Hoover and Root

Kingston Mills lockstation is a historic canal site operated by Parks Canada. It has some really nice cliffs and a lot of people go rock climbing there. Parks Canada has asked everybody who goes rock climbing at this location to sign a form releasing them of liablity. As far as I know, there was no public uprising when this policy was implemented. The rock climbers just accepted the fact that they had to sign the form before they could go climbing. I'm just mentioning this as an example. P38manCdn, I understand your feelings about logging. But pointing our fingers at another group and saying "Look, they're worse than us" does not do anything to help our cause. My view is that Ontario Parks has specific concerns about geocaching (liability, environmental damage, etc) and the way they addressed those concerns was to tell us not to geocache in their parks. You may say, "they're our parks, not theirs" but the fact is that they have made a policy and we have to abide by it. I think if we can propose alternate solutions, such as signing liability waivers, maybe they will revise their policy and we can start geocaching in provincial parks again. I was thinking last night about how Ontario Parks has a very fancy website that allows you to make campsite reservations online. I think contracts signed with a click can be just as legally binding as pen and ink signatures (based on all the software license agreements we sign with clicks), but I'm not sure about that. Maybe the waivers I'm proposing could be online too, at the Ontario Parks website.

My assumption that Ontario Parks could be held liable was based on the part of their geocaching policy that says "Management of geocaching is necessary due to public safety and liability issues..." Am I wrong to assume this? Why do you say they cannot be held liable? Do you have any suggestions for what we could do to make them less worried about being held liable?

That's ridiculous. Do hiking groups need liability contracts before they're allowed to use the parks? Of course not. Neither should geocachers. Are you saying you would want to hold Ontaio Parks liable if you injured yourself while geocaching in provincial park? One of the main reasons Ontario Parks has developed its current policy about geocaching is that they don't want to be held liable if we injure ourselves. Do you have any suggestions for what we could do to make them less worried about being held liable? Hoover

Lately I've been pondering this whole Ontario Parks hoopla, and I think we all need to seriously change our attitudes. Saying all these bad things about the park rangers and ministry employees is only going to create bad feelings and make things worse. I believe everybody can agree that geocaching is a good thing. Everything we have been saying about CITO, introducing children to the outdoors, and bringing more visitors to the parks is perfectly true. I even think the parks believe that. But these good things about geocaching are outweighed by the bad things about geocaching, which is why Ontario Parks has developed its current policy. Ontario Parks has told us what their concerns are, and we need to address them. It's as simple as that. If we can come up with satisfactory solutions to the problems they have with geocaching, I think Ontario Parks might be more open to allowing geocaching on their lands. Here are some of my ideas. 1) Liability. There has to be some official, binding contract stating that Ontario Parks will not be held liable if somebody gets injured or killed while geocaching. What if geocachers actually signed such a contract? Ontario Parks could supply geocaching.com with a list of names of people who have signed waivers of liabilty, and geocaching.com could make sure that only those authorized people can download the coordinates of caches in Ontario Parks. It would be kind of like our current system for "members only" caches. 2) Environmental damage. All it takes is one person who hasn't read the clues for a cache to wander all over the place, turning over rocks and trampling vegetation. But even if everybody is well behaved, then just four or five people walking along the same route will create a "social trail." The parks don't want that, so we can't do it. We have to put our geocaches right on the trail. I guess we could put them in a hollow tree on the side facing away from the trail, but the parks don't want us to leave the trails. We either follow their rules, or we don't geocache on their lands. 3) Inappropriate behaviour. The parks are worried about people putting porn, booze, or worse inside of caches. What if caches in Ontario Parks had no trading items at all, just a logbook? I believe this was originally Cache-tech's idea, and it sounds like a good one to me. The parks also get annoyed when geocachers use unofficial park entraces or otherwise break park rules (for example, skinny dipping to get to an island cache). I don't have a good answer to this one. Maybe in addition to signing the waver of liability, we could sign a statement saying we had read the park rules and agree to abide by them. 4) More work for park staff. Doing all the paperwork to authorize geocaches and the legwork to check up on them is going to mean more work for the park staff. We have to agree to do as much of this work for them as we can. All our caches must be inspected regularly, and if an issue is reported in a cache log, it must be addressed immediately. Maybe only geocachers who had proven themselves to be responsible cache owners should be given permission to place caches in Ontario Parks. Well, that's all I have to say for now. I may have overlooked some important key concepts or made some incorrect assumptions. I'm just trying to help, and I hope this is a good starting point for a real solution. Comments and constructive criticism are welcome. Hoover

I get stack traces if I try to add more than 10 notifications. The boring details are: Server Error in '/' Application. Input string was not in a correct format. Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code. Exception Details: System.FormatException: Input string was not in a correct format. Source Error: An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below. Stack Trace: [FormatException: Input string was not in a correct format.] Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices.DoubleType.Parse(String Value, NumberFormatInfo NumberFormat) +195 Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices.DoubleType.FromString(String Value, NumberFormatInfo NumberFormat) +82 [InvalidCastException: Cast from string "). Remove one to create a new no" to type 'Double' is not valid.] Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices.DoubleType.FromString(String Value, NumberFormatInfo NumberFormat) +171 Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices.DoubleType.FromString(String Value) +7 Geocaching.UI.LogNotificationControl.BuildControl() +337 Geocaching.UI.notify_edit.Page_UserLoggedIn(Object sender, EventArgs e) +1081 Geocaching.UI.WebformBase.IsLoggedIn() +1105 Geocaching.UI.notify_edit.Page_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e) +99 System.Web.UI.Control.OnLoad(EventArgs e) +67 System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() +35 System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain() +750 Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:1.1.4322.2032; ASP.NET Version:1.1.4322.2032

This reminded me of a story I once heard about farmers spraypainting the words "HORSE" or "COW" on the sides of their animals so they didn't get shot in deer hunting season. I googled for it, and it turns out to be an urban legend. On a related note, the part of the Rideau Trail that leads to our Loads of Toadstools cache is closed for a week this hunting season because the landowners will be using high powered rifles. I was about to add the word indiscriminately, but figured it would be in poor taste.

Welcome, Koopy! I'm not sure if your post is directed to me (Hoover) or the mailing list (Kingston Area Geocachers). I'll pass your message along to the list so everybody else can read it too. Since I see you have just subscribed to it, you'll receive any replies in regular email mailbox. If anybody who isn't subscribed to the KAG list is interested, everything posted to the list is archived at http://www.freelists.org/archives/kag Hoover

I have just created a mailing list for Kingston area geocachers. Visit http://www.freelists.org/webpage/kag to subscribe or send an email to kag-request@freelists.org with "subscribe" as the subject (without the quotes). Hoover

Back in December Jeremy posted a message in the benchmarking forum: quote:Originally posted by Jeremy:Plans are to offer benchmarking for Canada and the UK (so far). Elias is working with the folks in Canada to get the data. Integrating it into the site will take some work. I live in Canada and have been benchmarking for a while now, but it isn't the same without being able to share my experiences with the online community, or race against others to get to certain benchmarks first. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. What still needs to be done to get Canadian benchmarks on the site? Is there anything I can do to help? I already asked this question in the benchmarking forum, but received no replies. Hoover

quote:Originally posted by Jeremy:Plans are to offer benchmarking for Canada and the UK (so far). Elias is working with the folks in Canada to get the data. Integrating it into the site will take some work. How is this going? Is there anything I can do to help? Hoover

The felled trees were small, ranging from 2 to 6 inches in diameter. The largest were used in the fort as crossbeams and a supporting post. The other wood in the fort seems to have been salvaged from somewhere -- peices of wooden fences, and so on. This land is owned by the city but has been unused for 20 years. I do not think the fire was set intentionally. My opinion is that somebody dropped a cigarette butt in the grass along the trail. August was the dryest month in my city's history, and the fire must have spread quicky. I can't imagine what stopped it, though. Maybe the fire department came. I'll try to borrow a digital camera and take some pictures.

I just had to archive my first cache and I feel very angry about the stupid people who did this. Has anybody else had a similar experience?

quote:Originally posted by strfry:I asked a diabetic friend and they recommended plastic soft drink bottles as temporary sharps containers. Watch out for the thinner plastic used for bottled water-- the heavier plastic for carbonated beverages is better. They recommended finding a cooperative doctor's or dentist's office for proper disposal. Thanks for the good idea about the plastic bottle. I'll probably wear a couple pairs of latex gloves under some work gloves, just to be safe. As for disposing of them, I'll just drop them in the sharps box at the lab I where I work. Hoover

There has always been a lot of litter in the woods where I hid my cache, but today I found some "insulin syringes." What do you think I should do? I am leaning towards the first choice, but would like to hear what others have to say.