Lord Stirling

You can find caches under the snow. I've found many, some under as many as 3 feet of snow. See that tree at ground zero? Dig around the base or poke around (gently) with your hiking stick. See evidence of a down tree under the snow? Check that out, especially around the root ball. Just think of the places you normally find caches without snow and check those with snow and you might surprise yourself. Also, if it's been a while since the last snowfall, you might find tracks going right to the cache, making it a piece of cake. There is a "winter" attribute. Search for those, as they are caches that can easily be found with snow on the ground. Usually they are up in trees. No need to spend your winter caching in mall parking lots.

You can have an event in a park where every fence post is a "cache", or one where all of the manhole covers and storm sewer drains in town are "caches". Think of the possibilities!

That's precisely what it is. It's a way to get around the temporary cache, distance and virtual guidelines. As I understand it some of these "temp" caches at some of these events aren't even caches. I get the play your own game ethic, but sometimes things are taken a point that the game some people are playing has no resemblance whatsoever to geocaching. I understand at least one event involved logging Christmas light displays around town. Seriously, how is that geocaching?

Give up and move on. There are plenty more out there. I recall one where I had 6 DNFs over several months. I wasted quite a few hours on that one before the owner archived it.

Me

Note, don't confuse the 60C with the 60CSX or 60CX. The 60C is a discontinued unit and is nowhere nearly as good as the 60CSX or 60CX. The 60C doesn't have expandable memory or the high sensitivity receiver. You can get a 60C pretty cheap though, so if expandable memory and the high sensitivity receiver aren't important to you then it might be an inexpensive alternative.

If you have a list I'd be happy to take a look at it. Please e-mail it to me.

Good idea and if the cache doesn't have the permission of whomever is in charge of your subdivision, perhaps you should issue a needs archived log.

For starters, double check your coordinates. The ones you supplied put the cache in the Atlantic Ocean a few hundred miles off the coast of France. You might want to double check your home coordinates as well, unless you live on a boat in the Atlantic. Other than that, it seems just to be a matter of time before your local reviewer gets to it

I see nothing in the queue under your name. As others mentioned, did you check the box that says the cache is active? Is the cache enabled? What state are you in? Perhaps I can find it easier if I know where to look.

Have a holly jolly Christmas everyone and may 2008 be the best year ever!

I have some very good stories. Here is the best one with the details redacted to conform with the Groundspeak privacy policy. A newbie cacher named _______ submitted two multi caches in _______. So far so good right? But here is where it gets good. The first one was _______ and all of the stages of the second one were ________. I was flabbergasted! I posted a reviewer note asking the owner to _______ the first cache to _______ and he tells me that _____ and ______ were ______. Give me a break! So now he submits a ______ and breaks the first multi into ______ and _______ and they are placed guess where? By a _______. Not only that, he hid them in a _______. Talk about clueless. So he insists that I ask another reviewer, so I e-mail Mtn-____ and asked him what he thought. He tells me ______. So I relay this info to the owner and he e-mails me back with ________, but when I look at the listing again it says _______. Simply unbelievable. It really makes me wonder about some people.

You can do this using GSAK, EasyGPS or a host of other applications. And if you have a unit that takes more than 500 waypoints you can load multiple pocket queries and have thousands of caches on your unit if you like. If you have a Garmin and get GPX files, it will automatically populate the comments field with the cache and owner name. You can also use GSAK to add the cache type, size, terrain and difficulty. There is also a way to use Garmin's POI loader along with GSAK to add the clue and cache page info for each cache waypoint. Not sure how things work with a Magellan or Lowrance though. And don't rule out getting an inexpensive PDA. There is something to be said for having the cache page in your pocket for each of the 500, 1,000 or more cache waypoints in your GPS.

Hi, I looked at the queue for Minnesota (assuming that is where you hid it) and didn't see a cache there from you. Did you check the box that says "Yes this listing is active"? If it isn't checked, it will not appear in the review queue and your reviewer won't see it.

Nice pictures

In rough order of how often I see them : #1 - Too close to other caches. A person comes along and thinks its a great place for a cache. Unfortunately so did someone else 2 years ago. People really should have all the area caches on their unit, or at the very least, check for nearest caches before submitting. I'd estimate that this accounts for nearly half of all caches that are initially rejected. #2 - Vacation caches. A person comes along and thinks its a great place for a cache. Unfortunately he lives 3,000 miles away. #3 - 1 star terrain but not handicap accessible. I won't turn it down for this, but will add a note asking the owner to change it. #4 - Too close to bridges, schools, RR tracks and other off limits areas. #5 - Commercial content or agenda. Page will say something like "Cache is by Joe's pizza, who has the best pizza in town" or "The purpose of this cache is to raise awareness of autism". #6 - Additional waypoints not added for multis and puzzles. #7 - Private property without permission. #8 - Does not comply with known policies for a park system. #9 - Illegal hiding methods. e.g. buried caches, drilled holes, nails in trees, graffiti #10 - Bad coordinates. Cache is supposed to be in Michigan but submitted coordinates put it in the Azores.

I get tingly every time I hear Briansnat say "bomb squad."

Coming here for a nudge in the right direction is fine. Coming here expecting someone to give you the answer is not,

There is no blanket ban on geocaching in wilderness areas. Many wilderness areas do ban geocaching, some do not. Nothing I've ever read in the Wilderness Act of 1964 would prohibit geocaching. In fact recreation is specified in tha act as one of the purposes of wilderness areas. From Sec. 4-B: ..."Except as otherwise provided in this Act, wilderness areas shall be devoted to the public purposes of recreational, scenic, scientific, educational, conservation, and historical use. Anyway, considering that the Wilderness Act allows for prospecting, mining, power lines, grazing animals, road building and drilling, and camping and horseback riding are accepted uses, geocaching is rather benign in comparison. As far as the OP is concerned, I'm all in favor of more WAs.

Glad to help. I will question caches placed on or near any bridges that carry auto traffic. It doesn't have to be a highway bridge. I may consider an exception if the bridge is a rural bridge that doesn't carry much traffic. An example might be a covered bridge in the Vermont countryside, or a bridge over a creek in the middle of farm country in Kansas. Also busy pedestrian bridges over highways or in high traffic areas will probably not be published, but a pedestrian bridge on a hiking trail in the middle of a state park would probably be OK. The cache container can also come into play. If the hider wants to put an ammo box or PVC pipe on that covered bridge in Vermont, I would strongly suggest that he consider a different container.

Actually e-mailing the reviewer and taking your issue to the forums are recommended methods if you are having problems getting your cache published. No, you don't need to send a barrage of e-mails to the reviewer, but if there is a hold up, you are perfectly within your rights to send him an e-mail. Sometimes a cache will just slip by a reviewer and he might need a nudge. If there is no response after a couple of days then send another. If the reviewer turns down your cache and you feel that it is not justified, you can take it to the forums. This is actually part of the appeals process recommended by Groundspeak. Just make sure you present the whole story in your post and stay away from flaming, or name calling or wild accusations. I would do this before submitting a cache. Once you've submitted a cache for review, there really isn't much your fellow locals can do or tell you. Odragon gave some good advice regarding how to speed up the review process. Using the additonal waypoints feature where applicable is important. Though the guidelines don't require it yet, I can tell you that when I encounter a listing where additional waypoints are not used, it will go to the back of the line because it takes much more work on my part and I will try to publish the easy ones first, then go back and look at the harder ones. Using additional waypoints will put most multi and puzzle caches in my "easy pile". Most important thing in any how to regarding the placing of caches is READ THE GUIDELINES. And I mean really read them. It is apparent that many people who submit caches check the box that says they read them, but really didn't. Those check boxes aren't like the check boxes on software install agreements that everybody checks without reading the agreement. If you do not take 10 minutes to read the guidelines it could cost you hours in time going back to remove, or move your cache or re-work it. I recall someone who submitted a very ambitious multi cache that obviously took days to put together. There were 4 guidelines violations in his first submission. When I pointed them out, he made changes and the new version has several different guideline violations. His third attempt had even more. So instead of his cache being published right away, he spent several days re-working it and it took nearly a month for it to finally conform. All because he refused to spend 10 minutes reading. I estimate that a as many as 1 of every 3 caches placed by newbies has an issue that could have been averted by reading the guidelines.

I stand corrected. Your cache was on hold which is why I didn't see it at first. It was awaiting your adding additional waypoints which you've done. You will need to send POFE an e-mail telling him that you've done so. He won't know that you've done it unless he goes through his hold queue again and I have no idea how often he does that.

Its a great unit for geocaching and compares well to Garmin and Magellan units. It's chief negative is that it doesn't do autorouting. The user interface is also a bit clunky compared to Garmins.

Between all those I'd go for the Venture CX. Its the only one of the three with expandible memory. You might also want to look at the Lowrance H20 if you're looking for bang for the buck. For $220 you can get the H20 Plus and that includes detailed maps in the price. Maps are about a $100 add on if you buy any of the three you mentioned. The H20 is B/W display and doesn't do autorouting (turn by turn driving directions) like the Venture CX and eXplorist do, but if that isn't a feature that is important to you, then the Lowrance H20 Plus might be something to check into.

I don't see a cache from you in the NJ queue. Did you receive a confirmation that it was submitted? . Can you see the unpublished page? If not your submission wasn't received. If it took you too long to fill out the page, it was likely lost. This is the most common reason for this to happen.