Unbeknownst to many, the streets of downtown Athens, and even of the University itself, hold hidden treasures.

The reason these treasures – called geocaches – are hidden, and the way to find them, is called Geocaching – a sort of high-tech treasure hunt aided by GPSs.

“There are several in the Athens area, downtown area,” said geocacher Jim Crouch. “Everybody walks by them every day . There’s a dozen or more downtown that you can find. There are several on campus.”

Geocachers begin their search for a cache on websites such as geocaching.com, which have registries of all the geocaches hidden throughout the world.

It was this aspect of geocaching that first caught Crouch’s interest.

“… I found out that there were a million of these little treasures hidden all around the world – literally all around the world – there aren’t any countries that I know of that you can’t get to, that are banned, [or] that don’t have geocaches,” he said.

After learning about a cache, geocachers can embark on their search with a GPS or with more old-fashioned methods such as a map and compass.

The caches are usually filled with trinkets or small toys for those who find them. If they take a prize from a cache, geocachers are encouraged to leave something else in exchange.

Other caches hold geocoins, which are usually dog tags or commemorative coins that can be registered and tracked online.

“You put one in the geocache and then as people take it out and put it in, take it out and put it in, they can literally go anywhere they want to around the world that you can probably track,” Crouch said. “I personally have a few running around in the upper northwest, in Washington and Idaho. Hopefully they’ll get back to Georgia someday, but they’re in no hurry to get back.”

But geocaching is about more than the end of the search.

“These are hidden by people interested in, sometimes, educating strangers to the local areas,” Crouch said. “They take you to places off the beaten path in the hunt, and give you some knowledge about the area.”

Crouch has searched for and found geocaches as near as downtown Athens and as far away as Seattle. Some are as simple as a set of coordinates that take the geocacher to a location, where he must then search for the cache. More complex searches, called multicaches, are made up of several caches that lead to each other, and then to a final cache.

Crouch’s enthusiasm for geocaching inspired a Georgia Outdoor Recreation Program (GORP) clinic on orienteering and geocaching, to be held on Wednesday and Nov. 8. Crouch believes that GPS skills and basic orienteering complement the other wilderness programs that GORP offers.

“I think the bottom line is.yes, GPSs are great instruments to take out into the wilderness, if you’re going to be a backpacker or be out in the wilds for an extended length of time,” he said. “But the batteries fail, they break, they do everything that prevents you from using them sometimes, and therefore you’ve got to rely on the old map and compass.”

The clinic will teach students how to read a topographical map and triangulate their position, as well as use a GPS. GORP will provide the maps and GPSs for the clinic.

Participants will spend the Wednesday section of the clinic learning the skills they need.

On Nov. 8, they will put the skills into practice in a multicache at the Lake Herrick recreational sports complex.

A multicache involves two or more locations and usually only the final location contains the physical object. At Lake Herrick, four geocaches will lead to a final cache with a souvenir for participants.

Geocaching hones live and survival skills. Crouch hopes the clinic will be both fun and useful.

“I think it’s fun being in control,” he said. “When you’re by yourself, to be self-reliant, and this is just one of the ways to become self-reliant, to develop that sense of competence, so that you don’t panic in the wilderness. You’ve got to know where North is.”