Return of the Planet of the Apes

The Return of the Planet of the Apes geocache (GCBA4) is the third mission of Project A.P.E., the operation launched at the end of May 2001 by 20th Century Fox for the release of its Planet of the Apes. Fourteen caches scattered around the world in three months, most often large ammo cans, each with a prop from the film for whoever got there first. Mission 3, “Grahm's Link”, was hidden in June 2001 in Graham Hills Park, in the USA.

The logs from that summer read like a serial. The park is a mountain-biking hotspot, and visitors, playing along with the fiction the studio had set up, described the riders as “agents” to be shaken off before reaching the chest. One of the first to arrive left smoke bombs behind to cover the retreat of those who followed.

Then the can disappeared. Fox had left the scene, and the orphaned A.P.E. caches had to be archived or taken over. On 11 January 2003, two geocachers from the area, Planet and Ttepee — the latter had found the original A.P.E. in June 2001 — came back with a plain plastic box, placed it a little further away and renamed the page. Same code, same forest, new name: mission 3 carries on as a traditional cache, a tribute held up at arm's length by the community.

It is therefore no longer an A.P.E. cache and no longer shows the icon — two caches of the series are still in play, in Brazil and in Washington State. People come here for something else: an easy walk in a beautiful rolling forest, in the footsteps of the Project A.P.E. as told by Team Markwell, and a logbook where you sign after 2001.