Backpacker Mag: Does geocaching violate Leave No Trace?

[gotta run]

Every time you go caching you leave a trace. Maybe you bent a dogwood branch, stepped on an ant, or needed to use the port-a-tree. Even virtual caches leave a trace–in the process of making the journey to observe, we’re either traveling well-worn paths or making new ones. And, as someone on the backpacking forum so rightly said, a trail is a pretty big “trace!”

If you read the “leave no trace” guidelines, I would argue that, except for the cache container left behind (which, by virtue of being hidden, is not something that’s going to disturb the experience of anyone, unlike trail litter), geocachers follow LNT guidelines as a matter of written guideline or good practice. And heck, we do some of them without being told, such as “Use a map and compass to eliminate the use of marking paint, rock cairns or flagging.” We don’t need to leave a bread crumb trail to get us back out of the woods, we have a GPSr!!!

I am sick and tired of self-righteous enviro-weenies like this Backpacker magazine clown spewing this garbage disguised as political correctness, trying to make us all feel guilty just for being alive. Who made him the arbiter of the outdoors?

We’ve been given the responsibility to be good stewards of the land. That does not mean we are forbidden from using it.

On the Left Side of the Road...

[-cheeto-]

Maybe you bent a dogwood branch,

Or did a deer, bear, the wind bend that branch?

stepped on an ant,

One could argue, the ant is going to die soon anyway? (not trying to offend anyone here…)

or needed to use the port-a-tree

watering the tree to help it grow?

I don’t “buy” any argument that geocaching is harming our natural areas. They’re all public places where people are allowed to go and the people that are not geocaching are harming those areas and rates thousands of times worse than geocachers are.

Take for instance, when I was up in Door county. Deep in a county park, my wife and I were walking on a trail that had been there for a long long time. The cache was a popular multi, and most points were mere feet from the trail. As we walked between points, up above on the rock face a large bag full of glass bottles came a tumbling (actually crashing) down. Someone had emptied their truck or whatever of all their beer bottles into the county park!

Not only did they litter, but that large bag took out much more vegetation and such than any cacher there would. AND they almost took out a couple of geocachers! My wife and I yelled up to them but we were a good 50 feet down and could never get back up there in time to do anything about it…

I just don’t buy this argument at all. Leaving “geo-trails” is not the end of the world. There are well-established “people” (and animal) trails all over our parks. Whether those trails lead the way to water, shelter, the road, a geocache, whatever… is having those trails hurting anything?

One tornado (an act of nature, god, whatever you beleive) does trillions more in damage to nature itself than geocachers will ever do and it’s over in a blink of an eye.

I can keep going…

I don’t buy it.

[gotta run]

I also bet that 99% of geocaching treks are less than an hour. Geocachers aren’t lighting campfires, setting up tents, digging “catholes,” and so forth…

On the Left Side of the Road...

[GrouseTales]

@gotta run wrote:

I am sick and tired of self-righteous enviro-weenies like this Backpacker magazine clown spewing this garbage disguised as political correctness, trying to make us all feel guilty just for being alive. Who made him the arbiter of the outdoors?

I agree. I subscribed to Backpacker magazine for one year. While I love back packing, I could no longer stomach the “enviro-weenie” articles. Haven’t picked up a copy since !

[nohandsgps]

It looks like my subscription to this magazine will only last a year. I can’t stomach to much “enviro weenie” babble.

[TyeDyeSkyGuy]

I guess you could call me a tree hugger. But because I know that most of the trees will be there after I’m gone, and many of them have been there longer than I’ve been alive, I try not to sweat it if I step on a leaf, or break off a small branch.

I don’t like to damage nature. I learned my lesson from a cache I had a few years back called NEMESIS #3 Are you nuts yet? The area got torn up so bad, that it really bothered me. The area was destroyed on purpose by angry cachers searching for a cache that was muggled. I considered giving up caching because I didn’t want to be responsible for more damage.

But, I came to my senses and started hiding caches differently. No, the NEMESIS caches aren’t any easier, but you won’t be tearing up the land around them while searching. I pick places that are already torn up, matted down, or use dead trees, or even jungle gyms. In my most recent and difficult NEMESIS cache, I’ve even left a marker where to concentrate your search. There’s no need to search outside of a 20 inch area. This is written right in the cache page.

The most important thing I learned was that after archiving NEMESIS #3, I came back to the spot the following year, and guess what. There was no way of telling that a cache was ever there, or that cachers had destroyed the area. Without the original coord’s in my GPS, I probably never would have located the exact spot where it had been.

So, the point is, tread lightly, do as little damage as you can. But don’t beat yourself up over a broken branch. Nature will come back. And it will come back quickly. And it’ll be there long after we’re all gone and forgotten.

[kbraband]

Leave No Trace (LNT) is an effective way to get people thinking about their relationship with and their impact on nature. In general, I think most geocachers are already more aware of this relationship than most people who do not get outdoors much or even who only participate in outdoor activities that are motor-based (ATVs, dirt bikes, power boats, etc.) To answer the original question, I’d say have to say, yes, we are leaving a trace. But in the grand scheme of things, geocaching is calling more people to care more about the outdoors and the environment. There used to be an article that I wrote about LNT here on the WGA web site but I can’t find it now. A quick online search brings up this reference to my article, which is now posted on the Geocaching Maine web site: http://www.geocachingmaine.org/forum/showthread.php?t=364

[Ry and Ny]

I think something that’s often overlooked is that, when we’re out hiking or caching, we’re part of nature, not necessarily intruding on it. We’re not acting in a manner that is in any way inconsistent with any other habitant of the area, unless we’re making campfires and/or leaving trash. Squirrels stash acorns and nuts. We stash peanut butter jars and matchboxes. Hell, even if you take a whizz on a tree, the only thing you’re doing is making the nearest territorial animal come back and mark it again. Deer scrape the bark off of trees. We might bust a branch or two.

It’s not like we’re going out there and paving a road. In no way are we really behaving any differently than the creatures in the ecosystem around us, even if we do dig around a bit to find a tough cache. The average groundhog moves about 700 lbs of dirt making his burrow. If I’m in there poking around with my walking stick, it’s going to take me 2 months to catch up with that little bugger.

Unless I’m out there using tools and/or methods that do not mimic natural behavior (i.e. leaving trash, using fire), I fail to see why I’m less of a valid part of the area than anything else that’s there. As mentioned before, there are exceptions to this, but in most cases, we’re not putting caches in those ultra-sensitive places to begin with.

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