Burying valuables on public land?

[bvanevery]

What are your thoughts on finding an out of the way spot while boondocking and burying some valuables?

Darned foolish. You think you can contend with Nature? One good flood, forest fire, or heavy windstorm and the landscape you thought you knew and had careful notes on is going to be utterly changed. Are you planning to bring in earth moving equipment and search a large area to retrieve your valuables? They aren't likely to be that valuable. If they are, you need an offshore bank account.

 

[offroad]

Thus why you need to take gps location of the spot.

 

[user 423]

Thus why you need to take gps location of the spot.

And dig deep...

 

[sparky1]

burying anything on public land, surely would be found soon by some other person with a metal detector, or any one watching you ,or the land.
even my own place, I have nothing but water lines or power cables buried. they are traceable with a metal detector.

 

[bvanevery]

You really think civilian GPS is going to be accurate enough, and your shovel mighty enough, for the kind of landscape changes I mentioned earlier? Have you been in a NF and seen a bridge and a road well, just, gone?

 

[highdesertranger]

well if you stay away from mineralized areas or around old homesteads you really don't have to worry about metal detectors. but when I was in my younger days we would bury bottles of alcohol throughout the west and see if we could find them later. I never kept stats but I can tell you we lost many stashes because mother nature decided to change the landscape. some areas the change was so drastic I think our bottles might be in Hawaii or asia by now. highdesertranger

 

[offroad]

There is a game called GEOCACHING where people hide thimble size objects. Yes the commercial GPS can work fine. If you know about radio reflection and interference with GPS signal to compensate.

 

[vagari]

I was thinking you:
1. Find an area not prone to floods, fires, erosion, timbered, drilled, etc.
2. Find an area out of the way or not frequented often
3. Find some landmark like large boulder, tree, etc.
4. Take GPS coordinates of landmark
5. Take all kinds of pictures.
6. Write down actual location (ex: 10ft north of landmark)
7. Save all data to encrypted cloud storage
8. Provide a relative you trust with instructions in a sealed envelop in case you become disabled

I know it's not perfect and doesn't remove all the risk. Just a thought.

 

[bvanevery]

I'm having a real hard time imagining how you fulfil 1. on public land. National Forests, Grasslands, and Seashores are out. BLM land that has no streams, no rainfall ever, no flash floods due to baked ground, no minerals or oil, no wind...? It sounds like what you'd want is a big, extremely stable, one piece rock somewhere. With no possibility of seismic activity. And nobody interested in mining or tuneling it. And no forests or rivers or mud or volcanoes to mess with it. Then drill a hole somewhere on it, put your stuff in their and cap it.

Gagh! If you can find all of these conditions, maybe a computer hacker can run mathematical algorithms on land surveys to narrow down the very limited number of places you could have hidden something, LOL.

This is like some crazy science fiction problem of where a really good place to put a time capsule would be, if you're not willing to presume a stable civilization for a few hundred years.

 

[CTP]

the book "how to hide things in public places" by Dennis firey(?) is a good read. His experience was most people do not see things they don't expect to see. He was dealing with an urban environment but found it was easy to hide things and have them not found.

 

[VanLifeCrisis]

Yeah geocachers are masters of hiding stuff...some you can't find even with the gps coords and looking! They arent allowed to bury them, in order to protect the land

 

[hippiechk]

Hi folks;

Well it seems like what MIGHT have been a legitimate discussion on storing some valuables has deteriorated into a discussion that has crossed over into something that certainly does not serve any real function so I'm going to close this.

Graveyards are NOT public places [these posts deleted], people sometimes save a lifetime to leave their memorials and to actually consider this as an option is shall we say extreme.

Honestly, even a paupers field is the private property of either a church or a community.

As for hiding your assets from your legitimate creditors, perhaps paying your debts might make you feel a lot more peaceful?