edexter

Thanks. I will check this out further edexter

I recently recieved a notice from Google that a data breach had occured and that I should change my password. All of the affected domains were Geocaching related (Geocaching.com and c:geo for example). So heads' up... edexter

Six months later, here's an update: 7/16/20: dnf 7/19/20: dnf 7/19/20 I post another NA log 8/8/20: dnf 8/19/20: The Reviewer disables the cache and notifies the CO that the cache "may" need maintenance and they will check back in "30 days" (48 days and counting...so far) The CO, who placed 1 cache (this one) found three, and hasn't been active since 8/3/08 did not respond. The cache was reported as having been physically removed 17 months ago. It's hard to get good help these days...

I'm noticing that maintenence is no longer required in my neck of the woods (Massachusetts) due to the coronavirus. Reviewers are no longer flagging caches in need of repair by disabling them or archiving them and NA logs are simply being ignored. The given reason of course is "we recognize the huge disruption to people's lives caused by coronavirus and don't want to put anyone at risk by asking them to go out". I guess this makes sense if your cache is placed downtown or if your state has a "stay at home order" (as of July 3rd none do) but walking in the woods is probably one of the safest outdoor activities possible and bringing a mask and hand sanitizer along reduces the risk to negligible. When a cache hasn't been found in a year or two, and the CO has been inactive for longer than that, it's been abandoned and no one is going to go repair it anyway. No one is put at risk by disabling or archiving an abandoned cache. It's the only way to maintain the accuracy of the cache listings. Giving folks more time to do repairs when they ask for it is easy enough and indicates that the cache is not abandoned.

I recently returned from an unintended extended stay in sunny Florida and after being gone for almost five months I decided to take a quick look around to see what had been placed near home in my absence. I figured there would be slim pickings, the winter and the virus undoubtably having slowed things down a bit, still I was a bit surprised to find a total of only 7 new caches in a 20 mile radius of home and only two of them with a d/t combo as high as 1.5/2. Five obvious P&Gs and a couple of puzzles...Increasing the search to 30 miles roughly doubles the area and resulted in 49 new caches, which is better, and more encouraging was more seeing that more than a dozen were t2.5 or higher. Guess I'll be doing some driving in the coming months...What's it like in your area these days? edexter

Oh, it's even weirder than that. My NA request was not ignored, it was rejected. When I questioned The Reviewer's response I was told "NA and NM logs are ony for people who have tried to locate the cache and have first hand knowledge. This is to prevent Armchair Cachers from causing unecessary maintenace runs"... Leaving aside the implication that my report was an Armchair Log, and granting the reality that 99% of The Reviewer's activity is sitting at a computer, how do you convince someone that a cache is actually gone when they don't go see for themselves or believe folks who have? This is such a bizarre example (no maintenace logs in the prior 10 years and two previous NM logs by different cachers with no response) I suspect some unknown factor is at play. I pointed out the cache is along the route of one of my multis that I regularly maintain, that I posted the NA the same day as my OM notes (this was October 2019: 5 months ago) and that I previously found the cache, knew where it was and had checked on it over the years...At this point (March 2020) the reviewer said he wasn't going to disable the cache or follow up on any NM or NA logs going forward until the Coronavirus "stay at home orders" are dropped so he "wouldn't be forcing people" to go fix their caches...As if that were possible... All in all very odd and the end result is what I think of as a Ghost Cache: the cache is gone but the listing lives on. At any rate, I sympathize with GG and their desire to replace a neglected cache with one they will maintain. I still suggest following the proceedure of posting an NM log, waiting, posting an NA log when nothing happens, and then waiting for The Reviewer to act. In my experience, they generally do, though I've seen the process take several years. In this case the first NM log was posted in July of 2018, so one year, eight months and counting since then and 11 months since the cache was removed. Chances they'll get a response sooner than that. You never know. edexter

Thanks guys, that was helpful and just what I was looking for. edexter

I'm wondering if there is a way to easily download a .gpx file of all the caches placed by a person. I have found the following ways which I don't consider easy: 1, Add each cache individually to a list (requires knowing all the caches and downloading them one by one) and do a pocket query of the list. 2, Going to their profile, opening the file that lists all their caches, and checking each cache individually or a page at a time (creates a .loc file not a .gpx file) 3, Opening each cache and downloading the .gpx file What I have in mind would be solved if one of the pocket query "fields" was "by owner". Is there any way to do that or something similar? Thanks, edexter

As Keystone pointed out this is "not typical", but I have seen a similar process play out a half dozen times. The process described in the guidelines should take six weeks. It mostly takes longer than that. There is a simple way to speed up the process which is to follow it. In this particular case the CO has not been active for over 11 years which you can tell by simply looking at their profile page with shows: 3 caches found, one placed, last find in 2004, this cache placed in 2004 and last maintained in 2006. It was an ammo box and lasted more than a decade without being visited by the CO. The game has been around long enough for some things to become apparent. One is that many caches are abandoned without notice. "Newbie placements" such as this one are even more frequently abandoned. This is expectable, so the process should take this into account. Groundspeak functions as a "listing service" while all cache placements and maintenance is done by Cache Owners. When they fail to act, responsible "members of the community" will step up and do the right thing, which in this case was to remove the "geo litter". Deciding to "informally" maintain the cache is another possible option (there are many pro and con arguments for this option). As the game matures the number of unmaintained abandoned caches is only going to increase and the need for an accurate "list" will become more obvious. If a cache I own needs maintenance I want to know about it and would rather have The Reviewer temporarily disable the cache than ignore it. It takes little effort to respond to the situation online and in my experience The Reviewers are very responsive to any CO who responds and explains what they will do to rectify the situation. If the CO doesn't take the time to respond online, they are very unlikely to actually repair the cache...

The actual process for getting a damaged non-maintained cache archived is often drawn out to ridiculous lengths.. As described in the guidelines, the process is simple, direct and straightforward. Caches are expected to be regularly maintained and if one finds one damaged, you post an NM log. If there is no response to it, the reviewer temporarily disables it and when there is no response to that, archives it. The process should take about 6 weeks and the CO can stop the process at any time by simply repairing the cache or asking for more time. That's the theory. In reality the process goes like this (this is an real example): The CO drops out of the game an abandons the cache and no longer does maintenance. After a while folks start reporting problems with the cache (wet, moldy, disgusting). Finally someone logs an NM which gets ignored. Six months later a conscientious cacher (not me) finds the totally disgusting cache and removes it writing a detailed log explaining why they removed the cache. Six months after that I check on the location (which I have previously known as it is along the route of one of my caches) see that it is gone and log an NA. The reviewer then says "No, it may need some attention but it was recently found" (by the cacher who removed it!)" so it's ok". That was six months ago. The cache is gone for 11 months now. There is an open NM log, and open NA log, the cache has been abandoned, removed and the CO has been out of the game since August 2008 and yet on the cache is still on the website, not disabled, no warning to repair it. I filled another NA log today laying out the evident once again. We'll see what happens. But the point is, unless you push the process (simply follow the steps in the guideline) nothing will change. And sometimes, even if you do, nothing will change for quite sometime.

GIS and Tax Assesors Property Maps (which let you click on a property boundary and see who owns it) have made identifiying who owns a piece of property a lot easier. In general, I am going to try to place a cache in an area that already allows public access, so being able to see what is town, state or federal agency controls the territory is a big help. Now, finding out who can "authorize" permission is another story. I generally make a phone call or send an email and ask if they have a geocaching policy and go from there. I comply with the rules but still question them. For instance: My reasoning is that any public land that allows hunting in season is certainly a suitable area to walk around in and leave a small piece of plastic by, in or on a tree. Certainly hunters don't report I am going to stand here, here and here, is that ok? Getting advance permission to place a cache in a specific location you've never visisted seems silly to me and the more reasonable land managers get this and instead generally use restrictions (you can't place it here: and then list the areas that are no go) rather that have you submit a specific location "up front". Management not micro management. I typically ask is it ok to put a cache anywhere in this area and then say I will tell them the exact location once I go check out the area. The more the land manage knows about geocaching the easier they are to deal with...

(In response to L0ne.R, who wanted to hear about cache maintenance from someone with "more than 100 cahces")... I presently have 130 plus geos (and another hundred or so TCs) that I actively manitain in five different states. I'm a big fan of multis so the total number of geocache stages is north of 500. To keep track of everything I use both GSAK and an excel spreadsheet. The maintenance section tracks when the cache was placed, when it was last found, when I last checked on it and what repairs were needed. While the tracking system was tedious to set up, maintaining it takes a few minutes a week: if a cache is logged, I note the date, find/dnf, fav pt. Since I get notified of every log, this is easy to keep up with. If I get an NM log I enter the cache and date and a note on what it needs to my repair list. As you might expect the majority of NM involve a missing or damaged coordinate stage, not the cache itself. Depending on the report I prioritize the repair: if an expirienced cacher reports a damaged container or stage and includes a photo it gets top priority. If a newbie can't find stage one of a five state multi, not so much. Consecutive dnfs on an easy to find cache goes near the top of the list, etc. One of the main reasons I cache is to get out in the woods for a hike. This is part of the reason most of my caches are multis and most of the reason I don't mind maintaining them. Generally speaking I'm going to enjoy my two mile woods ramble more than a long drive to an cache unknown to me. (Having to drive an hour or more to do new interesting caches can get tiresome...). If I can't get to a cache within a week or two, I'll disable it and say why in the log and estimate when I'll be able to repair it. Because I make myself available to other local cachers, I will occasionally get a PAF call or text and can assist folks and determine if the stage or cache is actually gone. Since I bring a repair kit with me (replacement logs, containers, pens, wire ties, etc) and do some temporary repair work for others, some folks return the favor and do a temporary repair for me. Because excel makes all this data easy to sort and play around with, I can tell how long it's been since I checked on a cache and compare that to the last find and decide when to go check on it. Since long woods multis are not popular with most cachers, and neither are "admitting" dnfs, it can be difficult to tell if a cache with no finds in a year or so is gone or simply ignored, so the caches with the greatest number of days between finds also get placed on the maintenance list for a check. A major change in the frequency of finds also gets it on the list (If a cache that was being found twice a month for years goes six months without a find, I have a pretty clear idea that something is amiss and the cache needs to be checked). The schedule of mainenance runs varies but on average I go out once every month or so to sort things out: sooner if there is clearly something wrong, less often if there are no new NMs logged. Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it ;-) edexter

Barefoot Jeff said :"I think there are too many variables to make that assertion." my assertion being that at any given moment about 5% of caches need attention. But then he documents 9 repairs to 38 caches over the course of a year which is 24% of caches needing a repair. And Barefoot Jeff is a conscientious CO. If some one who really pays attention to their caches needs to repair a quarter of them annually, then I think my estimate is in the ballpark, or possibly low, as a CO who doesn't maintain his caches would have an even higher "needing maintenance" rate. Personally, in the past year I've done 44 maintenance runs on my 130 or so caches, so a third of them needed repairs . Most of them are multi's, so counting stages (roughly 540) the rate is much lower (8%) so I think roughly 5% at any given moment is a decent lowball estimate. If you think in terms of an annual rate, it's clearly in the 20-30% region and this is for folks who actually do maintenance. For folks who don;t, it's clearly higher. But: this is one of those "your mileage may vary situations". I agree with his experience that that more remote and fewer stages a cache has the less often it needs maintenance. Single stage ammo boxes in the woods can go for many years without needing attention. Six stage multis (five micros and a lock & lock) are lucky if a year goes by. I tether everything and still the stages disappear... I would argue that anyone who has 50 or more stages is going to need to do a minimum of a couple of runs a year, very likely more, just to keep them up and running, and that if a CO with that many stages placed doesn't consistently log mainenance on their caches, prior to getting an NA log or a Reviewer nudge, they aren't doing it...

Based on my experience based of repairing my caches and confirmed dnfs of caches I've dnf'd, I would estimate the percentage of caches that need maintenace or are missing at any given moment as roughy 5% for caches placed recently and higher for oldies. So if a CO has 20 caches, odds are good that one of them needs repair. If they have 50, it's a near certainty and many of them will be aging. Some percentage of cachers simply don't do maintaince and if called on it (you know, by an NM log describing the situation) will choose to ignore, insult or prevaricate rather than repair the cache. Perhaps you have heard of the concept of "the tragedy of the commons": " The tragedy of the commons is a situation in a shared-resource system where individual users, acting independently according to their own self-interest, behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling the shared resource through their collective action." In this case, the shared resource is the listing service, and their self interest is in using their time doing something other than cache maintenence while pretending otherwise. Shirking responsiblity would be another way to describe it. Requiring folks who use the listing service to actually maintain caches listed is the simply remedy and that eventually comes down to a reviewer action when the individual user continues to ignore the community postings. I have to admit however that among the most practical responses to the "fake OM" response ("I repaired it last week", in response to a Reviewer request for confirmation the cache has been visited) despite the ever lenghtening list of dnfs, is the throwdown cache. Simple, fiendish, and salutory. A response to the non-response as it were. Not that I would ever consider such an act....but it does make one go hmmmm....

I notice that my interest in puzzles varies by "puzzle type" and within types it tends to vary by who placed the cache. In general there seem to be two types of puzzles: those which invlove a "brain teaser" of some sort that can be solved at the computer; and those that have to be solved "in the field". I find puzzles that combine these approaches to be the most engaging. For example a wonderful classic puzzle such as Still on Patrol GCK1MT (sadly now archived and dismantled) required code work, visits to physical sites 60 miles away, watching movies and learning military history and finding a worthy physical cache placed in an interesting area. My enjoyment of straight forward brain teaser type puzzle depends mostly on the difficulty of the puzzle and if I have a clue (if I have no ideas that work I'd rather be outside hiking so these tend to be solved or not during the evening or bad weather...) . In general, the majority of these puzzles are more about the puzzle solution than the cache placement and in my experience often tend to be uninteresting physical caches, even when the puzzle is engagzing. A similar "field puzzle" type cache is what I consder the "pretend multi" where you go to a sign or marker, plug in the numbers and then walk 200 feet to the container. Since the majority of caches in my area are placed by a handfull of cachers, after doing a few of them and checking the FP totals, generally few, I skip over them. Of a similar ilk are the "power trail mulitple choice" caches where someone lays out a string of caches, provides a choice of 2 to 4 answers to a question (hardly a puzzle, really) and after replotting the actual coords you go do a power trail. Again who placed the cache is paramount since the puzzles are trivial, but take time to "solve" and don't teach you much (the more you care about the subject matter, the better). My experience here ranges from "why bother" to "wow, that was pretty good". What I find most engaging as a format is a "puzzle multi" where deucing the coordinates relates to geocaching in some way, typically using maps, either modern or historical, which then leads you to work in the field. Field puzzles can be as simple as finding a series of stages as in a typical multi, or involve solving clues at the stages, or using projections, landmarks, hints etc. to lead you on to the final. While there is no accounting for taste, as a general rule, both puzzles and multi and combinations of them, tend to have "half the finds and twice the Fav Pts" In effect, the folks who choose to expend more time and energy in solving for the coordinates are a self selected group whose opinions I find more in tune with my own. Dosen't mean I can solve the brain teaser but I'm more likely to stick with it...More often than not, who created the puzzle is a good indication of how interesting I will find it to be... Regarding "short cutting the answer" from a cache owners point of view: I'm fine with folks finding a multi without finding all the stages (I construct them with location hints so this is possible if you are clever and observant) and if a stage is missing, a PAF to get the next stage coords is also good (as long as you let me know so I can go replace the stage). Small group finds, where one person does the puzzle work and everyone else just searches at the coords, are fairly common and not objectionable; but somehow having someone else tell you the final coords while you represent as having solved that d4.5 puzzle seems wrong to me. Write a note instead or describe your find as "found cache but couldn't solve the puzzle"

I doubt anyone knows even the approximate percentage of caches placed with explicit permission but I would guess it's on the order of less than 25%. I believe the great majority of caches are placed with implicit permission without any attempt to identify, contact or obtain permission from the landowner. Implicit permission means that the cache is placed in an area that is "open to the public" or "along a public way" such that "nobody cares" if you are there. The most common examples of this are P&Gs and LPC caches (curbside & parking lot caches) which these days make up 30-40% of all caches. The next largest group are caches placed on public land owned by towns or states that are known to be "ok with caching" and that consider caching to be just another type of "passive receation" like hiking or biking and either encourage it or don't prohibit it. On Cape Cod, for instance, a number of town recreational properties have caches placed by employees with the specific purpose of attracting folks to come visit. The caches with explicit permission tend to be placed on private property, or quasi public land (conservation areas open to the public or their memebers) that have explicit geocaching policies, require a permit, allow caches "here, but not there", etc. Groundspeak publishes some information about caching access but makes no effort to be systematic leaving it up to the individual cacher to jump through the hoops of obtaining permission. Getting permission is a crap shoot. For example I recently wanted to place a cache on a town property: On one side of the access road was a town landing controlled by the town harbormaster. On the other side, a newly opened town conservation area. I called the town hall and worked through their phone system until I eventually reached the person authorized to deal with the "can I place a cache here?" question. The harbormaster said, "No, absolutely not" and gave the reason as "because I said so". The conservation head said, "Yeah sure, thanks for letting us know. You can put it anywhere you want that's reasonable..." I've had similar experiences while Benchmarking. The great majority of benchmarks are on private property, some even in people's backyards. I go up to the front door and knock and ask for permission to search for it and the responses range from "No, go away" to "Yeah, sure, let me show you where it is". So you never know. It's worthwhile to keep in mind that there are a number of perfectly legal workarounds to being refused permission to place a cache in areas that allow passive recreation but forbid physical caches. The simpliest way to to create a "virtual multi" where you direct folks along a route of your choosing where they need to gather information off of preexisting objects (signs, trail markers, kiosks, structures, etc) and then assemble the information into coordinates to the "final" which is in an area that allows physical caches.

I've been stopped on occasion by the police who typically ask, "What are you doing?" and then relax when I say "geocaching". Most police who are aware of the activity and just wave you on. Those who don't know of it get it right away when I show then my track on the GPS or the webpage. It's a caching rite of passage....

Thanks for the help guys. I was able to make a copy of My Favorites, then create a pocket querry and upload to GSAK. Just what I wanted to do.

Is there a simple way to create a pocket querry for your favorites?

(Goldenwattle (above) seems to follow the same procedure that I do...) In my experience, the easier the cache is to find, the higher the likelihood of someone claiming a find who didn't actually sign the log. Most of my caches are multis in the woods and whenever I replace a log and match up the names, they match. On the opther end of the spectrum, I have a silly LPC cache that gets found frequently and whenever I replace that log there are a number of people who didn't sign it. (I guess when you find 50 of these in a day, you "forget" to sign some of them). Anyway, I use a simple routine: 1, I contact everyone who didn't sign in, tell them about the descrprepancy and ask them about it. 2, I post a photo of the sign in log on my OM log showing all the signatures. 3, I wait a week or so and then delete anyone who doesn't respond. Those who do respond generally say "they forgot" to sign and either delete their own log or offer some explanation or evidence that they actually found the log (a photo, a description of the cache, etc.) and I ask them to add this to their found log. I'm sympathetic with the "I forgot the pen crowd" as, I am often among them and substitutes are fine with me. A few times folks have not responded, then relogged a find after I deleted the first one and then ignored my second email asking for an explanation, so I delete them again. My reasoning is if you can't be bothered to sign a log in a cache that takes 15 seconds to find, open and sign, well, then "no soup for you!" Ah well.

I find the visual representation (the red circles) helpful when reviewing an area prior to placing a cache but not so much when there are mystery and multicaches in the area. Since the hidden stages are unknown, it's only after you have placed a cache that you get the word it is "too close". I recently ran into this issue twice: the first time my cache was 350 feet from a hidden stage; the second time it was 525 feet away. The Reviewer would not tell me the coordinates of the hidden stages, so I had to puzzle it out. I asked for an exception to the distance rule in the first case because the cache was in the middle of a river while the hidden stage was ashore and in the second because there was a busy four lane highway between my cache and the other. I was told "no" in both cases. Because I also place a number of mystery and multicaches, I have run into the distance issue from the other side and to date I have found notes on four of my caches that have a version of this: "GC4V8WD is 314 ft E of your waypoint. Minimum acceptable distance is 528 ft. Learn more." In each case, my cache was placed years earlier than the other cache. In each case, I emailed The Reviewer who approved the other cache and asked for an explaination of why the other cache was approved, indicating that I wasn't objecting to the placement, but wanted to know the rationale for approving it. No response from any of The Reviewers. Anyone else run into this issue?

Thanks guys, I will try reloading the caches that lock up by themselves after clearing everything out. I generally use GSAK but not always so I'll reload the problem cache using that and double check the software and firmware updates. edexter

I've been having an issue with my Oregon 600. After selecting a cache and hitting the "go to" button the map page screen comes up. Then if I hit the back button and select "show Description" I get a blank page white scrren lock up. Can't go forward or back. Oddly, this only occurs on some caches so not sure what makes some work and some not. Any thoughts out there? edexter

Ok, no names to protect the innocent... Cache placed 7 years ago rated 3.5/2.5 with 14 finds and 46 dnfs and last found in 2015 and no maintenance logs by the CO unless prompted by The Reviewer Reviewer in 2017 : May I request the cache owner verify this cache remains in play? CO reply later the same day: "Recently checked in this and it's there." Reviewer: 8 dnfs and and a year later: As this cache has been un-found since April of 2015, with a string of DNF's, may I ask you (the cache owner) confirm this cache remains in place and available to be found? CO reply later same day: "Have already checked and it still awaited someone to find it again." Present day: a year later, still no finds. Looking further down the list to the last recorded find we see: "The hint no longer applies and was leading us astray!" No change to the hint since the cache was published, eh? Since the basic idea of cache maintenance is to have a cache available to be found, that actually can be found with the information provided, once you've identified a "pretend maintainer" the simpliest thing to do is avoid their caches. Getting them to actually do maintence, well....not going to happen. Identifying them in advance can be tough, but here are the signs: 1, They have many caches but never post OM logs. 2, The cache page is never updated no matter how long the cache has been in the field nor how many changes to the area have occured 3, They either ignore NM logs completely or immediately post that they "just checked on it, and "it's fine". 4, When someone finally posts an NA log it's The Reviewer, not the CO, who eventually archives it....

Thanks Keystone, I will check it out. edexter