Distinctly Montana Magazine

D I S T I N C T L Y M O N T A N A M A G A Z I N E • S P R I N G 2 0 2 0 38 Park. There are caches hidden along Mon- tana's highest road, the Beartooth Highway between Red Lodge and Cooke City, with one cache hidden at 10,269 feet. And if you search for Troy, which bills itself as the lowest town in Montana, you'll find over 1,300 caches within fifty miles. Of course, some of those caches are in Idaho or British Columbia. The way this all works is thanks not only to that multi-bil- lion-dollar U.S. Government global positioning equipment, but also to the Internet. When I hide a cache, I check my GPS unit (several times to ensure accuracy), name the cache, and send the information to Geocaching.com. A local geocaching representative confirms the details of my cache, then Geocaching.com publishes my cache on their website. Other players looking on-line for caches in their area, or an area where they will be visiting, set off to find my cache. Remember the piece of paper I mentioned all caches contain? When you find a cache, you open the container, take out the paper and add your name or nickname to the list of people who have found it. Back at home, you visit Geocaching.com and log your find on the site. If you are the first person to find a new cache, you get the FTF (First To Find) award, which may be a mention on the site, or if the cache is large enough to hold trinkets, there may be something special inside just for you. While the game was conceived with GPS equip- ment in mind, these days all you really need is a smart phone. Of course, there's an app for geocaching. (Yesterday, as my partner drove to Kalispell, I had my phone out looking for caches along the way.) (There are many, by the way.) This morning, when I opened the Geocaching. com site, the program asked if I wanted to log any of the caches I had looked at yesterday. And it asked about each one by name. Using a phone requires good cell service, something that we all know can be in short supply in Montana—the big white spot on the cell carriers' maps. A GPS unit doesn't require anything but a clear sky. I did not have any of my GPS units with me, so the phone was crucial. Un- fortunately, I lost signal just south of Hot Springs and didn't reconnect until Dayton, some thirty-five miles down the road. It is free to join Geocaching.com, and free to use their website. When searching the site for caches, you can even ask that the list highlight those caches particularly suited to beginners. Caches are rat- ed by difficulty and terrain. There are some I have passed by because I was not willing to put my life at risk sliding down a rock slope into the Clark Fork River, for example. I'm seventy years old and not all that sure on my feet any longer. My age and instability don't keep me from heading out to find more caches, however. There are thousands in Montana that won't trip me up. If you are a private person, you can go out by yourself (although I always recommend letting someone know where you're heading when you're out in the woods). If you are more social, there are orga- nized groups of cachers in Billings, Helena, Kalispell, Missoula, and Watch a video about Geocaching www.distinctlymontana.com/geocache202 DISTINCTLY MONTANA | DIGITAL Natural Pier Bridge, Alberton, Montana where a cache is hidden in the rocks. Explore the history of the U.S. Forest Service by finding the Savenac Multi-cache in Haugan, Montana Two geocaching trails follow the forty-mile length of the Thompson River between U.S. Highway 2 and Montana Highway 200. The Thompson River Scenic Byway (TRSB) Trail has 180 caches and the Anaconda Copper Mining (ACME) Trail has 372. In addition, there are several caches that are independent of the two trails.

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