Ma & Pa

BTW we have a nephew who is a figure skater with Disney on Ice. Here is photo from his recent wedding. (yeah off topic) .

I would say automobile trails only, and only in the Western U.S., as broad of a term as that is. And to answer Ma&Pa, yes, it is only "high number cachers" leapfrogging and container swapping. I just couldn't imagine a casual cacher with a few hundred finds doing or even knowing about these practices. As rare as it is to see someone like that even do one of these trails. NOTE: Not implying every "high number cacher" leapfrogs or swaps containers on say the ET trail. Nope. But the ones that do are. You mention casual cachers with numbers in the hundreds. They are obviously not high number cachers. At what point does one cross the line into the terrible high numbers? So what is the definition of "high number cacher"? . I can tell someone is probably offended. Take no offense, I'm almost sure you've made references to being retired in the past. I could get some laughs and say "anyone with more finds than me". I dunno, how does 1,000 finds per year or more career average sound? So even people who joined last October and have more than 1,000 finds already can get some love. By the way, 99.8% of these people probably do not leapfrog or container swap in the western U.S. Desert. Actually I am not offended and yes I have often mentioned that we have been retired for 18 years and that caching is our job. I just have this thing about painting everyone with the same brush. So I saw the title as being similar to stuff we see in the media or in social media. You know things like All High number cachers cheat All muslims are terrorists All left wing people are communists All Republicans are anti environment All male figure skaters are gay I had a thread some time ago about high number caching. I think I will start a new one . .

+1 I never thought of it in that way but I agree that it is likely that the intent has more to do with getting it done.

That kind of depends on where you live? There is a high concentration of a large series of caches placed for the purpose of achieving a high numbers in some areas that just don't exist in other areas. Someone living within a days drive of southern Nevada or PEI can easily achieve a 10 figure find count, while in most countries in the world, achieving a 4 digit find count would be extremely rare. According to your stats you have over 20K finds. I doubt that anyone living in Africa, Central or South America has more than 10K. You are absolutely right, although a good portion of the series on PEI are on hiking or biking trails. or hikes through woodlots. I don't recall ever hearing of container swapping there but there have been rumours of some splitting up of groups. In addition to having lots of caches nearby, you have to have the time to go get them for your numbers to go up. I think I am going off topic now so I may start another thread. .

I would say automobile trails only, and only in the Western U.S., as broad of a term as that is. And to answer Ma&Pa, yes, it is only "high number cachers" leapfrogging and container swapping. I just couldn't imagine a casual cacher with a few hundred finds doing or even knowing about these practices. As rare as it is to see someone like that even do one of these trails. NOTE: Not implying every "high number cacher" leapfrogs or swaps containers on say the ET trail. Nope. But the ones that do are. You mention casual cachers with numbers in the hundreds. They are obviously not high number cachers. At what point does one cross the line into the terrible high numbers? So what is the definition of "high number cacher"? .

To comfort you, I know of several cases where cachers with low numbers cheated (puzzle caches, souvenirs etc). I do not know any low number cachers however that apply container swapping techniques and that's the part of the topic I care about. Those high number cachers that take the time to retrieve a cache, take out the log sheet, sign it, put everything back at its place and then rehide the cache properly, are welcome to visit as many caches they wish to visit and find time for. The issue are those that affect others by not taking the time to behave as described above. . . The part about "medium-numbers cachers" or "low-numbers cachers" was posted as sarcasm I believe although they did not hold up their sarcasm signs. I have no problem with the discussion of topic dealing with the habits of some cachers on power trails, I just don't think it is right to point the finger at the high number cachers. BTW we have many long caching series here in Maritime Canada. Some are P & G series but most are on hiking trails or bike trails or ATV trails and I have never heard of anyone exchanging containers. Is this only practiced on the power tails out west? BTW what is the definition of power trail? Is there a number that turns a trail of caches into a power trail? .

No, I don't believe that's true... I don't either. If they were cheaters, they'd already have high numbers! FWIW, there are a number of "high-number" cachers (ie. >10000 finds) in my area that I know quite well. These are all good, decent, respectful people that would not and do not engage in any of the vandalistic practices described throughout this discussion. That being said, I've personally seen evidence of high-number cachers who were visiting the area that engaged in some unsavoury caching behaviour (I will not name names). It may not be fair to paint all high-number cachers with the "cheater" or "vandal" brush, but that group isn't free of bad eggs, either. I think the responses certainly prove the point that people seem more willing to believe that high number cachers cheat more than small number cachers cheat. I think cheating is a personality thing. If you are the kind of person who cheats, you will cheat no matter how many you have and if you are not the kind of person who cheats, it is likely that you wont cheat no matter how many you have. I have been reading this thread for a while and hated the title and the shaming and the accusations, and the rumours. I was reluctant to comment but I could no longer keep quiet. Seems pretty obvious that if there is any cheating going on, that it's probably not being done by a person with a low find count. Why does it seem obvious? We know a lot of people with high counts They get those counts by caching a lot. They have the time to cache and they do it a lot.

In what way is that going against TOU? I can't see anything in the rules which says referring to another cacher is not allowed. This cacher obviously thinks it's fine or else he wouldn't do it in the first place M Well you called him a cheat. I guess that is OK. And then you say it again in another way. Sdo I guess that is OK too. And if you are wrong, who cares

No, I don't believe that's true... I don't either. If they were cheaters, they'd already have high numbers! FWIW, there are a number of "high-number" cachers (ie. >10000 finds) in my area that I know quite well. These are all good, decent, respectful people that would not and do not engage in any of the vandalistic practices described throughout this discussion. That being said, I've personally seen evidence of high-number cachers who were visiting the area that engaged in some unsavoury caching behaviour (I will not name names). It may not be fair to paint all high-number cachers with the "cheater" or "vandal" brush, but that group isn't free of bad eggs, either. I think the responses certainly prove the point that people seem more willing to believe that high number cachers cheat more than small number cachers cheat. I think cheating is a personality thing. If you are the kind of person who cheats, you will cheat no matter how many you have and if you are not the kind of person who cheats, it is likely that you wont cheat no matter how many you have. I have been reading this thread for a while and hated the title and the shaming and the accusations, and the rumours. I was reluctant to comment but I could no longer keep quiet.

Yep cant trust those high number cachers they are all cheaters. Likely a lot of small number cachers are cheaters too because we know that they all want to be high number cachers.

We previously found caches on the French part of the island and St. Martin is shown as one of the countries in our stats. St. Martin is shown as one of the choices when searching by country. I assume the name St. Martin only applies to the French section, and yet some caches in the Dutch section also show up by that name. But as someone said, the hider can put anything he wants for the country. .

We are going on a cruise to the Caribbean and will be stopping at the island of Saint Martin. The northern section is French and the southern section is Dutch. Saint Martin & Sint Maarten. We would like to get a few caches in the Dutch section. The border is shown on the map but some of the caches in the south show the country to be saint Martin and some show Netherlands Antilles. https://www.geocaching.com/map/default.aspx?lat=18.0471&lng=-63.086417#?ll=18.052649,-63.094142&z=13 If the cache hider picked the wrong one, would the system change the country with regard to Statistics?

A big thank you to mjb His log on the cache has to be one of the best ever. Very funny. And now he comes to this discussion and provides a well written explanation of the situation. His posts have all been very informative and friendly and show a dedication and knowledge of his profession. . ,

Fun to see the news report of the cache, the bomb squad and interviews with the muggles

I could not find this item anywhere else in the forum. Hope it was not posted previously. http://coord.info/GLFRZ4Q6 .

Found a nice BBQ cover. a few years ago somewhere at side of road near a cache in USA. I still have it

There is a virtual cache in Quebec City that is a cannonball in a tree. There are over 2500 found it logs and 2200 photos in the gallery. Here is a link to the gallery http://www.geocaching.com/seek/gallery.aspx?guid=0bf0fc70-b897-48a3-ac94-ac2d69d9c0ef

Thanks all So are you all saying that I can load that number of caches in one shot? We have been putting high numbers in the gps but never more than 1000 at a time. We have often had 3000 in the gps but we loaded them 1000 at a time PA

We have an Oregon 450 and a 62S. We were told a few years ago that our units would hold more than 1000 caches but that we could not load more than 1000 at a time. So when we take a trip we have been loading caches in groups of less than 1000. If a GSAK database held more than 1000, we have been splitting it into smaller groups using mileage for example. I now wonder if the person who gave us this info was perhaps confusing this with the PQ restriction of 1000 caches. Any comments?

You can move trackables without trading. I know I can, but then I don't have any trackables left to move. WE pick up every TB we find and drop what we can in appropriate places. We don't trade and we always have a few with us. We do what we can to help trackables move. It would irk me if someone was keeping one of our TB's because they were waiting to trade it. PA

We travel a lot by car and pick up and drop lots of trackables. We grab all the trackables that we find unless there is a tag indicating a mission that we cannot help with. We usually have wifi access at the hotels most nights so we check the goals of the trackables that we grabbed that day and we try to help or drop it immediately if we cant help. Our biggest gaffe was in Bali Indonesia where we had gone for a wedding. We had a taxi drive us to the only cache we had time to get, and we grabbed a TB. We were only able to check goals when we got home. It had started in USA and wanted to get to India. We ended up dropping it near home in New Brunswick on the east coast of Canada

There is a thread about the Big Bang Theory gang going geocaching http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=322612&st=0&p=5385876&fromsearch=1entry5385876 Here is what Sheldon thinks about claiming finds when caching as a group. So I suppose he would feel the same about everyone in a group claiming FTF So the whole gang goes out geocaching and hence RobDJr's scene - Penny finds the cache the others couldn't which was right under their noses. The group goes through the stuff in the cache, and Leonard is rather dismayed at the lack of "treasure" in the cache. There is some cheap toys and a logbook, and a trackable. Then Howard says, "okay let's all sign it." Sheldon interrupts and says, "What are you doing? According to the rules you told me, the person who finds it gets to log it. Penny found it, therefore she gets to sign it. The rest of us didn't find it. We can't sign it." So Howard tries to explain that there are many ways to play, but generally how it works is that everyone present can log a "find" even though only one person actually "found" it. To which Sheldon replies, "I suppose you think that Watson, Crick and Wilkins all deserve to get the Nobel Prize for their work with DNA, then?" Howard, Leonard and Raj look at each other and Leonard says, "But Sheldon, they all did get the Nobel Prize." Sheldon says, "Yes, but that doesn't mean they all three should have!" Sheldon says, "Anyway this is a stupid sport. If I want to go all over the country looking for things other people don't want anymore (looking at the cheap toy), I'll just go to a yard sale."

Get the cache and leave. If they spot you they likely will come out and say hello. If it is a popular cache, neighbours may know what you are doing and speak to you. We have one on a post at the end of our laneway. The description mentions the post and says there is permission. http://coord.info/GC1N26E We are close to tourist areas so if we spot someone, we go out to meet them and find out where they are from. Even though the cache is relatively far from the houses, some have avoided getting it. Maybe their gps was not too accurate and they did not want to venture on to private property. When we go for caches on private property, we change our mind if it requires us to go on their porch or if the gps is not positive which building is correct or if it is hidden by a newbie whose coords may not be accurate.

Go to your profile page, click on the "show all logs for Trackable Items" link and then click on the Discovered It link. It will give you the total number of logs right on that page. Thanks Seems we have only discovered 9 of the 1455 we have handled. The 9 include 3 Moun10bike coins, a Groundspeak coin and and a couple of vehicles

So they found instead of attended? How is that a number thing?