Saturday, December 14, 2013

Night Caching In San Jose

On Wednesday evening I did some night caches in San Jose with some local Californian geocachers SaSiCo and silverbeetle.

Night caches are always fun as the combination of dark and reflectors means the opportunities to hide caches in unique ways is dramatically increased.

This is the first time I've done a night cache in an urban (well, suburban) area.  Usually they are deep in the woods, and involve following reflective tacks along a path.  This cache was more like a multi-cache where each stage provided either a container with the coordinates, or a puzzle to obtain the coordinates.  6 stages of fun.

It also had a unique aspect that I have not previously encountered, which was the use of UV lights to hide interesting numbers, like these ones (most significant bits obscured to avoid spoilers):

The one downside of night caches is the lack of light when you need to see the details on things.  Some geocachers use headlamps, but I just prefer to get good at juggling flashlights.
 The final was a fantastic field puzzle that would be worth a fav point all on its own.  With some teamwork silverbeetle and I made short work of it.

We had so much fun doing this cache that we headed off to do another one nearby. This second cache involved following tacks along a path, but the path was beside a mall, so it still had an urban feel to it.

Night caches are fantastic good fun, and if you ever get a chance to do any, I highly recommend giving it a go.