim of earthcaching is to take people to sites of geological interest, not only in the USA but around the world, and to use those sites to teach them some fascinating aspect of our planet. Sites are developed with educational notes on the web (www.Earthcache.org) and then geocachers visit these sites and leave a log on the web describing their experience. The program has been operating for less than two years and already there are more than 200 Earthcaches in over 17 countries. All earth science enthusiasts who want to share educational sites with the general public are encouraged to get involved in this exciting program.”

Gary’s profile on geocaching.com reads: “I live in Canberra (Australia), and telecommute to my work in Boulder, Colorado where I am the Director of Education for a society of geoscientists. When I am in Australia I hunt for caches with my two young daughters who love to find the treasure. It’s been fun showing other people how to geocache... I guess I just can't stop being a teacher. Maybe we should have statistics for the number of muggles we convert to geocachers!”

For Mrs. Minerals and me, “Ancient Worm Trails” wasn’t to be. We logged several finds in Logan Canyon, only to discover that we hadn’t loaded the coordinates onto our PDA for the Earthcache … when we enter the parameters for a pocket query we always check “Traditional” and “Virtual” but never select “Earthcache”. A big mistake. Always check “Earthcache”. So we’ve only logged one Earthcache … that one at GSA central in Colorado … but we still haven’t found the single Earthcache in Utah.

We know that there are a number of UTAG members who know a lot about geology -- MOCKBA, greenschist, and dino_hunters -- to mention several. There are several caches existing now as traditional caches that could easily have qualified as Earthcaches. So let’s get it in gear, check out (www.Earthcache.org) and start creating a bunch more fabulous Earthcaches here in Utah. Build a better earthcache and the world will beat a path to your door!

Table: Screen snapshot of a Pocket Query for Earthcaches within a 1000 mile radius of Zipcode 84124.
There are only 14, and only one of them is in Utah. Most of the others are in Colorado.