Many awesome people helped make the Aurora Challenge Trail come together! Let’s meet the crew.

BirkenstockReport
BirkenstockReport has only been caching since May 2025, but she hasn’t missed a day since she began. She first dreamt up the Challenge Trail while listening to the ChallengeTalk podcast, specifically episode 58, which described America’s Challenge Trail in West Virginia. She listened to this episode and a few similar ones while processing fish on the banks of the Kenai River for most of July 2025 and thought “We could do that in Chugiak!” She was right, but also so, so wrong. Her tribute cache is 365 Days of Birks, which she does not qualify for… yet.

RSPace
Mackenna first mentioned the idea to the “S” half of RSPace, mostly from a “wow, isn’t that cool?” standpoint. S got more involved later, and is the partner who has touched the most physical caches and helps the most with maintenance. RSPace are a husband-wife geocaching team who specialize in trackables, earthcaches, and thanks to R’s extensive work travel, Alaskan boroughs. Their tribute cache is Alaskan Space Force.

GeoFootstomper
Everett previously held the record for most Challenge caches in Alaska. He adopted a significant number of challenge caches from Karma! and has maintained them into longevity for many years. BirkenstockReport approached him about the challenge trail from a hider’s standpoint in October of 2025. She explained that she wanted to hide a bunch, but with a low find count and being new to geocaching, she didn’t qualify for a lot of the caches she wanted to hide. As part of the new rules post 2016, cachers have to qualify for the challenge caches they hide. Everett agreed to let us use his high and diverse number of finds to get many of the most fun caches on the trail published. As BirkenstockReport continues to cache, Everett continues to adopt these caches back to her after she qualifies for them. Everett is also famous for the Alaskan A.P.E. series and his annual pirate event. His tribute cache on the trail is GeoFootstomper’s Pirate Plunder.

Glenn.Fish
Glenn is the camera-shy, dry-humored, very sourdough cacher. He qualifies for absolutely every cache on the trail except for one (A Fizzy by Any Other Name). When no one else on the team qualifies, Glenn shares his gift by submitting the very most difficult caches for submission. The caches that he doesn’t own, he has often been the FTF on. Our very high-tech group Google form helps keep him honest. He has earned no advantage on the caches he has earned FTFs on.
Outside of generally being a find factory, Glenn is a county cacher and has cached in all fifty states. His current fixation is the Cache Odyssey Series, which he just completed another few states on this month. He has a tribute cache on this trail: Glenn.Fish’s Highway.

ValerieSeaker
Val came in clutch for one very important challenge cache. We had the cache page made, we had it hid, we had it ready for submission… and then we realized that there was a cache that Glenn himself didn’t qualify for!!! The shock! Instead of modifying the challenge, we brainstormed who would qualify, and we knew Val was the likely winner. She has also been an excellent beta tester on a variety of caches, and has a few trail FTFs. Val’s specialty is puzzles, and she is great at both hiding and solving them. She recently completed a complete Fizzy grid with just mystery type caches. (This is how we knew she could qualify for the non-traditional fizzy challenge!)

AlaskaTim
Tim was mostly a participant in the trail as the caches began to publish. He raced out for the FTFs several times before he became involved with the team. He was one of the first to qualify to look for the first bonus cache and immediately picked up on how much BirkReport was struggling with the Google Form for the code words. He offered to give it a try and came up with a much more sophisticated (and more importantly, functional) version of the form within a couple of days. He has now provided tech support for the remaining bonus caches and is just a generally awesome supporter of the trail’s mission: to make geocaching fun for all, no matter their skill or experience level. Tim’s main expertise is just generally having a sky-high find count and TONS of FTFs, which he blames Buffalo907 for.

RB126127 & Cytoplasm
River & Nate are often mentioned in the same breath because they cache and hide together often. They have been essential members of the team as hide testers. They come out quickly after publishing to look for the cache and provide feedback on coordinates, hints, trail conditions, and more. Both cachers’ main strength is in hiding: they have completely revamped the Crevasse-Morraine trail system. They are also total completionists: they love powertrails and have completed or made lots of progress on all the Alaskan equivalents, such as The Buttermilk Trail, the Ammo Can series, the Mushers series, and the Eklutna Lake HELP trail.

GreatlandReviewer
The reviewer can’t officially be a part of our team. He is, after all, a completely unbiased outside party who has to make sure all the hides are thoughtfully and carefully done, hidden with permission and precision, and are achievable and measurable. Reviewing challenge caches is a big and often time-consuming job for any reviewer. Reviewing 75 caches in one season for a state that hadn’t published more than a half dozen in the last decade is a herculean task. Doing that with care and concern– educating cachers, encouraging them, and even sometimes having to say no to them– is beyond mythical. We are eternally grateful to GreatlandReviewer for all his work on this trail.

LadybugKids
Another cacher with a supremely high and diverse list of finds, LBK is always there to check the challenge checker and help us identify flaws in the system. He is a fervent supporter, posting a note for each cache to show that the challenge is achievable if you’re willing to put in the work. He has a tribute cache, Recommended for (Ladybug) Kids.