South Surrey Scavengers

www.earthcache.org is working on a Q&A section on its website.

Your information was likely correct at the time (yesterday). But today is another day and ... I am part of an advisory group that Geoaware has set up to assist on setting up guidelines for Earthcaches. I just heard today from him that Jeremy e-mailed him with an update on the situation. A website update is coming which will have an automated section (but not clear just what this is). Also, there is supposed to be an additional approver trained to help with Earthcaches. That's all I know at this time. It sounds like improvements are on the way and they're not too far off. But no specific time has been given. GSA is also working on improving its website. We're currently discussing some possible improvements. Keep submitting your Earthcaches at www.earthcache.org

The process of approving Earthcaches on geocaching.com will be changed shortly and will make the approvals much faster. The website is supposed to be updated soon. Once updated, Earthcaches once approved through GSA shouldn't take too long for them to get onto geocaching.com.

Earthcaches are relatively new. They are first approved by Geoaware through the Geosociety of America. You can visit their website at Earthcaches. Thier purpose is to educate everyone (especially geocachers) about the natural world that we live in. Hopefully by having more people learn and understand some of the natural features of our Earth like fossil sites, unique landscapes, rock outcrops and other geologic processes, we will all have a greater appreciation for where we live. Earthcaches are more than just virtual caches because of their educational aspect. If anyone has recommendations for new Earthcaches visit the website.

I just don't get it.

Would you believe that there are geocachers outside of the USA? We don't have any benchmarks here in Canada (at least not on this website) except for the border monuments.

Something

Geocaching with my dog is anything but cheating. It's actually more difficult. My lab likes to chase birds and squirrels. One geocache that I went looking for was in a city park with dozens of squirrels. Leash law was in effect so I spent an hour playing tug-of-war with the dog before deciding to go home with a DNF.

Since I'm still a tadpole I guess I qualify as a "newbie". The few times that I've posted I've been told that the topic has been discussed before. Usually with a link to that older thread which I found useful. However, I'm sure a lot of "Newbies" don't want to look foolish by asking questions that have already been asked. Let's be gentle with them as we were all "Tadpoles" once.

Can I log a DNF if I didn't look for it? I could have thousands of DNF's that way.

fast test

testing

It seems we don't really have benchmarks in Canada at least in the geocaching community. I see the ones mentioned are locationless or virtual caches and not true benchmarks like the US has. The Canada-US border monuments are the closest to me here in the Vancouver area. It would be nice to see Benchmarks set up in Canada like the US has. Maybe the data doesnt exist or maybe GC doesnt want to do it for all countries.

My original question was never really answered and the topic was completely changed from "Do we have local cache approvers?" to "is the pig farm a suitable location?" I purposely did not provide a link to the cache now being discussed because it was not relevant to the original question. I guess I shouldn't have mentioned what prompted me to ask the question in the first place. So I'll try to be more concise now. Are cache approvers located in local regions such as one in BC to approve BC or even one for the western provinces or do we have an approver that calls home ONTARIO but approves all of Canada. Or are the approvers located in the US and approving all of Canada. My preference would be to have cache approvers as local as possible however, I'm sure geocaching.com does not have an unlimited number of cache approvers. So what kind of balance between local representation and limited resources should be struck? If there isn't a cache approver for just BC I would think we could find a local geocacher that would volunteer for the position or am I wrong?

I agree that the cache was handled appropriately after the fact and we don't need more rules. But the question still remains, do we have local cache approvers or not and/or should we have local cache approvers?

A recent cache which was approved in Port Coquitlam was in bad taste and has resulted in some discussion about who is approving caches in the Vancouver, Canada area. Surely no one who lived in the Vancouver area would have approved it. Which seems to indicate that approvers are likely back east or from the US. If we don't have a local approver may I suggest that we get one for this area. Anyone else think the same?