TotemLake

Part of the Monte Cristo Mining Ghost Town, this is Peabody's Garage. The old Wellington town site along the abandoned Great Northern railbed that served the first Cascade Tunnel and was also the site of the worst rail disaster in American history when more than 96 people lost their lives in an avalanche here on March 1, 1910.

Nice.

I think the quick stop store at the West Summit sells day passes as well as the gate at the Iron Horse State Park when it is manned. You can also gain a State Park day pass at the state park if you find you need one. And for anyone camping in Western Washington, the burn ban in camp fire rings has been lifted in most parks. Check with the local authority to be sure. http://www.parks.wa.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=69

I'm planning on camping at or near the Red Bridge on Mountain Loop highway on Thursday evening. I may have some noise makers with me. I'll either camp at a campsite near the bridge, or make a right turn just before the bridge and hike an abandoned jeep road. I'll be leaving Seattle for Granite Falls at Noon. PM me if you're interested. I may even host an excursion to my new cache in the area.

I gave you the reason. You're choosing to ignore it. I'm out of this thread from this point forward.

I think team tisri's point is not that land managers can't have regulations on the land that they manage. The issue is that you have a location that is publically accessible where someone lists a virtual cache or a waymark. Logging a find simple requires going to the coordinates and perhaps taking a picture or getting some information. These are activities that a visitor to the area may do in the absence of the vitual cache or waymark. So the question has to do with whether a Land Manager has any power to demand that a listing on a website be removed. I keep saying this is a 1st Amendment issue. If there's a cave entrance at some coordinates, why can't I post that on the Internet? The evidence that listing coordinates of sensitive locations does bring more people to these areas (sometimes people who don't appreciate the need to protect these areas) explains the concerns of the Land Managers and possibly a rationale for censoring the internet. I get that too. The issue with any of this, is there isn't a single parcel of land in this country that isn't under some form of land management thus lands under someone's charter. First Amendment claims can't stop total censorship, but if the commercial enterprise wants to have a friendly relationship with said land manager, then there are certain things they need to abide by. Let's say a taxi decided to not follow the rules in Yellowstone and drives off road just for an example. The company receives a warning, the driver a citation. A second offense could mean the company now loses business inside the park. Now that's an extreme example but the point is the same, to limit damage, Groundspeak has to abide by the land manager's request if they expect to be able to use the land for recreational purposes. This keeps coming back to the whole "if they (Groundspeak) expect to be able to use the land for recreational purposes" issue again. If Groundspeak totally disregard the preferences of land managers where virtual caches are concerned they may find other land managers less willing to play ball where physical caches are concerned. This is a business decision that has nothing to do with what, if any, powers the land managers have to restrict people from noting down that it's three miles to Squiddleville. This becomes a matter of internal policy rather than the land manager having any legal powers to stop people walking the public trail and looking at the signpost. Sure, if you've been granted permission to place physical caches you follow the terms of your agreement or the permission is revoked. That's a different issue because hiding a box involves activities over and above walking along the public trail looking at stuff. From what you've posted here it seems the land manager only has the power to be awkward elsewhere. From the post in the middle of all the quotes, I get that some areas are sensitive and bringing huge groups at once can damage/devastate a sensitive area. What I've seen in the UK several times is that sensitive areas are fenced to protect them. In PA I've seen areas of the forest fenced to keep deer out to give new trees chance to grow before they get chewed by deer (with gates, so people can still walk through if they want to). But even in your quoted post you're still talking about people looking under rocks and digging around trying to find a sandwich box, whereas a landmark is typically much more clearly visible. If you say "go to the posted coordinates, enjoy the vista, and tell me how far it is to Squiddleville from the sign" that's a totally different thing to "go to the posted coordinates, enjoy the vista, and try to find the film pot hidden among the rocks. By the way, try not to trample the delicate lichens and flowers." The latter case will inevitably see some knucklehead trashing the place to find the film pot as fast as they can so they can get to the next smiley, but even if the knucklehead does visit the former location he can walk in, read the sign and walk out without touching anything. Sure, Mr Knucklehead might walk off trail because he gets to the vista a bit faster but people like that are going to ignore the trails anyway so they can see the vista without having to waste their time following the approved trails. Now you're just nit picking. I gave you the cause and affect of how the charters can be changed. Our lands our managed and you're arguing the fact.

I think team tisri's point is not that land managers can't have regulations on the land that they manage. The issue is that you have a location that is publically accessible where someone lists a virtual cache or a waymark. Logging a find simple requires going to the coordinates and perhaps taking a picture or getting some information. These are activities that a visitor to the area may do in the absence of the vitual cache or waymark. So the question has to do with whether a Land Manager has any power to demand that a listing on a website be removed. I keep saying this is a 1st Amendment issue. If there's a cave entrance at some coordinates, why can't I post that on the Internet? The evidence that listing coordinates of sensitive locations does bring more people to these areas (sometimes people who don't appreciate the need to protect these areas) explains the concerns of the Land Managers and possibly a rationale for censoring the internet. I get that too. The issue with any of this, is there isn't a single parcel of land in this country that isn't under some form of land management thus lands under someone's charter. First Amendment claims can't stop total censorship, but if the commercial enterprise wants to have a friendly relationship with said land manager, then there are certain things they need to abide by. Let's say a taxi decided to not follow the rules in Yellowstone and drives off road just for an example. The company receives a warning, the driver a citation. A second offense could mean the company now loses business inside the park. Now that's an extreme example but the point is the same, to limit damage, Groundspeak has to abide by the land manager's request if they expect to be able to use the land for recreational purposes. In Washington, our club manager Hydnsek has made great inroads with our local city and state parks including our national parks to the point the feds have relented allowing caches in national parks subject to approval with the local land manager (Ranger in charge). This also required a total rewrite of leaving caches in park systems. Note, this is not just geocaches, but caches of any kind. We're lucky, the ranger at Mt Rainier is a geocacher, but there are limits he has to abide by when allowing a physical cache. Failure to follow that charter means we get kicked out again. It's public land, but it is managed at a Federal level and we have shown through the years we are responsible land care takers by helping clean up, repair and bring back to serviceable usage, areas of the park where requested. So yes, in short, the land manager has the power as provided by charter and the regulations the land manager follows are written in detail. Challengable? Yes. How much money are you (generally speaking) willing to throw at it?

"Public" lands are not "Unmanaged" lands. Laws and regulations manage what you can and cannot do in parks. Parks have designated managers, in some cases, employed at the City, State or Federal level, to protect the publicly accessible lands under the same guidance for everyone. It makes for a level playing field if you will. Just because it's "Public", doesn't mean Joe Public can go to it and do what he wants without repercussions. Some parks don't allow motorized vehicles, where others don't allow horses, or mountain bikes. It depends entirely upon the charter of that park, and how it is to be managed. I have no argument about your website examples. The other web sites provide information for visiting the site, but do not encourage folks to look under rock and log for a box or search for a specific landmark to answer questions required to "find" the cache. Geocaching on the other hand, is known to bring large groups of people to a location all at one time and the impact can be devastating. I know this from personal observation of several cache locations. Children throwing frisbees is a paper argument and has no real bearing on this discussion. This activity is typically accomplished in a park designed for such recreation. They typically aren't throwing them at the edge of a pristine and protected area. Please keep your examples realistic. This is the type of rhetoric that caused me to remark you have your mind made up no matter what gets said.

I get that, but it means the site supports a container and the cache description can encompass these things that are available to see while you're there. Again, working within the system...

Thanks again.

Thanks for your advisement, M10B, but even when using the full scale site? It shouldn't have looped. With the prevalence of mobile devices and the direction of computing these days, perhaps it should be considered a bug that needs to be fixed instead of a feature not supported.

Not really, I'm just wondering if anyone can explain what gives land managers the power to demand that the public refrain from writing down details of things that are visible on public land. People giving examples of land managers saying they don't want virtual caches on the land they manage doesn't answer that question. I'd rather people didn't walk past my house but I have precisely zero power to stop them because the footpath they are walking on is public. Then you have to understand the charter the land managers were hired to follow. The charter usually is mandated by Federal and State requirements. How those requirements came about are another thing altogether. However, like you and I, those same land managers are told what their job is and part of that is to protect sensitive areas for everyone which also means a single group can't have special privileges and just trample where they want. The case I cited, dealt with a specific moss that takes hundreds of years to grow a single inch in height and it is very easily damaged. Our hider didn't know that and therefore didn't put in the proper caveats to take care. Land manager noticed and made the request to remove the listing to protect the area. They had the job, the responsibility and the right to make that request. Geocaching's hiding policies historically reflect these kinds of requests made throughout the entire history of the game. It also helps them maintain we are also responsible caretakers of the land we use to recreate on. There is an underbelly to this claim but that's off topic and can support it's own thread. Now, as far as bringing the virts back, the problem with this desire is what caused their demise in the first place. Your Wow factor is subjective. So is mine. Generally speaking, when combined with most everybody else's WOW factor, it became mundane... a big yawn in most cases. As well, most virts being placed could have easily supported a real container. Instead of being creative hiding a cache in those same areas, the virt was replacing the cache container because... wait for it... the low maintenance feature of it. TPTB having the big picture view, noted the pattern and decided this was not the direction they wanted the company to go in. Fair enough. A lot of companies have dropped things to maintain their core business. Listing hidden containers is Groundspeak's core business. Change is inevitable and the best you and I can do is embrace the change and work within the system with the variants already in place.

Somebody has their mind made up regardless of anything that might be said.

Yes, it does. If they find the cache posted on their land, they fire off a demand for archival to the admin, and if it's a physical cache, may even go out and remove it themselves. It happens. Not saying it makes sense with regard to virtuals, only that it's the way life works here. I can only give you examples related to the current situation (physical caches, since we don't have virtuals), but DO understand that policies of this sort have been applied to virtuals as well in the past. I'll add here we had a virtual in Washington where the location took the user to an amazing view. Unfortunately, it also contained very sensitive flora and it was getting trampled and it was directly attributed to geocachers causing more damage than normal. Social trails were developing in locations where there were none before. The land manager insisted on the removal of the VM listing.

I had the same issue yesterday using 4 different browsers on the Android. It was a little frustrating because I was preparing to go into the backcountry to set up a cache.

When I grow up, I want to be a Rubicon.

Ditto what he said.

If you want to test true accuracy, use coordinates for a known benchmark monument.

Sorry, I will be more clear.. the inaccuracy is that the Smartphone only gets me within 25 ft. of the cache. I can be standing on a known cache I found and the smartphone will say I am still 25 ft. away. sometime 45 ft. plus away. I used it today and if it was not for being easy to see my phone would have had me running around no where close to it. My wife suggested to buy a dedicated unit again and compare the accuracy Of course you are making the assumption the provided coordinates are accurate to 0.0. Not all caches are placed with precision. If you want to test true accuracy, use coordinates for a known benchmark monument. Typically it's a little metal surveyor's disk about 4 inches in diameter. It's usually in a small covered utility hole in the ground.

There is a version of Galaxy S4 that already has this feature. It came out early last year. The addition the S5 has is the fingerprint sensor. As for shatter proofing the face, there is a tempered glass film you can put over it and it doesn't affect the touchscreen sensitivity at all. when the customer rep at the phone store demonstrated it by throwing (not tossing) his phone across the room and bouncing it all over the place, I was an instant consumer of the film. Otherwise the Otterbox is still good for environment proofing your device.

Thanks for the link! That is very interesting.

I'd be up for that. We haven't hiked together since Little Si so many years ago. Let me know what day you want to settle on and I'll prepare an event for it.

This is exactly why I posted it in this forum. I even asked a local in Spokane who lived on that side of the state if he has ever heard of him. I was even wondering if the couple that walked by were geocachers. Nothing obvious, but it does put a different perspevtive of caching in that area. Who knows if you are going to end up on a "reality" show. As to help with location, he did walk to Forks one episode, just 9 miles from his "home". Bear in mind, "home" is relative to this guy. He has a winter home near the beach. The sea stacks (rock pillars in the water) noted in some of the scenes are similar to those north of the Hoh River estuary/outlet. I took a quick look at Google Earth and I'll revise my earlier post this looks to be the location of his winter home as well which would put him well south of Ozette Lake based on the similarity of the sea stacks I saw on the show. The Hoh estuary also looks like the location of the cove where Mick caught the crabs using a roadkill bird on an end of a line. He would tug them close enough to reach in very quickly and capture by hand. Oil City is nearby and there are a couple of locations that look similar to his friends cabin and has proximity to some heavy duty equipment such as the tractor used in one scene. There's also a couple of tree harvested areas which could have been one of the scenes where he built his cart from scratch materials. Here's a list of nearby caches as positioned near the Hoh estuary: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.aspx?t=m&origin_lat=+47.746647&origin_long=-124.423750&dist=100&submit3=Search

Mick's friend (Pat?) with the cabin has been homesteading for the past 40 years. He probably has a 99 year lease grandfathered in. Technically, Mick is illegally residing within the ONP. But he did start living there almost 26 years ago probably just before Congress designated 95 percent of the park as wilderness becoming grandfathered as a loosely defined resident. I'll add the location he built his little wagon to cart his caches around looked to be on a reservation near Ozette Lake. The area is pretty torn up from a long ago harvest. I don't recall seeing a harvested area along the Hoh River a few years back when Ray and I attempted the hike through in that area before bad weather pushed us back... but I could be wrong.

The Hoh Rain Forest where he resides and hides is all inside the Olympic National Park. There is one location where he resides it seems to me he is pretty close to the Steam Donkey virtual. Technically it is just outside the reservation, but still inside the ONP.