Asheville Offers Plenty of Hidden Treasure for Geocachers
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The 8-year-old game of geocaching is recreation’s rising star – and Asheville is just the place to try it.
Enthusiasts of all ages, abilities and interests can hunt hidden treasure from the studios of the city’s River Arts District to the breathtaking trails of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
“There are caches that would require you to go on a 14-mile hike in a national forest, and there are caches you can locate while maneuvering a wheelchair around urban environments,” says Graeme McGufficke, an Asheville resident and avid geocacher who has placed the world’s second-highest number of caches. “Whatever you’re excited about, it’s here in this area.”
Geocachers use Global Positioning System devices to locate hidden containers that hold logbooks and trinkets. Finders sign the logbook and, if they wish, exchange a trinket of their own for one from the cache.
Although no one has taken an official count, McGufficke estimates that hundreds of Asheville residents regularly go in search of the area’s numerous caches.
“Asheville is lucky because we have this couple who got into geocaching early, so it’s always been a fairly dense place for caches,” McGufficke says. “Asheville is seen by the geocaching community as something of a destination because you can come here in a weekend and find maybe 200 caches.”
McGufficke’s geocaching has taken him around the world, but he still considers Asheville a prime location to play the game. In fact, one of his most memorable geocaching experiences involved hunting an Asheville cache called Tube Torcher.
“It was physically challenging and mentally challenging; it definitely took you to places you wouldn’t have gone to,” McGufficke says.
And that, he adds, is what makes geocaching so engaging.
“It tends to take you to places you maybe wouldn’t get to on the regular tourist path,” he says.
Beth Anne McPheeters of the Asheville Convention and Visitors Bureau agrees. In May 2007, the bureau staged the inaugural Ultimate AsheCache. The nine-week event took participants off the beaten path in search of caches holding more than $2,400 worth of Asheville-themed prizes. The event was so popular that the bureau plans to repeat it every spring.
But McPheeters points out that AsheCache 2007 was about more than prizes.
“A lot of the people had never done [geocaching] before and felt it was a great way to see the area,” she says.
For his part, McGufficke loves the process and culture of geocaching.
“There’s this pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that’s there to find,” he says, “but it’s not about the pot – it’s about the journey to get to the pot and the people you meet along the way.”
For more about Asheville’s Ultimate AsheCache, go to www.exploreasheville.com.
Story by Kathryn Royster
Photo by Wes Aldridge
