The red-haired witch

Now, that is snotty. Your caches (or, according to your later post, some of your caches...) are placed for knowledgeable locals, and not for those inferior individuals called tourists? I'm very happy when people find my caches, no matter if they are locals or travellers from other countries, knowledgeable or not. Guess I'm not the snotty type Knowing the reviewer you are complaining about, I'd say her tone there was more "annoyed" than "snotty", as you first moved your approved cache to a spot where it would not have been approved, then reactivated it without having fixed the problem with it. Sure, it has now been established that you made an honest mistake and did not intend to circumvent the guidelines, but really, how hard would it have been to click on the reviewer name and send her a message, instead of posting a complaint here?

Have you tried removing the batteries for a minute? That should reset it. Thanks for your reply, i did remove the batteries and that didn't help, i have reposted my query to the GPS tech help. If removing the batteries didn't turn it off, there is something very strange going on ... and you'll probably be very rich soon. Running electronic devices without electricity!

I like GSAK, but I certainly wouldn't quit geocaching if it suddenly disappeared. I cached for years without it (and with an etrex legend...) Even when using GSAK and a 60cx, I never bothered with the POI loader. Too much trouble, 1000 waypoints seemed enough for me. Try easy GPS maybe? It is free, takes only a couple minutes to download. No fancy options, caches will simply be listed by complete GC codes, but it is easy to use, as the name says.

I would tend to say 5 as I consider special equipment (harness, rope) to be needed when the climb is high enough that you have a high risk of killing yourself if you fall. Some people free climb cliffs or can free diving a hundred feet deep, yet people usually rate those place as terrain 5 as you should use special equipment, for safety, even if you don't absolutely have to. I don't understand why so many people think climbing a 50 foot tree is much safer than climbing a 50 foot cliff. If it is a really solid and easy tree to climb (similar to climbing a ladder, then maybe 4 (can you climb a tree without using your hands?). Please use the climbing attribute.

There is also a Stargate cache on Mont Royal, those are pretty rare... I haven't visited it myself, so couldn't tell you if it is a nice spot, but with a terrain rating of 4, it's bound to be off the beaten track. If you are in shape, there are stairs going most of the way up the mountain... and a nice view from those stairs. It really depends on what type of caches you like and what areas you'd like to visit. Montreal has lots of tricky puzzles, well-hidden micros in "touristy" areas like Old Montreal, easier caches on trails in large city parks that can make you believe you are far from town...

I could see a market for renting GPS receivers (Dakota or Magellan GC maybe, not too expensive paperless)for people who want to try geocaching, but only if you also plan to offer introductory lessons in GPS use and geocaching, as anyone who knows how to use a GPS and geocache is likely to own a GPS and not need to rent one... There is not much else in the way of equipment one could rent for geocaching (bikes with GPS mounts maybe... geocaching on Le p'tit train du Nord is great). I don't know of any retailer in Quebec that carries the official Groundspeak line of products though, so there could be a market for those for sure. Many people would like to be able to buy the shirts, stickers, travel bug tags, etc, in a real store rather than online. I would suggest trying to contact Groundspeak

Sounds like a find to me. Containers often fall from their "intended hide". I'm not going to not log a found because it was less camouflaged than it was supposed ot be. I've found a few caches in the hands of a geocacher who arrived just before me. I see no problem in logging those either. I would only see an ethical problem there if you are the one who brought the tree or the building down to get at the cache more easily

Unlike (most) flashlights, wires, strings and magnets, those "little Giants" ladders cost a few hundred of dollars. A bit much to buy just for a cache (not saying it can't be useful for many other things, but not everyone owns/needs a 20 feet ladder). And it really won't fit in your caching kit if you cache by bus, bicycle, motorcycle or even some sub-compact car Nice of you to offer to rent yours, but if you're not always going to be by the cache, people need to either bring their own or make an appointment with you. I don't think that makes it terrain 3. Anyway, I'm unlikely to go caching in your area, but you asked for opinions, so you are getting them. I think that, when in doubt, over-rating terrain is better than under-rating it : - If you put too many stars, some people will comment it was too easy in their log, but they'll still be happy they found the cache. - If you put too few stars, some people may try for your cache even though the terrain is really above their ability, then see where they have to go and have to turn away without trying (or worse, try even though they shouldn't and get hurt in the process... For my part, I usually avoid climbing caches, but I've been known to do some tree climbing for a cache with a low terrain rating, alone in the middle of the woods, because I wouldn't turn away empty handed after an hour long hike I've been lucky so far when doing dumb things like that) I think you'll have more unhappy people in the second situation...

In my opinion, it clearly falls within the definition of terrain 5. Relative to Briansnat comment about a chair not being specialised equipment, if a cache is only a couple feet too high to reach, you could pile up a few logs, climb on your bike, on your backpack, on a chair or even on a caching partner , so I agree that no specialized equipment is needed. But if the cache is on top of a 20 feet wall, you need climbing gear or a big ladder, so, yes, that is specialized equipment. 20 feet is also high enough to kill yourself if you fall. Terrain 5 (as well as the climbing attribute) serves as a kind of safety warning... I will not try a terrain 5 cache alone. A terrain 3 or 3.5 might be a bit rough, but not that dangerous.

Similarly to what Zor said, I've asked a local Canada Post employee and was told that it wasn't an issue. Sticking a magnetic container under a mailbox is less of a crime than using tape to put an add on the mailbox, and even that would never get you into trouble (after all, the add usually has the phone number of the person who placed it, so Canada Post could easily find and prosecute that person). Of course, our reviewers always have the right to err on the side of caution. It is always good to avoid bad publicity for geocaching. So if bad things were regularly happening to mailboxes in an area and locals were likely to call the police on anyone spending time near a mailbox, I'd certainly see a reason to remove all such caches in the area. That is what the type of situation the link provided by CacheDrone illustrates perfectly. But the fact that this was a public announcement in 2008 that only applied to a part of BC makes me wonder why now is "a good time to bump this thread" and apply this directive to the whole country. In areas where there are no particular issues with mailboxes, why worry about existing caches that have been there for years? Mailboxes don't seem worst hiding spots than fences, park benches or spruce trees and are certainly better than garbage cans (really, why do some people put caches on garbage cans ) Of course, this discussion doesn't consider the fact that most mailboxes are not very interesting places where you'd like to bring people That's my reason not to put caches on mailboxes, but I will still defend the right of others to put caches on mailboxes and lamp posts

Do people actually do this? People do use Roundup and similar products to destroy some nasty plants. I've never heard of a cacher using it to find a cache, but I've heard of one cache owner using it to eradicate poison ivy covering some of his hides. The OP said this was along a bike path. It is very possible that the maintenance crew for this area is using defoliants to get rid of some plant that was growing there, like poison ivy, ragweed or any invasive species. I don't carry that kind of products with me, but there are some plants that I will pull out if I see them (even in nature preserves, pulling out invasive species is usually allowed or even encouraged). Were there other patches of dead grass along the path?As others have said, it may not be about the cache at all.

Yes, though I certainly wouldn't call that "intruding"... you don't own the area just because you are currently searching there. When there is a large event in an area, you can expect to meet people often. Cachers won't line up away from the cache area and wait for their turn to search, that would be ridiculously boring In over five years of caching, I've met with other cachers at GZ several dozen times. Sometimes I was there first, sometimes they were. Of all those times, I've only ever seen one person leave rather than accept to search together. The great majority of people are happy to team up for the search. And if it's a FTF, most people decide at that point that it will be a shared FTF, though I've heard of a very few prefer to keep the search competitive and that only the first to spot the container or the first to touch it will claim the FTF. (Of course, I'm in Canada, land known for its excessively polite people, so things might be different elsewhere )

As long as the terrain rating is appropriate (and it is, with a 5), I don't see a problem. I probably wouldn't try it, but the cache owner is honest about what is involved, so people know what they are getting into and to bring safety equipment. I get very annoyed at "sneaky" cache owners who put a cache 50 feet up a tree and call that terrain 2 or 3

Even if you do a non-official (i.e. not listed on geocaching.com) event, you can certainly ask local cachers to come help you. That way you have more GPS and more people who know how to use them. If one of your goals is to introduce new people to geocaching, having a few more teachers would really help. If there is a local forum for geocachers in your area you should ask there. You can e-mail a few (just a few though, so you don't run into the rules against spam) of the most active cachers in your area and ask them if there is a local forum or mailing list to reach geocachers in your area. As long as you don't use Groundspeak resources to publicize or organise your event, I don't see how you could infringe any guidelines. Don't publish any of the caches before the event, don't say where or when the event will be on this forum, or even put a link to a page where the details are. Groundspeak is understandably very careful about their ressources being used to raise money for anything without their permission, but they don't own the concept of geocaching, so you can certainly organise a private event based on that concept. And if you wan't to give back to the geocaching community afterwards, submit caches for publication after the event, either the ones who got the best comments during the event, or completely new caches so that those who helped at your event can have fun searching for those too.

I think this is why they included the following in the "Challenge caches" guideline : If you are thinking of creating such a cache, please include a note to the reviewer demonstrating either that you have met the challenge yourself, or that a substantial number of other geocachers would be able to do so. Some challenge caches are very difficult, I agree, with requirements very few people can fulfil, but there is a somewhat clear limit in the guidelines at least. That limit is what they couldn't manage to establish for the ALR. Also, from what I've seen at least, only challenges involving doing some specific geocaching are permitted, not challenges involving being/not being something or not doing some geocaching. So you can challenge someone to geocache every day for a month, but not challenge them to not geocache for a month... some ALRs were going in that direction, trying to "encourage" people to not geocache on weekdays, not find the caches of a certain hider, not be a premium member, etc... things we can't expect Groundspeak to approve of.

The reviewer's note might have several interpretation, but I understand it as targetting caches that have never been found and have been placed over 6 months ago, not all existing caches that have not been found in the last 6 months. Considering how much of a FTF race there usually is in most areas, I don't think it is unreasonable to suspect a problem if a cache has never been found after so long. Asking the owner to confirm that there is no mistake in the coordinates and that the cache is still there seems like a good thing to me. I know of a couple caches that are supposed to be easy, have no found, a bunch of DNFs and no word from the owner. After a few weeks, people just stop trying to find them. Would be nice to have the reviewer ask the owner to check on those caches... For very remote caches, a longer delay (one year?) could be better, and the reviewers would certainly allow some extra time if an area was unaccessible in certain seasons. Of course, in the "old days" people could place a cache far from home without being expected to ever go back there, so maybe that warrants an exception for very old remote caches... they're not "blocking a spot" or anything. Though having a confirmation that they are still findable might certainly renew interest in those unfound caches...

We seem to be "specializing" in the bike version of those power trails in Quebec and they are quite popular. My favorite so far is a 200 km bike trail with a cache every km (translation : 120 miles with a cache every 0.6 mile). Took me 4 days with a couple of friends, staying at inns along the way. Some crazy people have done it in 2 days In my experience, the fact that it is a power trail doesn't mean the caches will be all the same. They are just on the same trail. Size and hides are usually quite varied. I've heard about some of the power roads where all the caches are identical. I don't think I would like them as much, but I can see how some people would. I can see the challenge of "how many can I do in one day" on foot, bike or car. For those looking at how to find them, there is usually a bookmark associated with each power trail. Asking on your local forums or at local events could help you find those bookmarks for your area.

Saw that, but it's not the H version, so usefulness in the woods is severely limited. Sure, the Legend loses some accuracy under thick cover, but I wouldn't dismiss it that quickly. I geocached for years using one of these, mostly in "the woods". It worked fine. Legends were considered the best value for a "starting geocaching GPS" back when I first tried geocaching. They were well over 200$ at the time. I think it is great that people now have the option to buy one and try geocaching for only 60$. They can always upgrade (and keep the Legend as a back up) if they decide they really like this activity. Sure, there are now much better GPS available, doesn't mean that the old ones don't work as well as they used to.

Well... Nunavut can only be accessed by plane, so any caches in that territory could be said to be only accessible by plane. I do know of several caches in slightly less remote areas of Canada that are described as being accessible only by plane (seaplane). Usually caches hidden by people on hunting/fishing trips. For example : GCY7JK There is now a road a few km away according to the satellite pictures but, knowing the area, a 2km bushwack would be really though. Of course, one could argue that any cache on land can be reached by hiking/climbing (though it could take weeks or months to get to some places). Just like any cache marked as accessible by boat could be done by swimming... in theory... if you are crazy enough

Et si vous avez d'autres questions, vous pouvez les poser en français si vous voulez, il y a pas mal de géocacheurs francophones et bilingues qui lisent ce forum

The fact that the caches are only published on the date of the event certainly doesn't stop anyone from going look for them, no matter if they plan to go to the actual event or not. And saying that having caches published near an event is a reward to event attendees would be stretching the definition of reward, I think... Giving someone "early access" to a cache before publishing is allowed AFAIK, no matter if its for beta-testing or other reasons (birthday caches, proposal caches, event caches, etc) I think event organizers should be free to decide if they want publishing after the event, days before the event or weeks before the event... It seems to me that having people submit the caches over a period of several weeks and ask for a specific publication date makes the jobs of the reviewers easier than having a bunch of people all trying to submit their caches all on the same day to try to get it published on a specific date.

To me, the main interest of having them all published at the same time, about 24 hours before the start of the "official pre-event caching", is the additional challenge of puzzle solving and then planning the actual caching in a limited time. The Thursday night before a GAG is usually a fun evening of puzzle solving madness. Most of the time, that limited time factor also helps to convince cache hiders not to put insanely difficult puzzles. Most of the time...

I think this would work great when organizing an event in a relatively small area (for example, with all caches within walking distance) where there are relatively few existing puzzles and multis. Around here, when we place caches for an event we spread them around a huge area where there are hundreds of existing puzzles and multis, so the coordinator wouldn't be all that useful in determining if caches interfere (unless the coordinator was a reviewer ). The chances of having an existing "cache you can't see" interfere with a cache planned for the event are much higher than the chances of having two of the planned caches interfere with each other. As for asking people to place the caches long in advance to give plenty of time to the reviewer, we did remind everyone, but not everyone listened. I must say that the reviewers might be encouraging this disobedience by being too efficient and publishing on time caches that were submitted long after the deadline Oh, and I totally agree with not offering a reward to incite people to place caches. A prize to win (for placing the most caches for example) would increase the chances of people placing caches they can't/don't really intend to maintain. I think most people who placed a cache for our recent event would have placed one anyway, we just suggested a date to them so that all those caches got published on the same day. There always seems to be a large drop in the number of caches published here in the weeks before and after the event, so in effect we are just concentrating one month's worth of new caches into one day... one crazy day

A pocket query for "difficulty 5" & "unknown" caches would probably help you find some challenge caches, then you can check for bookmarks on the pages of those caches, if you are lucky someone in your area might have created a bookmark of challenge caches.

Actually, spruce trees are much less nasty to seach through in the winter, as you are protected from their pricklyness by a thick winter coat and gloves or mittens My usual suggestion for easy caching in the snow... : a pocket query with caches "found in the last X days", choosing X so that only caches found since the last big snow storm are listed. That way, you usually don't have to do any digging, and the tracks can help too .