The Sporting Life Goes Techno

Really, Holly Hirzel led her 59-year-old father astray only once, down the slope of prickly pear cactuses. (And he only got a tiny injury on that detour, just a scratch.) Which isn’t bad, considering that Holly, 29, the CEO of a video-game development company, had never before relied on the synch of 12 orbiting satellites to find her way to a secret spot--or anywhere, for that matter.

On a recent Saturday, Holly and her dad, a canning company manager, set out from her Santa Monica home on a high-tech treasure hunt known as “geocaching.” Each took along a Global Positioning System, or GPS, which is a hand-held receiver that works with a network of satellites to pinpoint one’s location on the planet.

Geocaching, which is also called an “adventure game” and even a “sport,” was invented thanks to an adjustment in satellite signals that sharpened the accuracy of GPS units. Worldwide, thousands of geocachers are using the satellite-based navigation system to hide or seek plastic containers or metal boxes filled with freebies, such as a cell phone with Caller ID, glow-in-the-dark watch or Stevie Nicks CD (The rule: Take a goody, leave a goody).

The locations of stashes--in 44 states and 22 countries--are posted on the Internet by latitude and longitude coordinates. Destinations include islands, caves and volcanoes and might call for mountain biking, canoeing or cross-country skiing. (One cache-in-the-works requires scuba diving.)

Geocaching is a curious convergence of online and outdoors, another way that techies are extending their cyber communities into the wilderness. The game is a Net spinoff with the same sort of quirky appeal of Burning Man, a huge, freewheeling annual festival in the Nevada desert that first gained fame on Web sites. What sets geocaching apart, though, is its crossover appeal to Boy Scout troops, search-and-rescue squads, hunters and others.

Eight months ago, geocaching took off with tech heads, as sort of a video game sprung to life. Now it’s popular with families, says Jeremy Irish, 28, who runs https://www.geocaching.com, the game’s main Web site. He’s not sure why geocaching caught on in so many corners of the world, including South Africa (where a Tom Clancy novel awaits a lucky someone) and Egypt (take a taxi to the pyramids and then head into the desert).

“Maybe it’s the primal urge as hunter-gatherer,” says Irish, a Web consultant who lives near Seattle. “And I think the sense of adventure is something a lot of us don’t get on a daily basis.”

*

On this morning, Holly isn’t sure where the game will take her and her dad, Bill Hirzel, who is visiting from Toledo. From the Web site, Holly picks “Red Rock Cache,” which has a two-star difficulty rating (out of a possible five). By plugging in her ZIP code, she knows the cache is 51 miles southeast of Santa Monica, where she lives in a guest house with her boyfriend and pet boa constrictor.

On the cache hunt, Holly will use her lemon-yellow Garmin eTrex GPS, which is the size of a cell phone. The $120 GPS device was a Christmas gift from her parents. Her dad, an amateur pilot, will use his outdated Sony GPS, which he bought 10 years ago to help him when he flies. His GPS unit is the size of a telephone answering machine.

First, Bill Hirzel reviews the meaning of latitude and longitude with his daughter and then leaves her to study maps. Holly hunkers over her pine dining-room table. She sighs, tucks her short blond hair behind her ears, taps on the table with a pen. She asks for her dad’s help, then refuses it, then wants him to double-check her coordinates. He hovers, backs off, then approaches again.

“I’m thinking that it’s right around here in Chino,” Holly says, using a capped pen to trace a circle on the map.

“You’ve got to be much more specific,” he tells her.

She switches to a more detailed map of Southern California. Maybe Cleveland National Forest. She turns to her father, “I’m guessing. . .”

“Don’t guess,” he interrupts.

She reviews the coordinates for Red Rock Cache: N 33 degrees, 42.174, W 117 degrees 38.948. This time, with the pen cap off, she marks an X over two words: “El Toro.”

GPS Units Come Into Play

The game is pronounced “Geo-cashing”--”geo” for geography, and “caching” refers to a cache, or something hidden. The geocaching craze began in May, after the U.S. Defense Department stopped scrambling the satellite signals beamed to GPS receivers in order to help emergency crews. Suddenly, GPS units could nail a destination within 30 feet or better. Days later, a thrilled GPS user planted a stash near Portland, Ore., and posted the coordinates online in a discussion group. The search began with tech fiends like Irish, who also began to hide caches. In July, he set up the game’s main Web site with a list of 20 stashes. Now, there are about 400.

Irish isn’t paid to run the game, but he gets a small commission from a site link. He reviews each cache posting for accuracy, taste and environmental sensitivity. He asks players to enclose a note so passersby who stumble across the cache will know why it’s there. (So far, only four caches have been reported plundered or stolen.)

The geocaching site has more than 3,000 registered users, who pay no fee to hide or seek a cache. But unregistered visitors are welcome, so there’s no way of knowing how many people play. Some cache hiders put a disposable camera inside the container, retrieve the cameras, and post pictures of stash visitors on the Web site.

Daniel Glenn, 39, ran across the geocaching site by accident. Great way to find new hiking spots, he thought. Recently, on a moonless night near Palm Desert, Glenn and two buddies ran up ridges and down gullies so dark that they could only see as far as a flashlight beam. They found the cache.

Others, like “Phil’s Memorial Cache,” are not just about the hunt. Glenn, a sergeant in the California Army National Guard, made it to the site in east San Diego County. The cache hider had dedicated the stash of canine and human treats to his dog, Phil, who loved to hike with him. One cache seeker wrote in the online logbook that the “idea of a memorial to your dog was way kewl” and left behind a picture of his own deceased dog with a typed tribute. And Glenn, who lives in Huntington Beach, contributed a picture of his childhood mutt, Poochie.

Glenn also spent about $60 to put together caches of his own on Catalina Island and near Barstow, with giveaways including an emergency radio powered by batteries or solar cells. “My thing is,” he says, “let’s see how many people could find this.”

An Excuse to Get Outdoors

Oh, it sounds easy. Plug in a cache’s location, and the GPS unit points the way on a high-resolution screen, just like a Personal Digital Assistant--more or less.

Which was part of the appeal to Holly Hirzel. She likes gadgets, as long as they don’t bore her. She had to paint blue-and-purple polka dots on her Palm Pilot to liven it up. Geocaching is an excuse to use her GPS and get outdoors. But what grabbed her was what one unidentified geocacher said he’d hidden.

His cache contribution was a Linux CD, which is an operating system for personal computers, similar to Windows, something that only a techie could love. “He left behind a piece of himself that’s really specific,” Holly marvels. “That really tells you a lot about the person.” He must be just like me, Holly muses, stuck at a computer all day but hankering for some fresh air and blue sky.

On this morning, Holly declares that she wouldn’t want the hunt to be too easy. She won’t look at the “Red Rock Cache” tip sheet, which includes links to a topographical map and satellite photos of the area. (Had she peeked, she would know that her destination is about five miles northeast of El Toro.) She and her dad pack water, snacks and cell phones for the day trip. Holly pauses to put on her good-luck turquoise necklace, then decides against it.

“Where’s your compass?” her father asks.

“Dad,” she says with exasperation, “it’s the year 2001! Everything’s digital!”

He walks out the door, lecturing on the virtues of a compass.

Bill Hirzel is trim, intense and good-humored, a mechanical tinkerer who carries a wrench with him wherever he goes, including on this hike. He rebuilds planes and cars when he’s not working in the family’s canning business. Holly, who has the fresh-faced looks and sunniness of Meg Ryan, is a co-owner of Player1 in Santa Monica, which creates video games for Sony PlayStation, Nintendo 64 and others.

Growing up, Holly spent summers and after-school hours trailing her dad in the family’s Toledo canning factory. Now, he would trail her. But more than once, her father would ask if she were using her GPS unit correctly: Are you sure you plugged in the right coordinates?

Off the I-5 Freeway, near El Toro, the pair stops for gas. Holly’s GPS unit shows that they are a little more than seven miles south of their destination. Holly looks at the map and traces her finger about seven miles up the road to . . . Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park in southeast Orange County.

(Whiting Ranch rangers later say they have never heard of geocaching. If the rangers find the cache, they will remove it, says Tim Miller, superintendent of the county’s Harbors, Beaches and Parks division, which oversees the 1,600-acre park. It’s not to spoil the fun, Miller says, but to preserve the land from damage and ensure safety.)

The park is an old cattle ranch, featuring red sandstone cliffs. From the parking lot, at 2:10 p.m., Holly takes her first wrong turn, up a concrete path that she mistakes for the park’s entrance. The path leads to a ball field. She backtracks, embarrassed, her father behind her. The temperature is in the high 80s, and they are beginning to sweat.

They find the park entrance, past signs warning of poison oak, rattle snakes and mountain lions. The main trail is sandy and muddy, and mostly flat. Mountain bikers jockey their way past runners and parents with small kids. Most of the shade is off the trails, from California sycamores and coast live oaks. The air smells fresh, Holly notes, and spiced with a hint of wild rosemary.

“I’m not giving any tips,” her dad warns, grinning.

“I don’t want any tips,” Holly retorts.

Her GPS unit indicates 1.67 miles to go.

On the trail, Holly spots a family with a GPS unit. Turns out that Will and Karen Haney, with their three kids--10, 7 and 4--gave up their hunt for Red Rock Cache. They took a wrong turn, they told her, and the kids were starting to wilt in the heat.

Holly’s face drops a bit. But she continues, at a power-walk pace, crossing a short footbridge over a dry creek. In a few minutes, her GPS unit reads 1.1 miles to go. “Right on target,” she chirps. Meanwhile, her dad’s old GPS unit wigs out from a possible battery problem.

Holly’s GPS unit is a basic one. It tells her how close her destination is via straight line. So she could be a mile from the cache as the crow flies, but there may be a river in the way or a mountain.

Or, on a winding trail, her destination countdown will jump, the way it’s doing now, from 0.7 of a mile to 0.9. Or else she’s going the wrong way. “Did you enter the coordinates exactly?” her dad asks.

“Exactly,” she says calmly. (Bill Hirzel’s GPS unit, by the way, reads 18.9 miles to go.)

The Hirzels pass another GPS user, 33-year-old Trent George, who’s on a hike but not geocaching. She tells him about the game and gives him the Web site address. (A day later, George will return and find the cache.)

At 3:08 p.m., Holly and her dad hit a “T” intersection. She confers with cyclists on the trail and decides to go right.

Closing In on the Cache

They continue on a few minutes: 0.25 miles to go. “Hmmm,” Holly says, checking her GPS unit. “It’s pointing this way.” She indicates a sandy hill to the right. The two climb up and follow a skinny trail bristling with cactus, sage scrub and chaparral. The trail leads nowhere, and Holly and her dad decide to take a shortcut back to the main trail--down into a valley of prickly pear cactuses. Her father pulls out a pocket knife and cuts into a cactus, pricking his finger on a needle. “We may have to harvest this for water,” he jokes.

It’s 3:41 p.m. Back on the main trail, Holly’s GPS unit starts counting down by feet. Her heart races. Only 520 feet to go! 400! 300! At 18 feet to go, a trail marker at the bottom of a slope catches Holly’s eye. Gotta be around here, she thinks. The cache hider would probably choose a place with a landmark. She’s so close that she can almost feel it.

“I gotta tune into the Earth,” Holly says, spinning with her arms open. Then she heads up the slope a few yards. Nothing. She heads down and, on a sandy incline, under a cactus, spots a glimmer of white--the top of a plastic container.

“Yeah, baby!” Holly yells and runs to the cache. She kneels and empties the contents: a yo-yo, surfboard wax, a Mona Lisa magnet and other goodies. So what if she’s not uncovering a treasure chest of gold--she didn’t expect one, and the thrill is in the surprise. (Think Cracker Jacks.) She pockets her prize, a brass good-luck elephant and leaves a Sega Dreamcast racing game produced by her company. Later, Bill Hirzel will say he had so much fun he hopes to plant his own cache on a Lake Erie island.

At 3:54 p.m., with the sun beginning to sink into the hills, she signs the on-site logbook.

“Chopper on its way,” Holly writes. “See you around.”

Her father can’t stop smiling. He knew all along she would find it.