Caching in Urban Forests

bevro · Veteran Member

Caching in Urban Forests

burchil · Veteran Member

I had this problem in San Fransisco earlier this year. Urban canyons are a problem with multi-path errors and just blockage. I do what I usually do when working in dense bush anywhere else. Find several open places (some times this is quite a distance) or even not so open but enough sky view to get sat coverage - sometimes this means standing in the middle of an intersection . Then triangulate the final location. I also read all of the logs and zoom in as much as possible on one of the maps (e.g. google maps) to get a feel for the location. Sometimes just waiting for satellites to come into view over an urban canyon. I spend lots of time looking at the sat coverage page until I find something that looks good (and I believe). It does take longer but I was somewhat successful.

I suspect that the posted location of some of these urban caches have problems as well.

TurdleEggs · Senior Member

Burchil’s triangulation method often works for me. I finish it off by walking a straight line tangent to the cache and coming in 90 degrees and pacing it off (my paces are exactly 1 metre). Also Google Earth helps sometimes and waiting for the constellation to come into alignment if you’ve got the time.

The crazies in Victoria use external backpack antennas to get more signal in the high canopy out there. But they’re also packing 2 or 3 GPSr’s (sometimes a Trimble) and using laser distance finders.

ertyu · Senior Member

Just keep walking around and manually triangulating the results. Get good bearings from open areas as suggested. Start looking for hiding locations instead of following the arrow.