tozainamboku

Actually, I know of some difficult puzzles that took team work to solve. Just having two cachers bouncing ideas off one another may lead to a solution. Even if one person solved the the puzzle, I agree with ShowStop that bringing along a friend to help search for the actual cache shouldn't negate that person's ability to log a find.

Neither the datum or the coordinate system have any effect on accuracy of GPS. The GPS receiver actually calculates a position in space using an earth centered Cartesian coordinate system. It then converts to the selected coordinate system (eg. lat/long, UTM, British Grid) using the selected datum (which describe the shape of the earth). There are different datum because historically the shape of the earth was determined by fitting an ellipsoid to a set of points. For this reason most datums are useful for only a small area of the earth (e.g. ORD SRVY GB is used only in the British Isles) WGS-84 uses more modern observation to determine the shape of the earth and it applies world wide. If you are using Ordinace Survey maps, you might want to use ORD SRVY GB as the datum and British Grid coordinates so that the GPS receiver agrees with your maps. If you are not using paper maps it shouldn't matter. The Garmin unit should automatically adjust its maps based on the settings. BTW, the British Ordinance Survey has a terrific Guide to Coordinate Systems in Great Britain that has a very good explanation of Datum and Coordinate System that I found very useful even living in the USA.

I'd give you a hint but I did 60 caches the day I found this one and can't remember much about it.

Seems that the hider can just not log that he/she dropped the TB until after the cache is a approved. Of course someone might then see the cache get approved and go find it before the TB is dropped and find an unexpected TB in the cache. But this is the same problem there always is - someone can find a TB in a cache before the TB drop is logged.

That's what happens when they approve too many puzzle caches

I checked the guidelines and the purist are rignt: I guess if you are supposed to go to listed coordinates it's not a puzzle

I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one. There are other puzzles out there that can't be done ahead of time, you need to be in the presence of the puzzle to solve these. These are of course mechanical puzzles and that happens to be the type that I like to make. Just because you can't do them while sitting at your computer does not make them inferior to ones that you can solve at home. They are a different type of puzzle and are not better than word or number puzzles, just different. Different types of puzzles appeal to different people. I would say that the best puzzle caches are engaging, fun, a little challenging and get you to think, be it from doing some math or solving a riddle. Heck I'm planning one that requires a bit of basic origami and I hope to get people thinking in new ways about puzzle caches. No quarrel here. I guess "etc. " wasn't clear enough. There are some puzzles where you must go to the posted coordinates to utimately find the cache. The Mystery/Puzzle cache is a catch-all category; there may be a physical problem involved in retrieving the cache or there may be a hint or a puzzle to solve to find a second waypoint. Some purist may insist that the first case is a traditional cache with a higher degree of difficulty and the second is a multi-cache. However I have seen these listed as Mystery/Puzzle caches to indicated that more than the usual brain power is needed.

SH** I used a sticker when I logged this cache. Do I have to delete my find?

The guidelines for puzzle caches state I don't think we need further guidelines. There has been some discussion in other thread as to how to interpret The best designed puzzle caches are the ones that have everthing you need to solve on the cache page (or linked to from the cache page). But a liberal interpretation of the rule would still allow for cache where you need to find additional information on the internet, hidden in other caches, etc. These can be fun to solve as well.

The only problem I have are people who use stickers in micro caches. The stickers take up two or three lines on the log sheet and sometimes make it hard to fold up the log and replace it in the cache. I'm probably guilty of doing this on one or more occassions

What the majority of us (pro trails) have not got from TPTB is how many caches are now acceptable on a path, road or trail. Every .1 miles is not allowed. what about every .25, or every .5 to 1 mile. ? Are 3 caches on a 3 mile long trail approvable, how about 6 caches on the same trail? When will this question be answered ? In my previous post, I humourously suggested the square root of the number of caches that could be placed per the .1 mile rule. I also pointed out that a formula like this might not work because there would be other factors. Eg. park rules, bike or drive vs. hike, etc.) It might just be that we will have to get pre-approval for any plans to place a series of caches in the same trail.

Funny, that was the same I hike I said I would have enjoyed more with fewer caches. However, I would have enjoyed a lot less had I not done it with Mark and the others. BTW, the trail was placed by 3 different teams from the area. Each placed 10 of the caches. The hides were all ammo cans or decon containers. Again, what makes this a great trail is not the number of caches or the particular types of hides but the great desert trail (including an isolated palm oasis). I suspect TPTB are cracking down on power trails for the same reason that they cracked down on virtuals - they just became too common so that in some areas they pushed out other types of caches. A mix of caches is what keeps this game interesting. I just wish that Jeremy would change the guideline to limit micros in lamposts in strip mall parking lots (I would also like to ban puzzles that use the resistor code - there are too many of these as well ). In any case, I would hope that approvers could make exceptions to guidelines when a power trail or a virtual would be something that many cachers is their area would like to do (if there aren't too many of them in the area already).

I have to agree with the guideline that just because you can place a cache every 600 ft. doesn't mean you should. I recently did one of the power caching trails in Palm Springs that has been cited in this thread as an example of a good power caching trail. Frankly, I think I would have enjoyed it more if there were just 4 or 5 caches instead of 30. Its the type of hike I would have enjoyed without any caches. With 30 caches, we spent so much time running from one cache to the next that I didn't really get to enjoy the desert except for when we stopped at the oasis for a snack. And it took three days to log all my finds. I tried to write something for each cache, but soon it became cut and paste logs. I may have enjoyed it more if I had hiked alone at my own pace, but this was the type of hike that I would prefer to share with friends and at least I can say that I did that. Perhaps I should have just logged a few of the caches (those where I made a trade) and skipped the others but since I visited all the caches I think I ought to log them. There are many power caching trails here in Southern California, so I will probably be doing some more but I suspect that I may find some where I will ask "Why? I would have done this hike with fewer caches and enjoyed it more." That said, I know many of the cachers that have argued in favor of power trails in this thread. I understand that geocaching is an activity that appeals to many people for different reasons. For some the appeal is numbers. And not just finding many caches but also hiding caches that will get many visitors. The power trails seem to be very successful in attracting both numbers addicts and those who prefer a hike over urban park and grabs. I hope this rule is not meant to ban all power caching trails but just to moderate them a bit so we don't have so many with 30 caches in 3 miles. I myself have been planing a series of caches on a trail that currently has only one cache on it. I guess I will now have to get a ruling from a local approver as to how many caches I can place there. BTW, I don't see the conflict between the .1 mile rule and an additional limitation on the total number of caches on a trail. Consider a 2 mile trail with 5 caches. They don't have to be .4 miles apart. It might make a better experience to have a couple .1 miles apart and then a gap of a mile before the next one. In fact, depending on the trail, you might be able to get the approver to allow some caches even closer that .1 miles apart. Perhaps a formula for the number of caches on a trail or in a park would make the guideline seem less arbitrary. I like the square root of the number of caches that would be allowed by the .1 mile rule. However, I can see why the total number of caches is left to the discretion of the approver. There are too many variables to give a formula (e.g. hiking trail vs. biking or driving, rural/wildnerness vs. urban/subrban, additional restrictions from the local land manager, etc.)

I believe you are entering decimal minutes as minutes and seconds. At Jeeep.com you will see 4 input areas one for degrees, minutes, seconds; another for degees decimal, another for UTM, and a forth for Minutes Decimal. Use the Minutes Decimal input for converting from the format used at Geocaching.com. You will need to enter degrees W longitude as a negative number, eg. latitude: 30 20.480 longitude: -89 21.021

It seems to me we can have something like a ignore list right now - at least for premium members. Premium members could create a pocket query that shows only the caches they want to see. On the My Cache Page add a link under Search For that runs this query on a search page. You might even have a drop down list so a user could run any of his PQs from the My Cache Page. I as user wants to see the nearest cache to his home but not see virtuals or multis , he could have a PQ to do this. You wouldn't be able to ignore specific caches but I suspect most of the people asking for this feature intend to use it to ignore certain types, difficulties, or terrains.

Tom is going to love my newDon't Trade Up cache.

I have a pocket query to return all caches I haven't found in an area. I use it to update my GSAK database from which I load my GPSr and also create my own GPX files to use with GPXSonar. When one of these caches becomes inactive (either temporarily disabled or archived) it no longer appears in my pocket query. Therefore it shows up in GSAK as active. Any suggestions as to how to get GSAK updated so I will know which cache are inactive. I would also like to eventually delete caches from GSAK once they are archived (except for those that I have found).

The icon for cache size adds information to the page, but the compass is superfluous as it already says N, S, E, etc. (of course I wouldn't complain if they used the Chinese/Japanese characters for the directions. I think I read that Jeremy was a Chinese translator in the Air Force) And I don't like the new color scheme but that is just personal taste.

Went hiking yesterday. After not finding the two caches on the top of the peak, I slipped on my way down. I put out my hand to stop my fall and put it right into a spiny yucca plant. Blood was coming out of my palm in five or six places. I used an antiseptic wipe from my first-aid kit to clean up and the bleeding soon stopped. But I noticed blood was still dripping from from my arm. It had met a rock during my fall which left an inch long gash. After covering it with a bandage, I had to hike 3+ miles back to my car and then drive to the emergency room where I got six staples to close the wound. One the way down (after my fall) I still managed to hide a new cache

Price sounds good for me to get about ten coins. Good plastic bag is enough, I don't seen the need for hard cases. I missed the ordering last time and was a bit embarassed after getting credit on the website for suggesting Eureka!. It was really GreenAchers that suggested it, I just pointed out that it seem appropriate for Geocaching.

You might think of posting a message in the South and Southeast forum asking for recommendations from Dallas-Ft. Worth area cachers. Let them know what kinds of caches you are interested in. I'm sure you'll get back some recommendations.

less time in the forums = more time to geocache

I was going to make the picnic my 500th cache now if its going to be postponed I'll really need to slow down.

Hadn't thought of that point. Accuracy is not the right term. Your GPSr accuracy is no different whether or not you use UTM. However precision is different. .001 minutes is roughly 6 feet while 1 meter is roughly 3.28 feet so using UTM will, on most units, be more precise.

I don't care who WestCoast Admin is - just as long as he/she keeps approving my caches Really, this should help out Hemlock and FullOn when they are taking their well deserved vacations.