COLORADO SPRINGS (AP) - A high-tech treasure hunt led to a bomb scare and evacuations in central Colorado Springs Wednesday afternoon.



Authorities say someone planted a small "geocaching capsule" in a field near the Summit Medical Clinic. Geocaching is a game in which people hide objects and post coordinates on the Internet so others can find them.

Police were told that a suspicious person left something in the field. Officers who responded found the capsule, but also ran across a metal pipe with a wire sticking out that apparently had been discarded in the field - leading them to think both objects were potential threats.

The Galileo School of Math and Science was locked down and portions of Mt. Everett and Mt. Vernon streets were evacuated while police blew up the suspected bomb.

Authorities later determined the pipe was harmless and the other object was an empty Chapstick tube containing a "log book" for geocaching players to sign.


(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

A chapstick tube? Never would have even thought of using that for a cache, nor ever found one.

Yeah, kinda like the fake soiled underwear they sell for hiding valuables. If I saw either one I would not pick them up.

I've found a couple of those chapstick tube caches, the logs were soaked. As containers, no better than Altoids tins.

What`s stupid?
Using a chapstick container as a cache.

What`s stupider than stupid?
Thinking a chapstick container might be a bomb.

(oh, and there`s another thread on this: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=213593 )

Thanks for linking to the first thread. I'm closing this duplicate.

As a forum moderator since 2003, I can count on just one thing when the bomb squad is called out to the site of a geocache. No, it's not "the cache will be destroyed." It's "there will be multiple threads started for the next week, each assuming that this is breaking news that has never happened before."