Gan Dalf

But I think the OP is syaing that is part of the problem. NA logs, notes to reviewers, letters to Groundspeak, are generally ignored or no action is taken. Here is another specific example. I know for a fact that all of those options have been used for this particular cache. Doesn't seem to matter, even though it is an obvious guidleine violation and maybe even illegal placement... The issue I see is that obviously a CO is not going to place an attribute on their cache that says that it was placed in violation of the guidleines. So unless a cacher is allowed to place the new attribute on the cache, kinda like The Needs Maintanance Attribute then it is a moot point. I also doubt that Grounspeak would seriously consider giving cachers that ability. But this isn't really a serious suggestion, right? I mean the OP was only posting this to make a point...

I would not adopt out a cache for any reason other than I moved or I just can't maintain it myself anymore. To just adopt it out because you don't want to deal with it but are otherwise perfectly capable of maintaing it yourself, and then to log it after doing that is suspect in my mind.

I've had a similar experience. The cattle never charged us butwe did have to walk among them to get to a cache that was down the trail that went through the area that they were grazing in. Felt uncomfortable the entire way, especially when we had to walk by a rather large bull (no horns) that was standing in the middle of the trail. He turned and faced us both as we approached and went past him but he never moved from the spot he was standing in. I wonder if the fact that we had our dog with us (who was going crazy trying to get off of his leash) had anything to do with that...

I've been thinking hard trying to come up with something where I think that my judgement was seriously impaired or that I could have been killed. While that has happened before in my lifetime it hasn't really occured while geocaching. Maybe having started this hobby late enough in life has me more cautios than I migh thave been had I discovered this sport (and it had existed) in my mid 20's to early 30's. the closest I can come up with that migh tbe considered to fit the criteria actually occured just a few month ago. There is a popular, well travelled hike up a local mountain on the West side of the Cascade Range that is less than an hours drive from my home. I can actually see the mountain from within about half a mile of my house from the right angle. It is popular becasue in additoin to being easy to get to, there is a trail, about 5 miles long that goes up the mountian to the very top where there is a forest fire lookout with a commanding view of the lowlands around Puget Sound to the west. On a clear day, you can see the sky scrapers in downtown Seattle over 50 miles away and the entire range from Mt Rainier all the way up to Mt Baker, it is an amazing vantage point. In addition to the lookout, there is a popular cache at the top as well and I, having never found it, decided to make it my milestone 3500th find. The hike is pretty easy and I took my dog and faithful caching companion with me but unfortunately thet day did not cooperate with nice weather. The weather was not the issue however. The mountain slope, while gradual enoough on its south side to make it a fairly simple, albeit steep trail hike, on the north side is a sheer cliff drop off, from the top near where the cache is located to the bottom of the cliff on the north side of the mountain has to be more than 1000feet. When I got to the top and my GPS said I was 30 feet from the cache I convinced myself that I had to go onto a ledge on this cliff to retrieve it. It had rained most of the way up the mountain and the rocks all around were very wet and slippery. No ropes, no proper shoes or climbing gear, out on to the ledge I went. Luckily I was smart enough to tie my dog to a nearby bush so that he wouldn't try and follow me out on the ledge, which he would have surely had tried to do if I had not secured him. He's 105 lbs and could have knocked me off the ledge, probably causing both of us to fall if he had come out. Once out on the ledge, with no where else to go, heart pounding due to my mild case of vertigo and the cache no where to be seen, while my gadget still read that I was 30feet away, I reevaluated the likliehood that the cache was out there and made my way back the 15 feet along the ledge to where my dog was tied up. I ended up finding the cache, 30 feet away, but on the other side of the rock that makes up the peak of the mountain from where I had been on the ledge. About a week later I was giving the expereience some serious thought and realized how stupid I had behaved. Had I slipped and fallen I would have died, leaving my dog tied up on the side of the cliff probably whining and barking to come and join me. There were people nearby, in the fire lookout at the time but the mountain was so shrouded in fog that day they couldn't see me...

Interesting coincidence...

I understand the general consensus is that if you've logged a cache as found that you've adopted from another owner, prior to having adopted it, that it is prefectly acceptable to keep your found it log after you've adopted it. I own a cache myself that matches that circumstance. What about adopting your own cache out and then logging a find afterwards, even if you actually did go out and sign the log? I don't know, it seems a little suspsect to me, like the bad toupee analogy in knowschad's signature. I know, I know, "play the game your way and don't worry about what others do" but if there is an opinion on logging your own cache then I would imagine that people might have opinions on this as well. I'm just curious to see what others think.

I've been a member at REI since the 70's. Their prices are sometimes higher then if I went to Cabella's for the same thing but the dividends that don't expire and knowing that I will always find what I want when I go there makes up for the price difference. And then there is this: I bought my first "real" GPSr at REI 3 years ago. It was a 60CSx, I loved it; one of the best tech gadgets I've ever bought. It cost $330. Last month I went caching with it in the rain. I'm talking serious drenching down pour rain at about 1500 feet in Western Washington. I was out in it for three hours, I was drenched and my much loved GPS died. The next day I took it back to REI and they gave me a full credit towards the purchase of another unit, no questions asked, FOR A GPS I BOUGHT 3 YEARS AGO!!!! At the same time, I had a pair of sunglasses that I had bought there, again, over 3 years ago, for $120. One of th ear pieces had broken off. They were nice biking glasses that I got a lot of use out of. I turned those back in as well, again, no questions asked, they gave me a full refund. So in short, I walked in the door with a non functioning GPS that had probably died because I got it wet and a broken pair of sunglasses that broke while I owned them, and I walked out the door with a brand new GPS (Oregon 550t, arguably an upgrade to my 60CSx but the jury is still out on that one...) and $90 in my pocket, decided not to replace the sunglasses and just took the refund. To me, these things alone make it worth, the five or ten percent more that I pay when I shop at REI, knowing I can get it cheaper, without that level of Customer Service, somewhere else.

I always write down the caches of trackables that I leave, and I never pick up a trackable and drop it in a cache during the same run before I log them out of the cache preferring to log them when I get home and can read more about their mission. Usually, if I find a coin in a cache that it is not logged in to, I can figure out the circumstances of how it got left where I found it without it being logged there and then I always log it in to the cache I found it in so that it gets it's proper milage. When I saw this coin in the cache (even though I can't remember exactly which one it was) I remember thinking it was cool to find a coin there as I was not expecting it. I was more surprised when I got home and the coin did not have a tracking number on it. In over four years of caching and diligently moving coins and Travel Bugs, this is the first time this has happened to me where an obvious (to me) geocoin was not actually trackable...

That's what I was afraid of. Now I feel bad for not leaving somethign else in the cache after taking the coin. It's very nice... Almost makes me wich it was trackable. Maybe I'll attach a dog tag to it and release it as a TB. Thanks for the info.

I found a coin today in a cache that has no tracking code associated with it. It is obviously a "Geocaching" coin. I found 15 caches today and unfortunately I can't rememebr exactly what cache I pulled it from, but have narrowed it down to about 7 or 8 most likelies. I've looked through the logs of those and can't see anything about anyone dropping it there in the last 5 or 6 logs. I can't imagine anyone seeing this coin and not grabbing it just as I did today. The coin has two web sites associated with it, both lead to dead ends. The first is printed on the coin itself, www.newvikings.com. the second was on the sleeve that contains the coin, www.kvcoins.com. Does anyone have any idea what/where this coin is/might have come from? when I encounter most coins and bugs in caches, especially ones that get found infrequently like where I was caching today, I tend to take them to move them along. There was nothing associated with this coin to indicate that it had a special mission or that it shoul dbe left in the cahce. I'm hoping that someone here might recognize the websites and advise me on what I should do with it. Thanks

Kudos - putting the unique part first makes it so much easier to distinguish caches in a series when the names are truncated on a GPSr (or with GSAK's Smart Names). Yes, this is exactly why I do it this way. With this in mind, I just swapped the order of a three cache series I own... Arggggh! why did you have to do it now!?! I checked, there was one guy that will lose his "N" cache for the Alphabet Soup challenge. It wasn't you. See ya at the LBCM!

Kudos - putting the unique part first makes it so much easier to distinguish caches in a series when the names are truncated on a GPSr (or with GSAK's Smart Names). Yes, this is exactly why I do it this way. With this in mind, I just swapped the order of a three cache series I own...

Flat Stanley is used as a tool to teach kids about geography. Perhaps the class is studying United States Geography ONLY and so the kids are being told to send their Flat Stanley's out only to locations in the United States. Besides, Canada doesn't really count and it costs too much to mail stuff there... :laughing:

I am adding my support to this idea.

Its a darned good thing he didn't also know that you are an evil copyright violator!!! Watch while GC send round a swat team to blow up the geotar! I'm completely lost. Waht are you guys talking about?

Really? Why? I suppose someone might get worked up about it but I can't imagine too many people caring. Unless the cache is remarkable I rarely remember the name. If someone calls me for a PAF on the cache, they usually have to describe where they are and what the cache description is in order for me to remember it at all. I could care less what the name is, again, unless it is a remarkable or otherwise somewhat memorable cache...

this is actually the argument that has the most relavance with regard to this issue. Most new cachers locate the first few caches they find either close to home or where they work. Usually, these are urban micros in lamp posts and rock walls. When all you find are those types of hides, you think it is perfectly acceptable if not desired. I still remember the first Lamp Skirt Cache I found. I thought it was enormously clever. Turns out my own one and only lamp skirt cache (albeit slightly different than the ones outside of Wally World) continually gets comments about how clever a hide it is from new cachers, same goes for my guardrail cache. Veteran cachers either give me a TFTC or comment on the sites that I brough tthem there to see instead. My point is that people hide what they've found. This lends creadance to the larger argument thta new cachers should meet some threshold before hiding their first cache. An opinion that I happen to agree with. If they were to create minimum number of finds rule, whether it's 10, 20, 50 whatever, when a newbie is itching to hide a cache, what is he going to do? He's going to try to reach that number as quickly as possible, which means he'll probably target park-n-grab micros. Not sure how much experience he'll gain from that. Then that would be an even greater argument to have some percentage or base number of favorite points in order to be able ot hide a cache.

And what do you propose to use for that threshold? Finding 100 crappy caches? Finding 10 most excellent caches? And who defines that threshold? How would you handle cachers who prefer to hide under a different account than the one they cache under? Or cachers who never log their finds on-line? Are you proposing some sort of entrance exam before being allowed to hide caches, something like a quiz on the guidelines? I really can't think of a simple, objective way to define or enforce such a threshold that would also accommodate all the different sorts of cachers who want to hide caches. And pretty much any threshold would have prevented briansnat from hiding his now 10-year-old cache. --Larry Any system in place would not have prevented briansnat from placing his now 10 year old cache, it simply would have delayed it. And besides, 10 years ago, when geocaching was even more fringe then it is now, 100s of lamp post caches and perpetual rock wall hides did not exist within a short drive of where ever it is that briansnat lives. In 2001 when briansnat placed his first cache, barely 10000 caches existed worldwide let alone within a few hours drive of where he lived and I am sure that most of the examples that he would have had to choose from as the one and only find he had up to that point were nice caches in scenic locations, which was the greater point of all of the info that you edited out. Actually, I kind of like one of your first suggestions. If favorite points are an accurate representation of what we as a caching community like to find as caches then perhaps a new cacher should be required to accumulate a certian number of favorite points as finds before they can place their first cache... Not a bad idea, if favorite points are an accuarte indication of cache quality, which unfortunately is not always the case... The rest of what you suggested have all been proposed before, and each has been debated as to their pros and cons so I won't comment on each of those. I agree that veteran cachers can place crappy hides just as I agree that occaisionally a newbie can place a nice one after just a few finds but those are the exception. In my expereince the majority of the 0-10 find hiders, usually make bad choices as to hide location or container type. It's not completely their fault if what they are finding are similar types of hides...

this is actually the argument that has the most relavance with regard to this issue. Most new cachers locate the first few caches they find either close to home or where they work. Usually, these are urban micros in lamp posts and rock walls. When all you find are those types of hides, you think it is perfectly acceptable if not desired. I still remember the first Lamp Skirt Cache I found. I thought it was enormously clever. Turns out my own one and only lamp skirt cache (albeit slightly different than the ones outside of Wally World) continually gets comments about how clever a hide it is from new cachers, same goes for my guardrail cache. Veteran cachers either give me a TFTC or comment on the sites that I brough tthem there to see instead. My point is that people hide what they've found. This lends creadance to the larger argument thta new cachers should meet some threshold before hiding their first cache. An opinion that I happen to agree with.

You know, this is a really good idea. It could be a pinned topic at the top of this forum called "Caches that made the news..." or something... I wonder if TPTB would consider pinning such a topic?

I don't really think of ivy hides as needle in a hatstack type of hide, depending on what the container is. And I agree that most people don't like looking for needle in a haystack type of hides but it's not about the searchers, it's all about the owners. People that hide caches like that, do so because they prefer getting DNF's, it makes them feel like they've won. There is no other explanation. Why else would someone take a bison tube, paint it brown and attach it to some fishing line, then tie it to a branch and throw it randomly back into a patch of scotch broom in a mosquito infested wetland? Or why would someone take a similar bison tube to a wooded area, stick it in a moss covered stump in a sea of mossy stumps and logs and then post a hint that says "moss"? The answer is because they get joy out of others not finding it. They think they are being clever...

you're right, I doubt the orignator of geocaching (Dave Ulmer) gave taxpayers much thought at all when he buried a 5 gallon bucket on the side of a State Highway and placed a weapon, food and cigarettes inside of the container. I'm sure that he never in his wildest dreams thought the game would be what it has become which is one of the reasons whe he doesn't do it anymore.

My 60CSx died a couple of months ago after 3 and a half years of hard use. When I went backto REI to get it replaced (thier return policy is incredible) they didn't carry the 60 anymore. Disappointed, I settled for an Oregon. It's different, I wouldn't call it better, and there are things about it that I don't like and miss from my 60CSx. The nicest thing about the Oregon is that it holds more geocaches. I don't have to worry when I travel about putting too many in as I have yet to come anywhere near the 5000 cache maximum.

For what it's worth... Interesting people write interesting logs. (You may read into that all that you want!) people get lazy when they're logging from a phone in the field. I have to disagree. I was a phoner for my first year. I always took the time to write a few sentences about each cache and if your cache impressed me or made me smile I took extra time to thank you with a good size log. If you take the time to put out a well thought out interesting cache in an interesting place you will be rewarded, But if you have a pill bottle in a guardrail and are expecting a fancy log...good luck, While I commend you for your actions in field logging good cache reviews, I think you are the exception rather than the rule. I'm bettng that you would find that most TFTC only logs are sent from iPhones.

I don't. I just scuff them up and paint over them. You can see in the picture of the cache the bear gnawed on that, other than the lid, the area where the decal is, is the only area that retained the paint. What's a Therapack container?