Meeting notes: March 8, 2003

Greetings!

The March meeting of the GGA was held at Elachee Nature Center near Gainesville, GA. Cynthia Crotwell gave a talk on the Nature Center and some of it's history. She also had a snake from the area to show us as well! She had some great aerial photos of the preserve and let us know that we can have geocaches in this area but with some minor restrictions. They would like to keep the number of caches in the area limited to a total of seven and there are currently seven caches in the area already. The GGA would like to encourage out members to come to the Nature Center on the first Saturday of the month to help them with work on the trails in the area.

We had a very short discussion regarding the GGA Challenge Event.

We also discussed the situation regarding caches in the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area and in Forest Service Wilderness Areas. The Chattahoochee River NRA has decided to not allow caches. There is not firm decision regarding the existing caches in the area, but no new caches will be allowed in this NRA. The Forest Service has also totally banned caches in Wilderness Areas, but they are going to continue to allow caches in the general National Forest areas. Wilderness areas only comprise about 10 to 15 percent of the North Georgia Forest area, so we still have quite a bit of Geocaching area available to us!

Finally, we discussed the upcoming Cache In -- Trash Out Day Event that is coming up in April. A sign-up sheet was started so people could volunteer to help with the effort. We are going to work on the Island Ford trail head area which is located on the east side of the Chattahoochee River just below Buford Dam. Coordinates for the starting location and an event cache page will be developed soon.

Thanks, and happy Geocaching!

mtn-man (Greg)