John Kinnear
Aug 28, 2024
A geo-caching competition.
Brent Dase formed a concept in his mind some time ago. A concept designed to help acknowledge the importance of our embattled health care workers and provide some badly needed moral support. You know them right? Those dedicated AHS workers (health care aides, long term staff, cooking and cleaning staff, nurses and administrative staff) that are on the line 24/7, handling consistently the crushing load that they have and always with a mind to providing quality health care within our AHS system. Brent’s 95-year-old mother Alberta is in long term care and through his frequent visits there he noticed a flagging morale. It occurred to him that some boosting was in order and as he put it; “if they (the employees) are happier then it will reflect in their service.”
The concept he formed was one of outdoor engagement and is proving to be a fun-filled distraction with generous rewards promised in the end for the participants. The distraction is a geo-caching competition, if you will, designed to draw all manner of AHS workers together, in a team effort, to find a series of keys. Geo-caching is a popular real-world outdoor adventure that started almost 25 years ago. There have been two such gatherings held so far in this locally grown event, in which many different factions of AHS employees have shown up, kids and dogs in tow, to chase down a key’s location. The first event was held August 12th and launched from the Blairmore Gazebo, in a walk-a-bout that eventually led to the first key’s discovery. On August 19th this geo-caching junket headed out once again, this time from the old Cameron School to its final key location near what is called the old “B” hole (swimming hole at the end of West Coleman).
The whole idea behind geo-caching is to use your mobile device to enter a set of coordinates supplied by Brent and then to launch into zeroing in on the keys location. It was quite the sight at its launch on the 12th to see 20 or so AHS employees wandering about, phones in hand, working their way circuitously, down main street Blairmore, towards that particular key’s location. There are clues given along the way should the search stall but AHS staff have proven to be pretty sharp despite his craftiness.
Brent has a very creative mind and it has translated into some wild clue interpretations being required to keep moving forward to a key’s location. The second key search involved, amongst other things, three buried trick wooden boxes, each of which contained a treasure map that required some serious deciphering and teamwork.
Brent has done a great job of canvassing local businesses for some spectacular prizes, most of which can be viewed at The Pantry, along with a strong box, secured with five padlocks. Each key opens one padlock and each padlock has a curious name suck as Kraken or Tomahawk. The last padlock is a combination lock so of course there will be some tricky contemplations of what that combination might be.
There is always something going on his competition Instagram site (cache_the_pass), as in subtle clues as to what might be coming next and announcements of side competitions. One is a team building thing called Dueling Baskets in which the challenge is to see who can build the best gift basket .
Another sidelight was the handing out of miniature Polaroid’s of a picture that everyone is challenged to find the location of for yet another prize. In this case the picture was of a cookie jar that participant Paige subsequently figured out was at the Cherry on Top.
The next leg of the AHS caching journey is called The Fabled Blue Moose and Brent expects to wrap up the five part series searches by mid-September. According to Brent, “the prize cache continues to grow as more and more people want to contribute to the appreciation being shown to our treasured health care workers.”
Ultimately, when all five keys are located there will be a gala gathering where all participants will be able to delve into the unlocked box in random draws for a multitude of spectacular prizes.
What fun! What a great concept! I could not help but smile when I first observed that AHS gang on the hunt for that first elusive key, laughing and spending quality social time together.
