This is Mine 2 GC14EEQ GEOCACHE OF THE WEEK – October 17, 2011

This is Mine 2

Near the top of the world the islands of Svalbard rest inside the Arctic Circle. The archipelago is home to a couple thousand hearty Norwegians. It’s also home to more than two dozen geocaches.

The traditional cache, “This is Mine 2” (GC14EEQ), collected the most Favorite Points among them. The difficulty two, terrain four geocache was hidden in 2007 by TVE & Martin L.

The hunt for this geocache leads adventurers back into the island’s coal mining past. Construction on the mine started in the early 1900’s – and is marred by deadly coal explosions and bombardment by World War Two battleships.  The mine is now vacant and sealed for safety.

The cache page encourages cachers to be courteous, “Remember that all these old buildings and artefacts are important parts of the cultural heritage of Svalbard and treat them with respect!” More than fifty geocachers have already logged smileys on the small-size cache.

This is Mine 2 - geocache

One geocacher who logged “This is Mine 2” wrote on the cache page, “What a place! Thanks for placing the cache up here, otherwise we probably would have missed this interesting place, even though it was visible from our room window. The climb up and back down was not that easy but surely rewarding. Took a lot of pictures and did some investigation.”

This is Mine 2 - cache page photo

Continue your exploration of some of the most engaging geocaches from around the globe. Explore all the Geocaches of the Week on the Latitude 47 blog or view the Bookmark List on Geocaching.com. If you’ d like to nominate a Geocache of the Week send an email with your name, comments, the name of the geocache and the GC code to pr@groundspeak.com.