Locals prepare new GPS hunt near Corvallis church

Ame Mahoney loves to find things. Thanks to the ever-growing sport of geocaching, she often doesn't have to look far.

Geocaching is an outdoor treasure-hunting game in which the participants use a hand-held Global Positioning System receiver to hide and seek containers called "caches" anywhere in the world.

A typical cache is a small waterproof container with a logbook, mission statement and trinkets for the searcher to discover.

More than 650,000 geocaches are registered on various Web sites and can be found on all seven continents. The Web site www.geocaching.com lists more than 3,000 caches in a ten-mile radius of Corvallis.

On Sunday, Mahoney, her husband, Brent, and friend Ken Luther set up a new cache near the Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship at 2945 N.W. Circle Blvd.

This was the first cache that Mahoney has set up. It's part of a series she's creating themed on the four classical elements that should be completed in the next few weeks.

Caches for Earth, air, fire and water will be hidden at locations to the north, east, south and west of town. At the center of the challenge is a cache for spirit, which Mahoney placed Sunday near the church.

In addition to trinkets, geocaching enthusiasts often hide "geocoins," "travel bugs" and "path tags" in their boxes with identification numbers on them for finders to take and transfer to other caches. Finders can register their treasures on a Web site, and the item's progress can be tracked around the globe.

The spirit cache holds a travel bug that Mahoney hopes will end up in Hawaii.

If no one Hawaii-bond picks it up in the next few months, the Mahoneys will take it to Hawaii when they take their delayed honeymoon.

"It's a nice way to go out in nature and spend time together," said Brent. "People generally put them in interesting out of the way places."

And it's relatively inexpensive hobby for beginners. Mahoney uses a Garmin eTrek GPS, that she purchased for less than $100 and setting up a new cache can be done for less than $10.

Caches are almost always found outdoors and on public property, although there are rare exceptions. One cache in Corvallis requires the searcher to enter a store, walk like an egyptian and say "the Pharaoh sent me," to reveal the cache, according to Mahoney.

But that's rare. The majority of caches in the area are referred to as "drive-bys," "park and grabs" or "cache and dashes" because the cache is a quick find off a main road or path.

Geocaching arrived on the scene shortly after the removal of selective availability from the Global Position Satellite system in May 2000, which allowed civilians to get better accuracy with hand-held GPS. Many of the very first geocaches were in Oregon.

Still cloud cover, rough terrain or dense forest can cause problems for GPS users looking for caches, so can people who aren't in on the game.

According to Mahoney, people who mess with, trash or steal caches are referred to as "Muggles" within the geocaching community. It's a nod to the Harry Potter book series in which nonmagical humans, or Muggles, are unaware or the secret world of wizards and witches that exists right under their noses.

"In the urban landscape, caches are around you all the time," said Brent.

Because there are some serious geocachers out there, many caches are found mere minutes after showing up on a Web site.

"Some people even have their cell phones set to give them Web site alerts," said Mahoney.

Joine the hunt

It usually takes about two days for a new cache to show up on the Web site www.

geocaching.com after it is registered. Gazette-Times readers have a head start on Team Mahoney's element series spirit cache. The coordinates are: N 44º35.212, W 123º17.067.