Find Your Geocache: Power Caching
May 10th, 2011 | 
Author: Geocaching Power Trails
I’m lucky enough to spend a lot of time with a brand-new geocacher. This gives me a lot of perspective on what the newest of the new cachers know and what they don’t know. (And sometimes that is surprising!)
So when I was chatting with Code Wolf today about today’s geocaching article, the subject of a “power trail” came up and he asked me to write an article about it.
Now, there are people who love power trails since they can rack up a bunch of finds in a short amount of time. And there are people who think that scooting down a 10 mile long road grabbing a cache every quarter mile is just silly.
A power trail is loosely defined as a series of caches laid out along a roadway. They are usually a series of PNG caches with cache sizes being small or micro. There are some power caches that are 50 or more caches along a single route!
An example of a 50+ power cache series is “Hang’m High On Hwy. 51 #1” GC20GR1 in Louisiana.
For me, there’s a big difference in a power cache series like this versus a road that has lots of caches along its length but each cache is hid as if it were a stand-alone hide.
Way back in 2009, I wrote about caches along a trail. But I wasn’t thinking of anything like a “power trail”. I like hiking along a trail or a loop and finding a cache on a regular basis, like the caches along the trail that lead to my “High Gear” GC1PN22 cache.
There are 5 caches along a steep, rocky hiking trail in Prescott National Forest.
Somewhere between caches along a trail and a power trail are caches that are one right after another BUT you have to walk or bike to get to them. There are two trails like that here in Prescott, both Rails to Trails, that I have been itching to go after: the Peavine National Recreation Trail and the Iron King Trail.
Caches along the Iron King Trail. The trail is walking, bike or horse ONLY. No motorized vehicles here!
I don’t think I’d make power trails by caching bread and butter, but just once I think I’d like to try my geosenses against a true PNG power trail. Just to say I did it!
Readers Weigh In:
- Power trails, yes or no?
- Do you think that power trails add to or detract from the geocaching experience?
- Is it still a power trail if you have to walk to get all the caches?
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I think the beauty of geocaching is you can choose to do a power trail or not. Personally I have participated in the Oklahoma Land Run Trail of caches, the goal is to link the Eastern border of the state with the Western border, when we did it last year there were about 250-260 caches in the series, it did not touch either border at that time, as of this writing it has made it to the Easter border, see cache GC29P5W and go East and West to follow the trail, this was a great experience for my son (6yrs old) and I, we got over 270 caches in one day and will probably never top that! As far as a power trail on a Rails to Trails my family and some caching friends have discovered a RT called Flint Hills Nature Trail just West of Osawatomie KS and have been placing caches along the trail, so far there are over 70 caches, and it is walk/bike/horseback only, see GC2TTJQ for the “Start” of the trail. Our goal is to link this RT with another RT that comes South out of Topeka KS. What a great sport we all participate in huh? We love that we found it.
Cheers!
I can’t IMAGINE doing 270 caches in a day. Congratulations! Our local Peavine Trail has a high concentration of caches and it’s walking/biking only. I’m looking forward to going after it.