WearyTraveler

I don't see it that way. Yes, there's a problem in your scenario. But it's not you, your cache, or the CC requiring whatever requirement it's asking for. It's the group of idiots piled into a car on their quest. Your cache is still a great cache (I'm ASSuming). Sure - the CC is asking for a difficult challenge in order to qualify. But hey, it's something for cachers who are looking for more than a challenge... But those guys on the cache run are the ones putting in the obnoxious c&p log. I've "found" a few CCs - yes one was 100 in a day, but the others were distance, country, altitude, or some such... one I did required 2 caches in 2 states in one day, 100 miles apart. I thought that was pretty cool, and it didn't result in the log you referred to. One that took be a while required me to find 15 caches with 15, 25 and 50 watchers in order to qualify. That made me do a heck of a lot of research _and_ visit a lot of neat caches. After doing all that, I relish the thought of finding an easy cache the size of a gnat's nuts in a GR... Not all CCs are "let's [find] a boatload of caches in a day" types. Some require a lot of work, finding great caches, and result in some great log entries. Not trying to be argumentative, just pointing out that CCs, by themselves, aren't a bad thing.

Exactly - if finders and COs won't hold up their ends of the bargain, then reviewers shouldn't be blasted for trying to make sure that what's out there is in the condition that COs agreed to keep their caches in. If my cache has mold, soaked log, leaky baggie, chewed container, bad attitude, then I have not kept my cache in good condition and have not upheld my end of the bargain. I don't have any issue with a reviewer (or any other cacher) proactively looking for caches in poor condition and reaching out to CO to correct. Now - if they archive it and it's still in good condition, that's bad. But if it's in poor condition and the CO hasn't responded to the "hey, something's wrong with your cache" emails, he gets what he deserves. Sure - GS can't legally remove / take custody of the physical container. They're limited to the GC listing. To me, the only thing left would be for a Good Samaritan to head out and pick up the trash after the fact. Unfortunately, there's no way for a cacher to search for archived caches to get the location of the trash. Perhaps if said Good Samaritan notes the location when the reviewer disables it? I don't know... And - before the flaming begins - has anyone on this thread had his / her cache unjustly archived because of a reported issue? Those COs are really the only ones who have all the details. Everyone else is just on the outside looking in...

Not a lot going on around here. There's me and one other cacher that place caches locally. My last 2 events I was the only attendee. Have you checked to see if there are other social groups who do geocaching? Maybe there's a facebook group locally, or a meetup.com group. You could reach out to other outdoorsy social groups like hiking or camping groups and propose a geocaching-themed gathering that could help introduce more people to the hobby. The best way to get more players is to introduce more people to it Pretty sure that influx of new players from randomly coming across the website or app is relatively small compared to the effect of larger-scale word of mouth! ideas ideas ideas Interesting that you mention serendipitously stumbling onto the GC website! Back in 2002 I was planning a trip to Nicaragua, backpacking, hitch hiking busses etc for 21 days. Fearing getting lost, I bought a GpS and feverishly googled "things to do with a GPS" or some such.. I stumbled upon GC site and tested it out on a trip to Mexico. At the time I lived in cache "rich" Northern Virginia but my first cache was in cache "poor" Mexico. Go figure... I created the local FB caching page and there are no meetup groups local. I hadn't thought about local outdoor groups though. I'll have to think about that one.

I consider an 'active cacher' as someone who has signed on to the Geocaching website in the last 6 months. I will also occasionally look to see if they have hunted for caches and recorded a found, DNF or attended or whatever in the last 9-12 months. Very often you see CO's who haven't signed on in over a year. sometimes people do sign in but just to look around but have not done an active search in some time. They could be very active finding caches without signing due to using an app. When looking, I check their stats page to see finds within the last year or so. No finds for years looks like inactive to me. Not necessarily. Some Geocachers use a different account for hiding than one for finding and some are out physically finding caches but just don't log their finds online. True , but the other account isn't what we're talking about. If "cacher hider" hasn't logged in in a year and hasn't found a cache in years, cacher hider is not active. If his alter ego "cacher finder" has, then finder is active... I would also opine that in your scenario, that if the actual person was logging in to log finds (app or web) that he's also receiving email on the hider account and isn't unaware of any NM on the hider account. So basically, if finder if finding caches but not reacting to NM mail sent to the CO account, he's an inactive CO ignoring NMs and should be treated as inactive, regardless of what his finder account does,,. Hopefully that make sense...

Just an FYI that having 'challenge' in the title is not a "new" requirement - if you define "new" as being post-moratorium. It has been a requirement of CC's since at least 2011. And as far as I know, there has never been a requirement that if a cache has Challenge in the title that it must be a challenge cache. That's why when I'm planning, I create a list and add the challenges to the list. I manually weed out any non challenge caches with challenge in the title. But that's very few, as the only false positives would be mystery caches with challenge in the title... I have 2 lists - challenge caches and challenge caches that I qualify for.

To be honest, when I heard about the 3 items you mention, I couldn't believe cachers would do that. I would say to myself, "but you didn't actually find it, why are you logging that you did?" Others here would disagree - "it's only a game" they say. I don't know... I don't reshuffle the deck in the middle of solitaire either... But, in full disclosure, my 2 cacheing buddies and I have in fact succumbed to the dual standard. On non GRC / LPC caches, we still get out and search. The last one to see the cache is the one who removes it - then we sign the log in the order of finding (hokey pokey / hinkey dinkey method as it's called elsewhere in the forums). But only when we come to a LPC / GRC, there's no real way for all 3 of us to climb out of the car and do the hinkey dinkey... if we did that, then the first to locate would end up being the fastest runner or the one that hopped out while the car was still moving... so- we rotate between the non drivers for LPC/ GRC unless the seeker can't locate. Then all 3 get out and look - then we agree it's not there (dnf it) before heading out again. The only time I've ever used a throwdown was on a PT in KY. We had dinner with the CO the night before. He told us that he was aware that several were actually missing, told us they were all GRCs on the ends, and gave us a handful of (those evil pill bottle) replacement containers and asked that we replace as needed. Other than that, I wouldn't consider throwing down and claiming a find.

Im with you on that. Would you then equate that with the groups in which 3 people search and the first one to locate the cache holds it up and says "Woo who, we found it!" And everyone scurries to that person and signs the log?

I consider an 'active cacher' as someone who has signed on to the Geocaching website in the last 6 months. I will also occasionally look to see if they have hunted for caches and recorded a found, DNF or attended or whatever in the last 9-12 months. Very often you see CO's who haven't signed on in over a year. sometimes people do sign in but just to look around but have not done an active search in some time. They could be very active finding caches without signing due to using an app. When looking, I check their stats page to see finds within the last year or so. No finds for years looks like inactive to me.

Not a lot going on around here. There's me and one other cacher that place caches locally. My last 2 events I was the only attendee.

CO maintenance is discussed ad nausium in a couple other threads... pretty exciting discussions.

Same issue with normal PTs. Actually - same issue with prolific COs...

Host one and find out! I'd love to, but someone has already created one and I don't want to be in the position of hosting a "competing" event. Also, I don't know yet what type of non-caching events will be happening that day or at what times. I live in a provincial capital, so there will be some big celebrations going on and I wouldn't want to hold an event right when lots of people will be wanting to go to something else. If it gets closer to the date and things look viable, I may indeed look at setting one up, if only to figure out what happens with the souvenir. If you're interested in hosting one, host one in my small town. Ill give you the coords of a local eatery. I'll attend! I'm tired of hosting and being the only cacher to show up. But if you host it, I won't feel so bad. And, you'll see if you get a souvenir even if you didn't attend.

I think it's just a case of the marketing person not being careful about how things should be worded. I'm sure it's July 1 OR July 2, and I doubt you'd actually get the souvenir for just hosting an event. https://www.geocaching.com/blog/2017/05/where-in-the-world-is-signal-the-frog-canada/ B. I I see they changed that to say "or" instead of "and", but it still has the "hosting" part. Since hzoi confirmed that hosting wasn't enough to get the Donerstag souvenir, it will be interesting to see if that changes for the Canada Day one. If it's true, then that's a departure from how they've handled event-based souvenirs in the past. I hosted an event and have the donerstag souvenir. But - maybe I got it for the attended log and not the hosting... Either way - I was the only one that showed up...

Personally I prefer to see it hidden unless I hover over it, otherwise it would get a bit busy. Honestly, I don't have a strong preference either way because I don't hand out FPs very often and have no shortage of available FPs. However, since many recent changes have been focused on making things work better on mobile devices, it seems odd to then make this feature require an action that isn't possible on a mobile device. I just tested this on my iPhone, and it acts a bit different. On the first tap of the heart, the heart remains empty and the "# available" text appears underneath it. Only on a second tap does it change to a filled-in heart and the count decrements. This doesn't seem very intuitive. I would think most users would expect a single tap to add a FP, not a double-tap. If the count were already visible, only a single tap would be required. If the count were already visible, no tap would be necessary... And - if they can fill out the numbers after a tap, they can easily bypass the tap and just let the number be visible...

I know that there's complaints about making changes to satisfy app users, but I use an iPad and not a PC. There's no way to hover without a mouse... Edit: just say that a tap / double tap displays the number. Very very non intuitive... Any way to include the number of favorite points in the heart? That way it's always there and doesn't take up any screen real estate...

I attempted to place an ammo can a while ago. I attached a length of chain to the handle and then to part of the structure it was under. I've seen other cans with cables and bike locks. I think that's a great way wo secure the cache so it doesn't float away. Obviously some miscreant could remove it, but we're discussing "Noah's" cache at the moment...

My wife is the one who logs the caches we find. We own a few in our area and check on them as often as possible. I can hardly find the enthousiasm to log my own finds, but my wife has logged 439 finds and 6 hides, most of which I participated in. We do try to clean up and restore caches if necessary. Saw some while camping last Summer and one in particular was placed by a Forces member who'd been moved away, but nobody wanted to adopt it. We changed the container and log book, and added some decent swag. The number of times I've reported caches in need of maintenance and never heard back is also annoying. But it gets tedious to always find the caches in similar condition. If you find a cache, and are sure the Co moved away hence no longer able to take care of their cache, why aren't you posting a NA log? Wayne - I agree. But in a few of these threads (they're all running together for me now) posting that would get you flamed for "blasphemy." Something should be done to clean up abandoned caches...

I get the same. I suppose the logic is: As the cache is disabled, it has some issue, and the disabled state reflects that. Hence no need for a NM. But I can see cases where a NM would be wanted. I found a cache the other day which was disabled by the reviewer as it is too close to another cache. I found it, it was in perfect condition. If I found it broken, I might want to log NM, to report a new maintainance issue. It could be that the CO is the only one that would see a different option than NA. They could perform OM to get it out of disabled state and back in play...

As do I. I've logged several dnfs followed by the find. I've no shame in dnfing. The only time I do anything w dnfs is when it's reasonably (some may disagree) determined that the cache was actually was missing at time of search. And moving forward, they'll be notes to document the visit...

To be honest, when I'm looking through challenge caches, I look at the description to see how "hard" it's going to be to qualify for as well as reading it to see if the CO has talked about the physical d/t of the cache. When you come right down to it, a challenge cache is pretty much nothing more than a traditional cache with ALR...

Well put.

20 caches that take more than an hour? Ouch... I'd think at least a D3. Consider higher? Because any cache with an hour's hike would probably have at least a D3 or a T3... likely higher. Yours would be a great long term caching goal. It's not necessarily an hour's hiking - one of mine with that attribute just has multiple waypoints spread out over a large area - but yes, most would I suppose, although an hour's hiking is only 2km each way at most. Looking at my own ten hides with that attribute, the majority are T3, with a few 3.5s, a 4 and a couple of T5s that require a boat. But I'm having a hard time putting a scale on the difficulty rating for the challenge - it's obviously not a D1 or a D5 but where does it sit in between? I don't think it's anywhere near as hard as a grid-filling challenge or one that requires visiting multiple states or countries and there are plenty of qualifying caches within reasonable driving distance of GZ to choose from. It's more about time, which is what this challenge is about anyway, but how does that equate to difficulty? The way I see it (and it's just my opinion) is that the challenge cache should have the D and T of the hardest cache you need to qualify. If I've got to find a D5/T4 in order to qualify, then the challenge cache itself was a D5/T4. To me, finding the challenge cache itself has been relatively low d/t on that container, but to qualify to log a find was much harder over rougher terrain. Also - to me, finding 20 caches, regardless of d/t, is much harder than finding 1 (the challenge cache), so I'd look for it to be rated higher than if it were just a GRC or some such... And most challenges I've read state that the rating are for the qualifiers and the cache isn't self was an easy one... But - whatever rating it has, its pretty much irrelevant unless you're looking to fill in the d/t matrix on the profile (or qualify for a challenge cache). As I said in a previous post somewhere, challenge caches just give me a goal to accomplish regardless of the ratings...

About deleting DNF's for caches that were actually missing. I wonder if what you're describing has happened at caches that I've looked at, where I'll see a bunch of Found It logs and then an OM log saying 'cache has been replaced'. When I see those, I wonder "Were the previous Found It logs fake? Because apparently the cache was missing and the CO had to replace it". Maybe there was a DNF after that string of Found It logs, which prompted the CO to go and check/replace the cache - but if the cacher that logged the DNF subsequently deleted their DNF log, then I'm just going to wonder why the CO performed an OM. TL;DR - I think your plan to change DNF logs to Write Note logs is better than simply deleting your DNF logs entirely. Or the CO deleted it to 'tidy up' the listing. I too have seen that but also, the NM attribute is still there. Does muddy the waters a bit. I've seen a few where the CO writes note that he did something and the Nm flag still flies. I think a lot of our issues would be moot if people (CO and seeker alike) would just follow directions... But if they did that, what would we all argue about on the forums? We'd have to get 2nd jobs or go out and cache more...

About deleting DNF's for caches that were actually missing. I wonder if what you're describing has happened at caches that I've looked at, where I'll see a bunch of Found It logs and then an OM log saying 'cache has been replaced'. When I see those, I wonder "Were the previous Found It logs fake? Because apparently the cache was missing and the CO had to replace it". Maybe there was a DNF after that string of Found It logs, which prompted the CO to go and check/replace the cache - but if the cacher that logged the DNF subsequently deleted their DNF log, then I'm just going to wonder why the CO performed an OM. TL;DR - I think your plan to change DNF logs to Write Note logs is better than simply deleting your DNF logs entirely. Yep - I agree - leaving a note to give a brief explanation is probably a better procedure. I've regretted, after the fact, doing so in several cases... And to your point. If everyone deleted the DNFs and all you see is a OM log talking about replacing it, would be confusing.

Here is a website I put up regarding the japanese camp near Landers, Ca. Go to Dixiemine.com and there are pictures and a little bit of the story. I am still looking for the families that lived there. I do not have coordinates but the site is now considered wilderness area and the signs are saying no vehicles, hiking in only. If you look at very old topo maps the camp is shown. I can give you the section number and the map it is on. Phillip Very interesting! Great pictures. That'd make a great hike to cache close to it.