Geocaching and Calgary Community History: Nose Hill Park

Nose Hill Park is one of Calgary’s most distinguishable features, easily distinguishable from both air and ground. It is one of the largest municipal parks in North America at 11.27 square kilometers in size. Open year round, Nose Hill is a place to spot bikers, dog-walkers, deer, porcupine, jack rabbit, prairie crocus and is the perfect location for numerous sizes and types of geocaches.

Its name thought to be originated for the nose of a First Nations Chief, Nose Hill is an archeologist’s dream. The evidence of tipi rings, stone cairns and tool-making stations can still be found along with bison bones long buried (and in some places thought to be nine feet deep!). Although many First Nations Peoples inhabited this area, the Peigan tribe was known to dwell on Nose Hill consistently.

The history of Nose Hill can be documented all the way back to the late 1700’s when Hudson’s Bay trader and explorer, David Thompson, made specific notes of this location in his findings. Since then, the park has seen many decades pass by the wayside, including years where boomtown brothels flourished along its eastern edge, but the natural beauty of the land has never diminished.

To collect every geocache on Nose Hill Park in a day, or even a weekend would scare off even the most expert cacher. Building a route along any of the entrances to the park is the key to a successful trip. Some notable caches are:

• Nose Hill Glacial Erratic, GC119A4 by Sleepy hollow and Another Nose Hill Erratic, GC17708 by One Bad Ant. Both of these earth caches are located quite a distance apart but are the evidence of the power of the glacier movement in this area at one time.

• If you’re in the mood for puzzle-solving, Solitaire, GCM0YD by ibycus will keep you scratching your head. A five star difficulty rating on this cache is a surefire way to keep those brain cells pumping.

• Are you afraid of bugs? Then Insectophobia – The Arachnids, GC1C8VE by Cougarman70 may make your skin crawl! A really fun cache for the kids to torture their parents with, this one is worth the trek.

And those are just a few of the more than 50 geocaches placed in Nose Hill Park. Take your mosquito spray, your water bottle and your comfortable shoes and head on over to Nose Hill for some sunshine and treasure hunting today. Carpe cache!

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