It's like treasure hunting - with satellites

On Thursday afternoon, 28 fourth-graders Fritsch Elementary School became treasure hunters.

But times have changed since the old days. No worn and faded treasure map, just a hand-held global-positioning system locator. And it's not called treasure hunting, now it's geocaching.

Geocaching is the practice of using GPS technology and a known set of coordinates to locate a cache somewhere in the world. Once participants find the stash, they sign an accompanying log book and replace the prize with something they brought.

Prizes range from gum and McDonald's toys to cash, coins and jewelry.

The students in Diana Easby's fourth-grade class divided into four groups, tromping and scavenging around the school grounds in search of their bounty.

"We thought it would be a real-life way to experience latitude and longitude," Easby said. "We had the father of a student who does this, and he set it all up for us."

Latitude and longitude are part of the state curriculum requirements for fourth grade.

Patrick Sollberger, a fisheries biologist with the Nevada Department of Wildlife, created the four caches the students were hunting down.

"The neat things are that we get to go to interesting places," Sollerger said. "We've done all sorts of things with geocaching. My kids love it because there's something at the end of it. It was a way for me to get them outdoors."

While Sollberger was helping group one, group two - guided by Easby - went in search of N 39 degree 10.643', W 119 degrees 46.339'. Their clue was "it's like being on the beach."

The group's first attempt took them to the front of the school, where they searched for their bounty - with a small detour to look at a spider.

"Maybe that's our prize," one suggested.

"A spider is not our prize - keep looking," chimed in another.

After some backtracking, the group put Lance Nakamatsu, 9, in charge of the GPS.

"No, we need to go this way. We did it wrong," Lance said.

After two failed attempts and several leaders, group two discovered a plastic bag with pencils and wristbands under some rocks next to a sand pile.

"It was fun," Lance said. "After we found it."

• Contact reporter Jarid Shipley at jshipley@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1217.

Need help with the lingo?

Geocaching (Courtesy of Wikipedia): a geocacher will place a container, containing a log book (with pen or pencil) and treasures somewhere on earth, then note the cache's coordinates. These coordinates, along with other details of the location, are posted on a Web site. Other geocachers obtain the coordinates from the Internet and seek out the cache using their GPS handheld receivers. Geocachers record their exploits in the logbook and online. Geocachers are free to take objects from the cache in exchange for leaving something of similar or higher value, so there is treasure for the next person to find.

GPS: Acronym for Global Positioning System. It is a system of satellites that work with a GPS receiver to determine your location on the planet. Geocaching uses GPS to help hide and seek caches on the planet.

Waypoint: Named coordinates representing points on the surface of the Earth. Geocaching uses a suggested waypoint for a cache, created automatically when a cache has been created.

Geomuggle: A non-geocacher. Based on the term Muggle, from the "Harry Potter" series. A muggle is a non-magical person.

Hitchhiker: An item that is placed in a cache, and has instructions to travel to other caches. Sometimes they have logbooks attached so you can log their travels.

On the Net

For more information or a list of coordinates:www.geocache.com, www.earthcache.org or www.GPSgames.org.