Story by Avantika Khatri

Over the past three years, David Bassett has found more than 2,600 hidden containers using a GPS receiver. Locations for the hiding spots, known as geocaches, range from mountain peaks to libraries to underwater caves to lush forests.

Geocaching became possible May 2, 2000, when the U.S. government turned off selective availability for GPS. Until that point, the government altered the GPS satellite clock signals to skew GPS accuracy by 100 meters for unauthorized personnel. Today, more than 5 million people have joined the high-tech treasure hunt, hiding and searching for more than 1.4 million caches.

“I saw a T-shirt once, and it said, ‘I use billion-dollar government satellites to find Tupperware hidden in the woods,’ and that sums it up right there,” said Bassett, 49.

During a traditional geocache, a person hides a waterproof container containing a logbook and possibly small knickknacks and then enters the coordinates for the container’s location on a website. Other cachers enter the coordinates into their GPS receivers, and the search begins.

Although there are many websites for recording caches, the main one is www.geocaching.com, which Bassett describes as “the Walmart of geocaching.”

Each cache provides Bassett an opportunity to explore new areas. Although he has lived in Boone County for a long time and says he is familiar with the area, Bassett regularly discovers new things because of where other people hide their caches. In Cuba, Mo., for instance, he discovered a waterfall and a dog-racing track — things he never expected to find.

These hiding spots also create opportunities for new experiences.

“I’ve rappelled. I’d never rappelled before in my life, but I’d gone to get a geocache just a couple of weeks ago, as a matter of fact, and we rappelled over a 125-foot cliff,” Bassett said.

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