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Posted: 8/15/2013 7:50:33 AM EDT
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Seems like you've already found markers in the terrain by stating there are large boulders and distinctive landmarks. If the area is truly remote the only thing that will move the boulders is another ice age. You can pick out some distinctive boulders (don't worry about them changing within your lifetime unless someone dynamites them) and triangulate a position. If the boulders don't have distinctive features then make your own with a hammer and chisel.
Hills and gullies can only change by either man (your area isn't remote after all) or mother nature in which case your cache is probably going to be compromised by the earthquake or glacier. Never rely on a GPS!! They fail, are unreliable as you have stated and they fail. Memory exercises are needed or a coded map. |
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yep, I would not rely on GPS, hell it may not be up and running when you need your stuff. I'm not a doomist but it could theoretically happen.
I would triangulate it from boulders or fixed landmarks larger than a car. Nothing that would get moved by a person or a bear rooting for something to eat. Three landmarks are better than 1 or 2. If you say west face hamhock mountain, approximately on 225 foot elevation contour, 90 yards above creeek in draw, Site Landmarks 12 foot tall by 18 foot boulder with the E-W running cleft, use cleft as sightline go 22 feet down sightline (approximately due W), stop when you get to a line between a 5 foot oblong rock 13 feet to your left (upslope) and a low rock 12' long that would lie 17' down slope. I would be hesitant to put too many man made marks on the rocks as it could draw attention. I certainly wouldn't use more than 1 in any case, just to insure you're on the right landmark. If someone finds one mark and finds that you put out more in the area they might figure it out. FWIW I have no caches but I get the concepts. |
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I like this idea - if placed properly it might even dissuade others from digging deeper and reaching your cache. |
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I like this idea - if placed properly it might even dissuade others from digging deeper and reaching your cache. Quoted:
It works really well from what I've seen, I work out in the oilfield and anything they bury they use it.. |
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Use a metallic item buried closer to the surface. Make sure you can recognize that item and find it with a metal detector. Then use your gps coordinates. I would do this -- perhaps with the tape mentioned above -- but I wouldn't do it over the cache in question. Maybe 6' south of the cache, buried a few inches below the surface. That way, if you locate it, you know to dig 6' north of the marker, and if someone else locates it, they find the locator and not the cache itself. |
Bury it and then put a fence post on top with a bird house and a marker warning that the bird house is for the endangered Blue tailed Warbler.
Or pile up a jumble of rocks. Build a stone wall Better yet, find some wall, fence, pole, etc. that's already there and bury the item underneath or next to it. |
| Bury a decoy and mark it. Something like a bucket full of one thing or another. Not really valuable but someone would think they hit jackpot. Then bury your cache 30 feet away. Due one direction or another. Get a large stone or chunk of concrete to mark the decoy. |
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Use a metallic item buried closer to the surface. Make sure you can recognize that item and find it with a metal detector. Then use your gps coordinates. Backwards. GPS will get you on it within a couple of feet. Personally, just mark it with GPS, and within that area mark it from a constant landmark (a tree or big rock that isn't going anywhere). "5'6" at 296 degrees from the rock that looks like Uncle Ted" or something. Be prepared to dig a decent sized hole. Memories fade. |
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First of all only an Idiot, would bury something valuable, not on his own property... If it is on your own property, then you should always be able to find it... Right. Because there would never possibly be any reason someone would want to have a cache of anything away from their property, right? I mean, it's not like people have BOLs, or might want to resupply on the way to one, right? 
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| It's got a long rock wall with a big oak tree at the north end. It's like something out of a Robert Frost poem. It's where I asked my wife to marry me. We went there for a picnic and made love under that oak and I asked and she said yes. Promise me, Red. If you ever get out... find that spot. At the base of that wall, you'll find a rock that has no earthly business in a Maine hayfield. Piece of black, volcanic glass. There's something buried under it I want you to have. |
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I don't see how you can go wrong with marking the spot with 3-4 or more azimuths to distant landmarks. The more azimuth intersections you have the more accurate the spot will be, 3 should be plenty, more for just in case one or some of those landmarks are removed for some reason.
Azimuth to landmark 1, Az to landmark 2, Az to landmark 3. If you stand in one spot and your azimuths are correct as you recorded 10 years previously you will be standing on the same spot. |
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Going away for 10 years ' eh?
Hey! you might get out early for good behavior. Anyways, I would get to a couple of easy to see high points ( like the crest of a ridge)and use a low tech compass to shoot an azimuth to triangulate a spot. Brick simple. Off to one side or another you can leave a clue as a visual reference, such as a rock carne. |
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Going away for 10 years ' eh? Hey! you might get out early for good behavior. Anyways, I would get to a couple of easy to see high points ( like the crest of a ridge)and use a low tech compass to shoot an azimuth to triangulate a spot. Brick simple. Off to one side or another you can leave a clue as a visual reference, such as a rock carne. There's a guy around here that stashed multiple 10K's of cash in a cooler. When he got out, all his natural references were gone; and there was a brand new subdivision on top of his stash. I can't imagine doing time, and thinking you have a solid start up plan; only to find a impossible treasure hunt. |
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First of all only an Idiot, would bury something valuable, not on his own property... If it is on your own property, then you should always be able to find it... Nope. Some stuff should NOT be buried on your own property. Assume for a moment firearms are outlawed. Asset-forfeiture laws could cost you your house and land should you be caught holding anything after the mandatory turn-ins. Having a spare buried deep in a state park or national forest, and the ability to recover it, might be A Good Thing. |
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Bury a series of at least 3-4 decent sized (10" ) rocks straight down over the cache, using a larger rock on top flush or slightly below the surface. When you pace it off, slam your shovel in the ground around the area, and when you hear your shovel hit something, dig the top rock up to check for more rocks underneath it, then start digging. So even if the top rock is moved, the area is covered in growth, or a tree falls on it, you'll have a pretty damn good idea of where it is, and you'll be looking for your stacked rocks in the dirt as an indicator.
However you mark it.. you need to have multiple methods of finding it. GPS - definitely get the grids. Get both Lat/Lon and UTM grids. Survey - Establish at least two known points (more is better). Use large rocks or other terrain features as a way to orient yourself. And do it multiple times. For example: [terrain feature] [distance to X] [paces to x] [azimuth to x] "Big rock - (73') 25 paces @ 37 degrees" "Creek bend - (104') 36 paces @ 204 degrees" So you would start at your "big rock", walk 25 paces in the right direction, drop your bag there. Then go over to the creek bend, walk your 36 paces in the right direction, and see how close you are to your bag, then dig intelligently between the two spots. Knowing the distance in feet from close known points is important because when you go to recover it you could stake a rope/string to one of those features and walk it to the recorded azimuth. End of the rope marks the spot. Just some ideas. |
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I dont know, but have a funny story about something. I guess about 15 years or so ago, the state was looking to study building a new road. They painted big 5 foot wide white and black x's about every 2 miles on different road around here. Then they went and took pictures from the air, to make a big picture that they could look at in the office. the x's were just so they could overlay them to build a big map later. One of these big X's was infront of my house. About once a month someone would ask what that there big O'le X was fer. and if i was in the mood to be a dick, I would exclaim, "that there is my buried treasure!!" |
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I'm afraid of burying stuff b/c I may be unable to ever find it again; however, I'm preparing to bury my first large cache. For reasons I can't get into, I would like this cache to be undisturbed and unmonitored for about 10 years. It will be in a remote area with nothing like large boulders or highly distinctive landmarks. From what I've read, you don't want to remember that it's "near a certain big tree" - in 10 years, the big tree could die and rot or a natural disaster could take it out. The terrain could change a lot in 10 yrs as well. Hills and gullies can be created and disappear over time. If I understand it correctly, GPS coordinates can be plus or minus 10 feet. This means I could end up having to dig a 20 ft diameter hole to find my stuff. I'm sure others have considered various options. Would anyone like to share their ideas on this? http://www.scribd.com/doc/3036556/Special-Forces-Caching-Techniques-TC-3129A Cacheing operations are just like any other military operations. Careful planning and mission analysis are required. Read the manual, then add a few new TPP's 1) Fingerprints and biometric (DNA from a hair) are now viable means of determining who cached equipment. Anything you cache may be uncovered by state security forces years from now and be interpreted as an attempt at criminal/insurgent behavior. Tape, glue and pvc gasket trap fingerprints and human hair like a mosquito in amber. 2) Turn you cell phone off as they can be geo tracked to an are near your cache site. If you have no reason to be at or near your site then the phone records could be used to give a rough location 3) Ex wives and other people who may turn you in years later are your primary threat. If you bury a cache with your current wife, plan on hearing about it again at your divorce/custody/civil commitment hearing. 4) Metal detectors and ground penetrating radar are far more common then they were even five years ago, so chose a site that can not be readily traced back to you. 5) Reconnaissance, reconnaissance reconnaissance. If you have not already done so and you can place a deer camera on your cache site do so, you'd be amazed at what goes on in places where there are "no other people". 6) Takes some heavy steel wire and a deep garden edger and cut a 10 yard x into the ground, place your cache tube at the (near) center of the x. When it is time to recover the cache you can use a metal detector, or easily find the wire and trace it back to the cache. Edit, if you are going to use GPS (recommended) then go 100-200 meters directly south (magnetic) of your site and use that as a map point, also when you dig up the earth separate the top soil and grass in one pile, and rocks and fill dirt in another. This is easy to do with some PVC pipe and chicken wire. when your done digging tamp the ground at the bottom of your cache down, then put all the lose rocks down to allow for drainage, if your cache is water tight and resting in a pool of trapped water the cap may come off or the cache may shift, so plan for drainage. Edit 2, make sure your computer does not have a record of you looking up caching techniques |
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Nope. Some stuff should NOT be buried on your own property. Assume for a moment firearms are outlawed. Asset-forfeiture laws could cost you your house and land should you be caught holding anything after the mandatory turn-ins. Having a spare buried deep in a state park or national forest, and the ability to recover it, might be A Good Thing. Quoted:
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...nonsense..... Nope. Some stuff should NOT be buried on your own property. Assume for a moment firearms are outlawed. Asset-forfeiture laws could cost you your house and land should you be caught holding anything after the mandatory turn-ins. Having a spare buried deep in a state park or national forest, and the ability to recover it, might be A Good Thing. This. |
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<snip> 2) Turn you cell phone off as they can be geo tracked to an are near your cache site. If you have no reason to be at or near your site then the phone records could be used to give a rough location <snip> Leave the f'ing cell phone at home or pull the battery. Not even turning it off is good enough now -- I discovered that an android phone I'd terminated service for and turned off, but left the battery in was still checking into the tower (on a vastly reduced schedule.) |
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lol at the prison comments.  I'm going to school in another state, and I'm not sure how long I'll be gone. I just threw out the 10 years estimate as a worst case scenario. I also have permission from the land owner if I choose to go this route.
I used to know how to use a compass; I guess I need to learn again. Thanks for all the tips! Why don't you just ask the landowner if you can store some shit in a crate in the barn? Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile |
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There's a guy around here that stashed multiple 10K's of cash in a cooler. When he got out, all his natural references were gone; and there was a brand new subdivision on top of his stash. I can't imagine doing time, and thinking you have a solid start up plan; only to find a impossible treasure hunt. Quoted:
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Going away for 10 years ' eh? Hey! you might get out early for good behavior. Anyways, I would get to a couple of easy to see high points ( like the crest of a ridge)and use a low tech compass to shoot an azimuth to triangulate a spot. Brick simple. Off to one side or another you can leave a clue as a visual reference, such as a rock carne. There's a guy around here that stashed multiple 10K's of cash in a cooler. When he got out, all his natural references were gone; and there was a brand new subdivision on top of his stash. I can't imagine doing time, and thinking you have a solid start up plan; only to find a impossible treasure hunt. Yep that would have a high suck factor. Fortunately not everyone lives in parts of the country with high population densities. As an example, the county where I built my cabin at has .82 people per square mile. 90% of which are in 3 little towns. There are far more elk, antelope and mule deer than people, so using a little proper planning could negate the risk. Same as in this situation. A little forethought about potential growth possibilities would be on order. |
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- I discovered that an android phone I'd terminated service for and turned off, but left the battery in was still checking into the tower (on a vastly reduced schedule.) Put it in 'Airline Mode' so it won't check with the tower if you want to use that old Droid. It will also save on your battery. |
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] Leave the f'ing cell phone at home or pull the battery. Not even turning it off is good enough now -- I discovered that an android phone I'd terminated service for and turned off, but left the battery in was still checking into the tower (on a vastly reduced schedule.) Interesting How do you know this? |
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Interesting How do you know this? Quoted:
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] Leave the f'ing cell phone at home or pull the battery. Not even turning it off is good enough now -- I discovered that an android phone I'd terminated service for and turned off, but left the battery in was still checking into the tower (on a vastly reduced schedule.) Interesting How do you know this? They FBI can not only tell where you are when the phone is off, but they can also listen to what you are saying. "Any recently manufactured cell phone has a built-in tracking device, which can allow eavesdroppers to pinpoint someone’s location to within just a few feet," he added. THE BLOTTER RECOMMENDS Federal Source to ABC News: We Know Who You’re Calling FBI Secret Probes: 3,501 Targets in the U.S. Click Here to Check Out the Latest Brian Ross Investigates Webcast on CIA Secret Prisons According to the recent court ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan, "The device functioned whether the phone was powered on or off, intercepting conversations within its range wherever it happened to be." http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2006/12/can_you_hear_me/ |
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Not sure if some of the responses here are joking or not. Caching is pretty straight forward and I'd recommend against marking the actual cache location.
This is a good reference document: SF Cache techiniques Pay attention to the section of the FRP or Final Reference Point and how it should be denoted in your cache report. |
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Reading that makes me think they remotely install software on the phone. Software which allows them to tap into the micorophone, and make the phone look like it's 'off' when you push the off button - but in fact is on running the monitoring software. Very clever if so. |
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Put it in 'Airline Mode' so it won't check with the tower if you want to use that old Droid. It will also save on your battery. Quoted:
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- I discovered that an android phone I'd terminated service for and turned off, but left the battery in was still checking into the tower (on a vastly reduced schedule.) Put it in 'Airline Mode' so it won't check with the tower if you want to use that old Droid. It will also save on your battery. We were past airline mode. It was OFF. As in OFF. It was total coincidence I caught the thing transmitting, but I happened to have some radio test equipment on when I caught a long burst and confirmed it was the droid -- black display, turned off weeks ago, chatting with the home base. If it's ignoring being off, it's ignoring airplane mode in a big way, too. |
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Interesting How do you know this? Quoted:
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] Leave the f'ing cell phone at home or pull the battery. Not even turning it off is good enough now -- I discovered that an android phone I'd terminated service for and turned off, but left the battery in was still checking into the tower (on a vastly reduced schedule.) Interesting How do you know this? It was pure coincidence, but I had an RF field meter up for a completely different reason, and it triggered (it has a squelch setting) when the other device I was checking (a radio) was turned off, I thought it was odd and started moving the meter around to see if it was a stray transmitter like a WiFi radio or whatever setting it off -- and it turned out to be the Droid phone I had. I was stunned -- I'd certainly heard the conspiracy noises about phones being active when off, but when you actually see it happen with your own eyes, it's pretty freaky. I left the meter on for the next 8 hours sitting with the antenna laying on the droid, and not a peep, so the cycle time has to be super low. |
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Here's what I've done.
Pick a spot that's not subject to flooding (ever) as air and watertight containers will pop out of the ground. You're going to have to dig a hole deeper than the freeze line (ever) to avoid frost heave. I use public lands that are parks in areas accessible only by 4x4 - there's over a million square acres of that around me. I picked an area where there was mining done 100 years ago. There's plenty of artifacts in the soil - thousands and thousands of discarded cans from the miners, bullets and shell fragments from WWII desert warfare practice and even modern plinkers. The areas are off-limits to hobbyist metal detectors because of the park status even if someone wanted to wade through all the junk. Pick two trees, two large boulders, one of each ... whatever. Two unique things. Heck GPS mark one of them or something within sight of the two points. Run a length of paracord between the two points to measure the distance. Now use that same paracord to mark the distance from one or the other in a direction along the line that the first two points form, or due north, or south from either point ... dig. There's a whole art to digging and restoring the soil so it looks normal. Plant an artifact over the top of the cache under the soil if you want. A non-metallic object like a plastic picnic fork or spoon might not seem out of place. It helps to know you're right over the top as the top of the cache ought to be a good 10-12" below the surface. Once you're done come back after the first couple of rains to check for settling. I spent a good three hours measuring, digging, planting my garden, and burying it up afterwards. I've checked on them a couple of times and nothing looks disturbed. Sandy soil doesn't settle very much at all. 
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Nope. Some stuff should NOT be buried on your own property. Assume for a moment firearms are outlawed. Asset-forfeiture laws could cost you your house and land should you be caught holding anything after the mandatory turn-ins. Having a spare buried deep in a state park or national forest, and the ability to recover it, might be A Good Thing. umm i would highly recommend against the state park or national forest thing. With the number of drug grows on such pieces of lands, I can personally assure you they are monitored heavily, and burying a cache might draw way more attention than you want |
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It works really well from what I've seen, I work out in the oilfield and anything they bury they use it.. Quoted:
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It works really well from what I've seen, I work out in the oilfield and anything they bury they use it.. How do you detect it? It's aluminum, so magnetic is out. "Radar" aimed into the ground? Stranco’s Detectable Warning Tape is constructed with a solid aluminum foil core to support locating from above ground. And I'd go with the fiber optic tape. Electrical or phone people might try to mine for the copper. Water, people might need that for TEOTWAKI too. Fiber optic is the only one I can't see a desire for. Even if the Internet is still up extremely few people have the skills to splice into fiber optic. |
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Put a building on top of it! 
An uncle of mine buried a case with an AR, a .22 pistol, and some ammo in a field about 100-yards from some RR tracks on the northeast corner of Main St and RT 41 in Highland, Indiana. There's a Target on top of it now. Sounds like it is pretty safe now, did they find it? In the Z-paw he just needs to make sure he brings a jackhammer to retrieve it.
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Right. Because there would never possibly be any reason someone would want to have a cache of anything away from their property, right? I mean, it's not like people have BOLs, or might want to resupply on the way to one, right? Quoted:
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First of all only an Idiot, would bury something valuable, not on his own property... If it is on your own property, then you should always be able to find it... Right. Because there would never possibly be any reason someone would want to have a cache of anything away from their property, right? I mean, it's not like people have BOLs, or might want to resupply on the way to one, right? Not to mention the definition of valuable can change over time and circumstance. How valuable is warm jacket, a handful of rice and beans and a couple boxes of ammo today? Not much. However when it comes time for you to really need to dig up that cache I'm willing to bet that stuff will be worth more than its weight in gold. |
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Another thing to consider is the size of your cache. Is this a large crate or a section of PVC pipe? If its small like a PVC pipe even with the best markers and most careful measurement its going to be difficult to hit it on the first try. Miss that and you're looking at spending a lot of time digging exploration holes or poking around with a probe. Especially if you bury below the frost line.
Now I have not tried this before but concentric circles of nylon rope a few inches below ground and foot apart could help make for a larger target to hit. Even is you start with a 10ft diameter circle and work your way down to 1ft you're looking at less than 175ft of rope total. Maybe not even make it a regular shape like a circle. A perfect circle of buried rope in my mind would set off all sorts of alarms that something is not right. If you make it an irregular shape and for whatever reason someone else is poking around and finds the cord, its just some random junk hank of rope left over from something. You however would know what it meant and could help lead you to your cache that much quicker. |