Cache Mania

When I attend geocaching group events it would appear that Garmin is the manufacturer of choice for geocachers.  It’s no wonder that is the case.  Garmin makes an excellent handheld GPS receiver. I did my first Geocache yesterday with my new Colorado 300.  Overall the experience was pretty good but I can tell you that setting the back-light every time is very frustrating!  It just so happens that the cache I was doing was  a night cache so the back-light was very important.

I’ll keep my review short as I’ve only had the Colorado 300 in the field once my opinions may change over time.  Here are some annoyances I’ve discovered with the Colorado 300.

1. The shortcut and options button are hard to depress when wearing gloves.  It some ways it is nice that these buttons are flush with the case it does make using them a little harder.
2. Sharing wirelessly was the main reason that I upgraded from my GPSMAP 60CSx.  This outing was my first chance to share a waypoint wirelessly.  This is an excellent feature except for the fact that the description is not transfered along with the waypoint.
3. The compass requires that you hold the unit level.  It is very sensitive in this regard.  The compass is also very sensitive to battery changes (which you will do often).
4. I”m a little on the fence regarding the carabiner mounting clip.  I liked having the lanyard and slip on clip with the 60CSx.  That way I could clip it to my backpack and use the lanyard as a safety strap.  I would have lost my 60CSx in a river once if it wasn’t attached via the lanyard to my backpack.  Warning:  only change the batteries over solid ground.
5. Why does the unit turn off when I unplug it from the computer?  Grrr.
6. Navigating when editing a waypoint was not intuitive.  When you are entering numbers using the wheel you don’t immediately think to use the rocker to move left and right.  Once that’s discovered editing geocache stages becomes straightforward, and easier than on the GPSMAP 60Csx.

It’s not all bad.  In fact I quite like the Garmin Colorado.  Here are some of my positive impressions of the unit.

1. The fully rubberized housing makes for a more secure grip.
2. Using the soft buttons (on screen buttons) is quite intuitive.
3. You can’t beat the paperless caching aspect of this unit.  I long ago abandoned printing cache pages primarily because I frequently cache with my friend Bakers Dozen who already has a Colorado.  I’m sure he’ll be relieved that I’ll no longer be calling to him with “do we know what size it is?”.
4. Zooming on the map is both intuitive and fast.
5. The rocker wheel is definitely a highlight of the unit.  It takes some getting used to if you are like me and need to reprogram your brain.  Data input is fast with this interface.
6. Profiles make it easier to use this unit both in the car and on the trail.  Once inside a profile type you can customize things like the trip computer to your liking for each role.  In this way your trip computer for Geocaching can have different data fields than your automotive profile.
7. The compass overlay on the map screen is a nice feature.
8. The ability to log notes with your finds.  Even though the rocker wheel allows for fast data input I don’t think you’ll be writing long logs with it.  It is a good way to note if you dropped or picked up a trackable item.

Overall I am very pleased with my decision to upgrade to a Garmin Colorado GPSr.  The feature I had the most difficulty with was myself.  After three years with a GPSMAP 60CSx I have to unlearn all that I’ve learned.  The interfaces are radically different.   You will find little similarity if you are used to using a different Garmin unit.  What you will find is an interface that works very hard to make the administration and execution of your geocaching activities easier.

NOTE:  Regardless of when you get your Garmin Colorado be sure and update the firmware.  Many past annoyances have already be addressed in the most recent firmware.

UPDATE:  The Garmin Colorado has a very temperamental compass.  It requires frequent calibration.  If you find that your compass is not working you should try recalibrating the compass.  When there are no letters on your compass as in the image to the right it indicates that you did NOT successfully calibrate  the compass.  It must be held flat and rotated at the correct speed for the calibration to be effective.

If you take your Colorado GPSr in the car be sure to set the interface mode to Garmin Spanner.  Once you do this the unit will prompt you for Mass Storage mode when you plug in a USB cable.

Here’s how to activate Garmin Spanner:
Setup>System>Interface>Garmin Spanner

The Garmin Colorado includes the option to take screen shots of your device.  To take a screenshot hold the right soft key for about 5 seconds.  If you have sounds on  you will hear a beep confirming capture.  These images are found in the SCRN folder on the device.   This is very handy for illustrating stories and for troubleshooting.

Tags: Colorado 300, Garmin, GPSMAP 60CSx, GPSr, Night Caching, review, Spanner
Posted in GPS Hardware | 2 Comments »

Night Caching

How much of a hint is too much?  I think that all depends on the person that needs the hint.

I was out with a group of eight to do some night caching .  This wasn’t just caching at night this was attempting to find geocaches that have been designed to be found at night.

Our first cache got off to a roaring start.  We found the fire tacks, the container, the coordinates and headed off.  Thirty minutes at the coordinates and we had nothing.   Did we do something wrong?

We read some of the logs and it appears we were not the only group to have encountered a problem.  How pure do you play the game?  Is reading the log like getting a hint?  We decided to go back to the start and see if we missed something.  Others before us had done this also.

We returned to the first stage and reread the instructions.  How could we be doing this wrong, the coordinates were there for us to read.  Yes they were written as words, even homonyms but still, it was really straightforward.  Having done a few caches by this player in the past I should have known better.  They are NEVER this easy.

We searched some more.  We reread the description.  We searched some more.  We read previous logs.  We searched some more.   We had already read the hint provided but it wasn’t helping.  In retrospect the hint makes sense.  That hint will give you reason to stay at the first stage until you can do what is suggested in the hint.  Something had to be done.  It was time for phone a friend.  Were we taking an unfair advantage by calling someone that has already done this cache?  Should we have abandoned our search rather than call for help? Once the call was made we had the correct coordinates for stage two in a matter of seconds.

The next two stages were challenging but not anywhere near as tricky as the first stage.   Having completed the cache I noticed that the first stage’s instructions would have seemed different had they been in of the later stages.

We really enjoyed this cache even more so because we were thwarted in the beginning.  It feels better to have triumphed than to be defeated.  I did get to thinking though, at what point is a hint a spoiler?

Follow this link to read my complete log for this geocache.

Tags: BFL, hints, Night Caching, spoilers
Posted in Geocaches, Rants | No Comments »

I had my little Sony DSC-V1 out with me and I remembered it had the nightspot feature.  I decided to try and record a little video of our night caching adventure.  I may invest in better video editing based on the feedback from this video attempt.

Tags: DSC-V1, Night Caching, sony, teamvoyagr
Posted in Geocaches, Videos | 2 Comments »

This was my third BFL Boot Camp and I was not disappointed.  The organizers did a superb job. Everything from finding a suitable location to host the pub night to creating innovative and fun night caches.

I’ll review each cache that we did and then give a wrap up of the night overall.

My team for the evening consisted of myself (teamvoyagr), Bakers Dozen and Shadefrog.   After enjoying some libations at the pub we headed out for the evenings caches.  There were 11 caches in total but you only needed to do one from each set of two in order to get the details for the final.  We were able to get five caches done but we were beat.  It was 0330 and we had been at it since 2100.  It was time to go home for sleep.

GC1YQG4 – BFL Boot Camp IV: A Reflection

As our first cache of the night we lucked out in that this was one of the easier caches.  We didn’t have any trouble finding the final.  This was a good cache to get us going.  Nothing too hard.   We had a leisurely stroll to and from the cache.

GC1YYM8 - BFL Boot Camp IV – Nocturnal Creatures

This was a cute cache.  There was a nice story to go with the props.  I’m not sure how long this cache will last in the wild.  We tracked the clues and had the container opened without too much difficulty.  We were FTF on this cache even though another team was essentially at GZ.  That team didn’t realize that the final was close to where they were.    This one is kind of fun if you have younger members of your team.

GC1YNKA - BFL Boot Camp IV – Telecommunication

This one proved far more challenging than it needed to be.  We missed stage one and spent a considerable time finding it.  Getting the correct answer for stage one was also a bit trickier than stages 2 and 3.   We used walking talkies so we didn’t have to keep yelling.  We really liked the team aspect of this cache.  It’s near impossible to do alone.

GC1Y19Z - BFL Boot Camp IV – Signs of Night

Hands down our favourite cache of the evening.  We were on the wrong side of the trail on our first attempt to decided to try and find the other sign.  We figured if we found one it would be easier to find the other and it was.  This was a unique night cache as it didn’t involve firetacks.  The clue even stumped us until we tried it on our first sign.

Not only was this cache not overly long or difficult it was also interesting to do.  If you are looking for a night cache in this area this one is highly recommended.

GC1YVKX - BFL BOOT CAMP IV – SPOTTY CACHE

This was hands down our least favourite of the night.   As a night cache it was fairly straightforward except for stage two.  On that one write down both of your guesses.   Our sense was that this was a beautiful forest.  As a night cache you’ll never get to enjoy that.  Our strongest criticism of this cache was the length.  Long caches can be fun but not so much on a night were you are trying to get a series of caches in order to get to the final.

We called it quits after this cache.  It had been a long night and it was time to go home.  It also meant that we didn’t get to do the final which was disappointing.

Final Thoughts

This was a great night of caching.  The caches were all different and offered their own challenges.  It is always fun to do a challenging cache but there are limits.  There is no doubts that this evening of caches pushed those limits.  I think the evening/morning was a great success.  This is due in no small part to the organizers.  If there is one thing I would change about the evening it would be to time it such that most people have a shot at the final on the evening of the BFL.

If you attended the event I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section.

Tags: BFL, Night Caching
Posted in Geocaching Events | No Comments »