jhauser42

I just did my first 2 canoe caches yesterday. They were a blast. In fact, one of them was actually a "park-n-grab" that could only be accessed from the canoe. It was also pretty amazing to be in a canoe in Buffalo in November!

Place a cache on your car with a GPS tracking device. The finder would have to go to a webpage that lists the currnet location of the cache based on the info sent from the tracking device.

Found one of these at a local baseball field yesterday, although the container was glued into the fence cap instead of being placed there magnetically.

You can make a bookmark list of anything that you identify as a TB hotel then run a PQ off of the bookmark list.

Now, where's the fun in that? Well, part of solving a mystery cache is to use any and all means available right?

You could also just do a search on yellowpages.com for Groundspeak in Washington.

To take a manual average you are going to have to take several readings. Go the cache site, let your GPSr settle and then take the reading. Go to a point about 60 feet (20 meters) away in a different direction and then approach again. Let the GPSr settle and take the reading. Do this from 3-5 different directions, then take the average of the readings. In your example you had N 49.06.542 - W 122.38.959. If your 3 readings turn out to be: N 49.06.542 - W 122.38.959 N 49.06.539 - W 122.38.952 N 49.06.548 - W 122.38.951 use the average: N 49.06.545 - W 122.38.954. It may not be perfect, but it will help to alleviate some errors. You can also take the readings on several different days to help account for satellite patterns and weather conditions.

That was a fun puzzle! One of these days I actually have to go find it.

The big red X comes from Google maps. If you load too many maps from the same IP in too short a time period you will get that. I do not know how many in what time period, but if you wait they will come back.

I have never left the house when I got the notification although it has been tempting at time. I do, however, have 3 FTFs. 1 was published about 1/2 hour before I had to leave for work and it was on the way. Easy decision to stop. The other 2 I got the next day since no one else had bothered to log them by then.

Good points, jhauser42. The cache owner lives around five miles from the cache. October 4th was on a Sunday, so quick maintenance would be possible. As to the height of the river on that date, I have no idea, because I was not in Grand Rapids at the time, but I do know that in the spring it can be six or seven feet higher in many areas than its normal level. Exactly! An inch or two wouldn't have made muc difference to SF, I believe he's quite adventurous and used to adverse conditions....I may be mistaken though! Yes, but an inch or two of rain (4 inches in a week) would not raise the river an inch or two, but substantially more when you consider that all of the feeder streams and runoff would be pouring into it. It would probably raise it quite a bit and cause the current to be faster. That is certainly what happens here to rivers, streams, etc. that are only a couple of inches deep. Again, as I do not KNOW what the conditions were or how the CO accesses this point I do not have any way to make a decision as to what happened. It just strikes me wrong that such a high terrain cache could be checked on that quickly. Is it possible? Of course. However, I do not find it likely. Since I placed the cache and know where it is I can do the five minute drive over to the location and without even getting wet, see the cache from the bank of the river. Since emails come into my iPhone with a tone alerting me to new emails I had the info on the temporary hold only seconds after recieving the email. Also the communications that I posted were the only ones that took place. Soon after posting them I did recieve one other email (which was requested to not be made public) and I am abiding by this request. Believe me-Dont believe me, I dont care any more. Like me-Dont like me, I dont care any more. The fact is that I will not go through the money or the time to place another cache, since it will be quite some time before I loose this sour taste in my mouth from this incedent. I doubt that if I dont hide any more caches that the community will be effected at all, In a few months they wont even remember who I was. Any other questions??? Yes. You just said that you checked the cache placement from a distance. I have no problem with that. If you placed it you probably can see it fairly easily. However, in your maintenance log you said the log was blank and dry. How, from a distance, can you tell if the log is blank or dry?

On my monitor, in both Opera and IE7, it scrolls off of the right side of the screen. My monitor is set to 1280x1024, a very common setting. You might want to think about resizing.

Good points, jhauser42. The cache owner lives around five miles from the cache. October 4th was on a Sunday, so quick maintenance would be possible. As to the height of the river on that date, I have no idea, because I was not in Grand Rapids at the time, but I do know that in the spring it can be six or seven feet higher in many areas than its normal level. Exactly! An inch or two wouldn't have made muc difference to SF, I believe he's quite adventurous and used to adverse conditions....I may be mistaken though! Yes, but an inch or two of rain (4 inches in a week) would not raise the river an inch or two, but substantially more when you consider that all of the feeder streams and runoff would be pouring into it. It would probably raise it quite a bit and cause the current to be faster. That is certainly what happens here to rivers, streams, etc. that are only a couple of inches deep. Again, as I do not KNOW what the conditions were or how the CO accesses this point I do not have any way to make a decision as to what happened. It just strikes me wrong that such a high terrain cache could be checked on that quickly. Is it possible? Of course. However, I do not find it likely.

This has been a very interesting thread. Iwas not going to respond but I see 2 things that bother me. 1. GS has not responded. This seems odd considering all of the action this thread is getting. 2. How quickly the CO managed to check on it. This is a high terrain rated cache that the CO says should not be attempted while the river is flooded. However, in the 7 days prior to the CO checking this on Oct 4th there were approximately 2.5 inches of rain in the region, 1 inch of that in the 2 days prior. This seems like it would make the river higher than normal, although maybe not flooded. If this is the case, then the CO got the NM request, happened to be in the area and happened to have any necessaryu equipment to get over this river with him. All in one day? Seems unlikely, although possible. We are just missing so much information on this one that it is hard to know what is true or not. I do know that based on other caches that have never been found and are not archived I would not be worried about other hard caches being archived. This looks like a unique issue with this one cache only.

I would never just email someone and tell them where it is. I think it is just wrong to assume the person wants to be spoiled that way. I have emailed people about DNFs and asked them if they would like a hint.

I've actually had 2 cachers admit to this.......Didn't think anybody would search for the new dilm can cache if it said micro. Then maybe they should hide something else?

Why do some hiders have such a hard time accurately listing the size of their containers? The cache listing page specifically tells you what each size means. As an example, I went for a find at lunch today that is listed as a small (holds logbook and small items). The cache description said "small ammo box". What I found is essentially a toy ammo box that has an inside volume about equal to a 35mm film can. This is clearly a micro. It is also the second time I have found micros from this hider listed as smalls. Now, I have no problem with micros, they are the majority of my finds, but PLEASE, list the size correctly! I would have never even looked in the palce where this one was hidden, but it caught my eye for some reason. The only reason I can think why people would do this is to trick the people that filter out micros to come and find your cache. Well, all you are going to do with this method is get people to ignore ALL of your hides when they get there and find they hated this one because you misrepresented your hide.

Of course a simple star rating can not fit to every one, but the more people are rating a cache, the better fits it to the average of the people. I also agree with you, that you do not want to see scuba or T5 caches, which are rated with 5 stars, if you can't do them. But this should not be a problem, because if the rating system is integrated as a native system, you can filter the caches via pocket queries the same way you filter the caches by attributes, types or diffculty. Concerning the favorite list: I like them, but they are useless when you want to look for good caches on the map or in lists. You always have to open the details of a cache to see if and on which favorite lists it is listed. In my opinion a 5-star rating in combination with all the complex query functions is very useful to find good caches. I have to disagree with this. No matter how you implement such a system you will get a significant portion of finders that love the cache and rate it 5 stars. You will also get a significant portion that hated it and rate it 1 star. This will lead to all caches ratings trending to the mid-point.

No idea, but I want to use that math when I pay my taxes!

A regular pocket query will be limited to 500. If you run the special "My Finds" pocket query by clicking the "Add to queue" button it will give you all of your finds, but will not contain the most recent 5 logs. Also, if you run it after your 5 PQs for the day it will not count against your limit of 5. It does seem to count against the limit of 5 if you run it before your regular PQs (unless this has been fixed).

.99 miles from home for me. However, that one is a 2-part multi where the first part needs help and from the string of DNFs, including mine, the 2nd seems to be missing. Next closest are 2 Wherigos, but I cannot do those with my Nuvi. Next nearest is a 3 part multi-cache along the Niagara River with a 3-mile hike. Not sure I want to do that in the winter! Nearest traditional is 2.2 miles and is a Scuba cache. Nearest reasonably doable traditional is 2.45 miles. Nearest to work is .77 miles and I've DNFd it twice. I'll get it one of these lunch hours.

While I agree that this will be true for most, I actually enjoy going and looknig for those that have not been found in a long time. I'll even look for those that have several DNFs in a row on them. It is really cool to find a cache that has not been found in a long time! My best is a recent find where the original container had not been found since June 2007. Even the CO (adopted so he may not have known the exact hiding spot) did not know it was there and had replaced it twice. That was definitely a favorite experience of mine.

You should definitely log your DNFs. It is part of your caching history and should be preserved. Also, if the CO (cache owner) starts getting a string of DNFs it can alert him/her to a possible problem.

My latest hide was published about 4pm local time Friday afternoon. It was found about 10 minutes later.... How long from the time you hid it to the time it was found? Final cache submission (after a requested modification) was about 3:45. 15 minutes to publish, another 10 to FTF.

My latest hide was published about 4pm local time Friday afternoon. It was found about 10 minutes later....