Austrian Geocaching Adventure

Geocaching in a foreign country has some unique challenges. But it also offers a high level of gratification when you log that find! On a recent trip to Austria for the opening of the Audi World Cup, I made a casual check of caches in the Soelden, Austria before I left. I was amazed to find an entire collection of caches in the area, including a series built specifically around the World Cup. It was time to load the GPS and prepare for an Austrian Geocaching Adventure.

I fired up the GPS in the parking lot of the Innsbruck Airport, knowing it would take a few minutes for it to find its new location. I knew it was a good omen as I drove out of the lot and a Geocache marker popped right up on the screen. I wasn’t 60 seconds on the road and I had my first find in the parking lot of an airport hotel. Then it was on to Soelden.

My target caches for the weekend were part of a special series called STOPWATCH, hidden by im345-ae., better known locally as Manuel from the wonderful Hotel Obergurgl just a few kilometers from Soelden. The STOPWATCH series recognized some of the great past champions of the opening World Cup ski races in Soelden including such greats as Austrian heroes Hermann Maier, Stephan Eberharter, Nicole Hosp, French racer Frederic Covili (whose cache baffled me) and even American veteran Bode Miller. Each of the caches was a micro or nano. And some were very challenging!

And the coolest aspect was the World Cup Cache Race, where you could put yourself on the STOPWATCH to see how fast you could find the five different caches!

The caches were unveiled just prior to the Oct. 27-29, 2007 Soelden World Cup races. And the weekend was celebrated with a Saturday cache hike led by Manuel and Tafari, who is in charge of reviewing and approving new Geocaches in Austria. The daylong hike through the mountains and down to Soelden finished up with a celebration at the Restaurant Salino for camaraderie and awards.

Given that I had very limited time, most of which was late at night, I felt I did pretty well finding three of the five. I arrived in town and took a stab at Stephan Eberharter. With a few inches of freshly fallen snow on the ground, and the heavy presence of muggles, it was a short and fruitless search. But I had the location zeroed in. I then drove on down to Frederic Covili, which would prove to be my biggest frustration of the weekend. It was a perfect hiding location, but I couldn’t find a thing.

The next day I went after Bode Miller, which had not yet been found. I only had a few minutes on my first try and the GPS wasn’t very cooperative, putting me about 100 feet away (as I ultimately learned). But I came back early the next morning (around 6 a.m.) and found it with no problem. It was the most creative hide of the group!

I also made repeated attempts at the Covili cache, including an hour long search after midnight Saturday, one of the wildest party nights of the year in Soelden. I figured a flashlight would help. Well, it didn’t. I now have a pretty good sense of where it is and I’m anxious to go back.

I had figured I would miss Hermann Maier as I was running out of time on Sunday. But I decided to give it a shot and risk missing my flight home form Innsbruck that evening. The location was tricky with lots of walls and fences close to the cache location, so you never really knew if you were ont rack or not. But I ended up finding it.

The only remaining cache, Nicole Hosp, was on my way out of town but I didn’t think I had time so I passed. But the location looks fabulous!

Geocaching is growing rapidly in Austria. The Austrian Geocachers think the hobby is still very young. But I found a huge number of caches with clever hides and events like STOPWATCH. It might be fun to do an Austrian Geocaching adventure in the summertime, hiking from village to village and picking off caches along the way.

My only regret is that I never had time to attend the party. But I was there in spirit, plus a bit of frustration, as I searched for some cleverly hidden caches.

STOPWATCH is a fabulous idea.