A brief (personal) history
We all know how geocaching itself started however not much is know about the beginnings of nightcaching. Well here is what I know and if you can draw some light on the past feel free to drop a comment :o)
About a year after the first cache was placed somewhere north of Seattle the EraSeek placed the first nightcache. With this cache already firetacks were used (as far as I know), which still can be found as a standard set-up for a lot of nightcaches. I am not really a fan of firetacks but that's another story :o) Anyway. Again almost a year later in March 2002 the first nightcache in Germany appeared. It is interesting because it introduced the German style of nightcaching: Instead of following a track of firetacks, you get a set of coordinates from where you have to spot a reflecting something - here it was a micro-cache - then you get another set at where you look around and so on. This means you have to use your GPSr all the time ... which should be an essential part of geocaching.
My personal nightcaching journey started in 2004 somewhere around Munich. It was the same "German style" coords&relectors type and I had serious fun over there. So much fun that I found myself a nice forest and placed a nightcache in that almost undisturbed landscape. (You might think that I am going a little bit over the top with the following sentence because it's me who created that cache but have a look at the 130 people watching that cache and the logs themselve)
Mission Echo ... just mentioning the name gives some people the creeping horrors. It features things like crawling into bomb-craters from WW2 or through storm sewers which are only 60cm in diameter. Just have a look at Windi after his FTF and you'll see what I mean.
After that nightcaching started big time and there was no holding back: I just had a look at nachtcaches.de and it currently holds 2900 nightcaches ... including the 72 of New Zealand and Australia (yep I had them added). It's fair to say that for some strange reason nightcaching never really flew downunder. And if you compare the English to the German wiki page about nightcaching, I'd reckon that it isn't that big anywhere else.
So if you know anything about the early days of nightcaching (before 2005) just post it here ;o)
cheers
Philipp
About a year after the first cache was placed somewhere north of Seattle the EraSeek placed the first nightcache. With this cache already firetacks were used (as far as I know), which still can be found as a standard set-up for a lot of nightcaches. I am not really a fan of firetacks but that's another story :o) Anyway. Again almost a year later in March 2002 the first nightcache in Germany appeared. It is interesting because it introduced the German style of nightcaching: Instead of following a track of firetacks, you get a set of coordinates from where you have to spot a reflecting something - here it was a micro-cache - then you get another set at where you look around and so on. This means you have to use your GPSr all the time ... which should be an essential part of geocaching.
My personal nightcaching journey started in 2004 somewhere around Munich. It was the same "German style" coords&relectors type and I had serious fun over there. So much fun that I found myself a nice forest and placed a nightcache in that almost undisturbed landscape. (You might think that I am going a little bit over the top with the following sentence because it's me who created that cache but have a look at the 130 people watching that cache and the logs themselve)
Mission Echo ... just mentioning the name gives some people the creeping horrors. It features things like crawling into bomb-craters from WW2 or through storm sewers which are only 60cm in diameter. Just have a look at Windi after his FTF and you'll see what I mean.
After that nightcaching started big time and there was no holding back: I just had a look at nachtcaches.de and it currently holds 2900 nightcaches ... including the 72 of New Zealand and Australia (yep I had them added). It's fair to say that for some strange reason nightcaching never really flew downunder. And if you compare the English to the German wiki page about nightcaching, I'd reckon that it isn't that big anywhere else.
So if you know anything about the early days of nightcaching (before 2005) just post it here ;o)
cheers
Philipp
 |
| My nc-equipment 6 years ago. I still got the etrex but the rest is gone |
 |
| Me at the first nc I found: Little Nightmeer in Munich (I still had hair!) |
Comments
Post a Comment