For those interested here is a summary of the equipment we use and how we log and document our travels and caches. Some of this information was learned the hard way and some was through hours toiling over web pages and documents until finally a eureka moment was reached. Either way if it offers to others an alternative option to planning a trail and logging caches then it’s served its purpose.
Firstly the most important bit – the GPS unit. We read many articles covering all manner of units and I’m not about to provide any in depth technical summary here of the pros and cons of one verses the other. Least to say that it is very much a budget driven decision for most. The unit we choose in the end was a Garmin™ Oragon 550t. From the many and varied reviews it seemed to perform well and offer a degree of robustness that we wanted. Downside though is that it was one of the more expensive units at the time.
Over the year the GPS has performed very well. My only criticism is that it can be difficult to get to know all its functions well enough that you get the most from it from day one. I would say that it was six months before I truly felt at home with everything this particular GPS offered.
Enough about the choice GPS. One of the features that attracted me to this particular unit was its ability to record the actual track that you were taking and provide useful information on that track for analysis later. Garmin™ offer free software (Garmin™ Basecamp) that allows you to view the maps installed on your GPS and upload the results of Pocket Queries as well as downloading the tracks that you have recorded, on your home PC. What Basecamp offers is a single place to manage routes and plan journeys in advance. As well as downloading tracks from your GPS you can also draw routes on screen and save them to upload at a later date to your GPS. I settled on this way of doing things after trying other various techniques and tools such as loading tracks into Goole Earth© for analysis, planning route on web based mapping tool and then exporting them and using Geochachiing.com ™ maps to pick individual caches for export!
Here’s what I do now. I’ve set up pocket queries on Geocaching.com™ that run during the week to give my a 1000 caches that I have not found starting from various points in the North West North West
To plan a route I connect my GPS to the computer and launch Basecamp. I have OS mapping installed on my GPS and this then becomes available as a map to view in Basecamp so I switch to that one, although the standard map it ships with is good enough to get you around to start with before committing to the extra expense of OS maps. Basecamp then allows you to draw a track onto the map. Given I have already loaded the results of my pocket queries into Basecamp this makes it very easy to see where you would want to walk to get the most finds along the way. It also becomes very obvious the circular cache series’ people have planted and the pathways they have followed. Once I have a route I’m happy with I save it in a folder.
Now the time has come where we want to venture out. Again I plug the GPS into the PC and start Basecamp up. The GPS appears just like a folder in the application so to transfer a route or the results of your saved pocket queries to the unit it’s as simple as selecting the track and the caches you want and dragging and dropping to the GPS folder. Unplug the GPS unit and turn it on. From here I then check the transfer has worked (lesson learned from getting out into the field only to realise it hasn’t) by looking up and displaying my planned track. On my GPS this is very well presented as it shows the OS map with the planned track and my current position in relation to that track. Ok so we know where we are going the next step is to record the actual route we take.
One of the biggest things I learnt in this first year is that like satellite navigation systems in cars you can’t 100% rely on what a GPS unit tells you – you have to employ some common sense and have a degree of awareness of what your eyes are telling you in the field. Planning a rough route at home and being able to then follow it is great but when it comes down to it GPS units are only accurate to a certain degree and you could be several meters from where you think you are. For that reason I like to record my actual walked route so I can compare the two later. It is these walked routes that I have detailed in this guide – it’s too easy for anyone to compile a book of walks using online maps without actually walking them. I hope that this is what makes this guide a little different.
I know we are on the right track and our GPS has a feature to lock on to the nearest cache so away we go. Counting down the feet to the first cache location on our track. Once we have found the cache I log it on the GPS unit. Again another neat feature, and a time saving one, is the ability to log field notes against the cache. This in effect means you can log the find and record your comments there and then. Useful if you are attempting a lot of caches in one day and you want to be able to remember specific things for your logs later. At this point we set the GPS to find the next nearest cache site and off we go.
On returning home I again plug the GPS into the PC and I can now view (through Basecamp) the recorded track for the days walk. I save this for my own use later – although at the time I wasn’t considering that these would be collated into this guide! Coming back to the field notes logged during the day – I log onto my Geochaching.com™ account and select upload field notes from the menu. You can then navigate to a text file held on the GPS unit. In my case it’s a text file called GeocacheVisits.txt. The location and name of this file (if available) will vary depending on your unit. Once the file is loaded you will be able to navigate to a list of your finds and individually submit that log. At this point the comments you have recorded in the field are then automatically placed into the comments box so all you need do is click submit.
For those brave enough you could edit the GPS text file via notepad first and embellish the logs before loading them up – which is what I do. Reason for this is that whilst it’s great to be able to log notes in the field it isn’t that easy to type lots on the screen of my unit. I have my own shorthand that I use to record enough that it will prompt my memory once I’m editing the text file. Typing up your comments in the text file I find easier as you are presented with a list in chronological order based on your first find of the day and you can easily edit the text if you need to.
That’s it. I don’t profess that this is the way you should do it, its just what I’ve settled upon and it works well for me. Hope it’s given you some ideas.
