Buena Vista Chamber of Commerce

     Geochaching In The Buena Vista Area

by Dick and Jan Scar

     Geocaches are containers of various sizes hidden anywhere you can imagine. There were over 700,000 geocaches hidden around the world! And there are over 30 located within 10 miles of Buena Vista. These include some right in town that are pretty easy to locate and one which requires you to climb over the summit of Mt. Princeton to reach. The caches vary in size and are rated by how well they are hidden and how difficult it is to cover the terrain you must travel in order to reach them.

     Locating geocaches requires the use of a Global Positioning System receiver, often shortened to "GPS". The sport of geocaching and operation of GPS's rely on a system of 24 earth-orbiting military satellites developed for national defense. Most GPS's will locate a position within 50 feet and some can do it within 10 feet depending on tree and cloud cover.

     Geocaching involves getting the location coordinates of a geocach and then using your GPS to locate it. The caches can be smaller than a 35mm film canister or as large as a 5-gallon bucket. Almost all will contain a paper log on which you can sign in and most contain a items from which you can take and trade for an item you bring to put in. There are several children caches near Buena Vista which contain items that delight youngsters in particular.

     Getting involved entails registering for free at Geocaching.com. From this site you can find geocaches listed near locations anywhere around the world. The easiest way to find the caches in a particular vicinity is to enter the postal zip code which brings up a list of geocaches starting from the closest to that post office. Entering the zip code for Buena Vista of 81211 will get you a list of over 160 caches within a radius of 25 miles of Buena Vista including the highest geocach in Colorado.

     Geocaching is a great way to learn how to use a GPS and leads you to places that you would never see otherwise. It's a perfect way to find hidden spots around BV!

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Brought to you By Buena Vista Chamber of Commerce and Colorado Tourism Office