hal-an-tow

Yes I can Stages on a multi cache can be bypassed by a searcher if there is no significant task involved at that waypoint, e.g. find a micro with the next co-ords, or read an inscription from a plaque to derive information . If the C.O. just suggests (as the initial post asks) there are no co-ordinates involved , no GPS use beyond the trailhead, just brains ... and cachers with brains and maps will probably mostly bypass the entire suggested route and go directly to the final, making it a traditional cache. However, the stages of a Wherigo* can simply be triggered by the cacher walking through a zone, so each location could be a Wherigo zone and the dialogue about walking towards a certain viewpoint next can be given within the Wherigo . However, I'd much rather try to come up with an answer for the original query than get bogged down in a debate on what is or isn't a multi , letterbox or unknown type cache, so here from the Help Center - hide your cache The relevant pages on cache types are too long to show here, but are easy to find . Trouble is, the different cache types have sort of evolved over time, the distinctions between them are not always clear (especially to a beginner) , and the descriptions are wordy and not easy to follow. I suspect the OP's idea immediately falls foul of the GPS use requirement outlined above, even before any cache type decision needs making : what he has in mind is actually a classic letterbox , not a Groundspeak 'letter box hybrid' cache as the current rules allow. I suggest the O.P. shelves his interesting idea until he has a bit more experience, and in the meantime makes Junior happy by setting a simple straightforward traditional cache in some spot near home that they both enjoy visiting and would want to bring other folk to . See how that goes, spend a few months caching, find as many of the other cache types as you can in your area, then think about how to implement your idea within Groundspeak guidelines . *Yes, I know wherigos can be cheated, but I doubt that is a simple process available to most cachers .

Oh, and facebook ... no, there are plenty of folk who will have nothing to do with it .

Hi The Ant Hill Mob , great that you (and Ant Hill Junior ) are keen to place a cache, but I note you've only been caching a few weeks, and found eleven so far, all traditional caches, and would suggest getting some experience of working out and finding a bunch of the other cache types before thinking of placing one yourself . You'll get a better idea of what works, both in terms of containers and hides, get more familiar with whatever device you use to point you to caches, and after finding a few letterboxes/multis/unknowns get a feel for your local customs (here in the U.K. I've visited areas half a day's drive away and found a different interpretation of what is a multi vs what is an unknown ). Plus thinking about what makes the hides/puzzles/caches you have found good quality, long lived and above all, enjoyable to do should inform what where and how you decide to place your first cache. To be honest, from your description, with no actual GPS use between points on the route, the only kind of cache which would take a finder along a trail in the way you want is a Wherigo !

Yep, just checked my caching e-mail inbox , same HTML shows in outlook.

As Cerberus said, that's not an unwritten rule . The written rule is clear : you swap evenly (or, if you are a generous person, perhaps a little generously ) based on value, i.e. perceived cash price of the item(s) . Each finder has to come to an estimate of value and decide on what is a fair swap. Individuals vary in how they value things and what their conscience allows. Basing swap trading solely on number of items would allow "Took unactivated TB, left paperclip " , which is obviously unfair. The 'treasure' in most caches is of no interest to me, but I carry a selection of small swaps (button compasses , individually packaged hand wipes , lego figures and some signature items I've made) which I will drop in good dry containers without necessarily taking anything in return..However, if I came across , say, a nice fossil in a cache, I'd happily leave a combination of whatever stuff I had with me which I felt was a reasonable fair trade. Like replacing found caches properly , not armchair logging virtuals, not stealing TBs etc etc., swag trading is up to the conscience and decency of the individual cacher. And finally , the O.P. has found 9 caches so far, and could be worrying about a problem that may never happen , unless caches in Brazil are packed with big valuable swaps ...

Please explain if this is supposed to be witty joke or it really is the incredible dismissal of women it reads as ?

Fairly old, and terrible at this, I've been on both sides of the question/answer dialogue, and can honestly say that my responses (or lack thereof) as a C.O. are given as a reflection of the way the request is worded and its content. If it's a rude, curt, entitled demand from someone who thinks they deserve a cache find because they paid for the app , the politest response I can manage is silence. A puzzle solution rather than a judicious hint : nope, here's a hint though. A demand for the solution to someone else's puzzle ? ........................... Tumbleweed. I generally get replies from C.O.s but don't often feel the need to ask : I've found that writing a good individual log for every cache rather than half a dozen words that could apply to any old micro establishes a friendly relationship which means any further contact , or meeting at an event , is going to be seen as a positive experience. The O.P. might tell us how many messages to how many various CO's they have sent , about what issues , and using exactly what wording ? (omitting cache/C.O. name ) , then we may be able to explain the lack of reply. I'm assuming that you checked before sending a message that the C.O.in question is still active (has visited the site recently or has made a recent find) and then allowed several weeks grace for the strong possibility that they are off on a holiday for two weeks, or a month's cruise, or even an extended stay in hospital, the arrival of a new baby, the death of a loved one .... Expecting cache setters to not only freely provide you caches to find, but also to jump to answer all and any questions quickly, would rapidly reduce the amount of caches set on Groundspeak. Cache setting and maintaining is supposed to be a pleasure, not a chore.

You certainly have ! Open unpublished cache, click download GPX, drop in GSAK , done. I know this didn't work in the past, as I tried everything I could think of to do it around 4 years ago , so I was surprised to find by a little idle experiment a month back that it does now !

Someone mentioned that the OP may be in Ireland, so I just checked that wiki too : "Ancient Monument (NI & RoI) Ancient Monument covers any structure that may be of historic significance, susceptible to damage and usually protected under law. Examples include, but are not limited to, megalithic structures (tombs, stone circles, dolmens, etc), raths (pre-historic fort mounds), earth ditches and ruined buildings. Any cache placed close to or within the confines of an Ancient Monument must be done so with the full permission of the responsible authority. Contact details of the person providing such permission should be provided at the time of submission." and "Walls (NI & RoI) Drystone walls are particularly sensitive to disturbance when used as cache sites and use of them for cache placement is not allowed. It is best practice not to use a hole in any kind of wall to locate a cache as it gets searchers in a mindset that this is a suitable location and can lead to damage in other locations in the future."

Stop and think about this ... there is a partly broken down stone wall, with loose rocks around, one of which you have placed on top of the cache. In order to find the cache, what will people do ? They will pick up, move , discard stones, they have to, to find the cache. Will they replace them with care where they should be ? Some people will not. Will they destroy the ruins further by dropping or throwing the discarded rocks aside ? Some people will. You are inviting damage by careless and thoughtless folk,. That UK wiki also states that : "Caches will not be allowed within the boundaries of any archaeological site whether scheduled or not without permission from the owner/manager of the site. " Have you permission from the landowner ? I'd say even if you are 'able to do this' , you shouldn't.

What you choose to do is entirely up to you, it really doesn't matter to anyone else. If you want to, I believe you can change your listed 'milestones' if you wish, on the old profile (which is what I use) click on 'quick view' 'statistics' then select milestones : you can change which shows as that milestone on your profile, and lock any milestones you want to preserve.

I once used a tick freezing spray (specifically sold for use on dogs and cats) on my cat , I told the story here , so I'll not repeat it. It worked ...

Please can the next blog entry be "Seven ways an interface for computer users can be made fit for purpose with reference to feedback from actual users / customers" , with a bunch of copy/paste from the threads here about the maps, amongst other things ...

Yep, the message centre is tiresome for eathcache logging, I've lost too many messages which vanished into the ether after being typed, one of the reasons I prefer e-mail. Now my method for sending C.O.s my answers to their tasks (especially if I have a few to log) is to compose the messages in notepad and copy paste them into the message thing if the C.O. has said they prefer that to e mail. That way when my work evaporates for no apparent reason as I press send, I can at least try again with minimal effort and annoyance.

I'm not going out and selling my MTB for any cache ...

I've been using one for almost exactly a year now (it was on such a good offer back then I upgraded from a perfectly decent etrex20) . The only issue I've had is the tiny sliding/pivoting metal memory card door, which somehow got itself loose and fell out when I was changing AA cells in the field ... as I've only ever opened the memory card door once ( to install a card with osm maps on when I got the device) the only way I can imagine this happened is if some time earlier I dropped the device when no cells were in place, jarring the memory card door at just the right angle to partially open by itself, then next time I opened the back to change the cells the flap was at a position to finish opening and gravity did the rest ... I got it back in, but it doesn't hold the card tight against the contacts any more , so there is a tiny square of paper folded up and between the AAs and the metal holder now to keep it snug, without that my maps (which I have on that card ) are unavailable, but the device works fine otherwise. So I'll be very careful in the future with how I treat that tiny metal door ! Apart from that small mechanical problem, I've had no issues , it's quietly steered me to around 1000 geocaches.

That is really bad news: GDAK is an excellent tool, it's given me simple compact offline backup databases (for more caching sites than just Groundspeak ) on an android 'phone which has quietly done its job for years now. My thanks to it's developer, and sorry they have been 'revoked'. Technical question for anyone better equipped than me ... does GDAK work with okapi as well as the GS api ? I've not tried it, altho' I use it with GSAK .

By the way, for anyone wondering, GME works fine on the 'browse' map, not at all on the new 'search 'map. Pretty much the only reason I log into GC.com is to use GME, other tools do everything else I need far better as far as cache sorting/selecting/logging etc are concerned. If it wasn't for the excellent combination of GME and GSAK (and, of course, a trusty GPS) my caching walk planning would be far less efficient and easy, and Groundspeak would not be collecting a premium payment from me for their contribution .... PQs

Are you certain that the physical cache at the spot where you were given the unlock code is not the Wherigo physical cache ? Sorry, I misunderstood your message . You need to find that physical cache at the end to claim a find on a Wherigo. Sometimes a Wherigo doesn't give you co-ordinates, but the final Wherigo zone is where the cache actually is . Whilst a Wherigo is a virtual sort of multi, it must lead you to a physical cache container. The unlock code allows you to record the completion of the cartridge on the Wherigo website, it has no bearing on the finding of the geocache, and a lot of people seem to ignore it . If you reached the unlock code, you got to the end of the Wherigo cartridge, so the only practical suggestion I can make is to try again, but be sure to scroll down the screen to be sure you have not missed any information which may be below the 'phone's ability to display .If no more information is found, then where you got the unlock code is where to search for the container !

No, this is not an unpleasant community, and that is an offensive comment . You are calling an entire community 'extremely unpleasant' . There are a very few bad apples within hundreds of decent folk in , say a 50km radius, but as I explained, a few such manipulative, moral compass lacking individuals can have a negative effect on the ethos of a small group within that community. Psychologists reckon 4% of Americans ( Americans are the people who have been most intently studied: there is no reason to think that percentage is not typical for people all over the western world ) are sociopathic , therefore it is very probable that a similar % of cachers have sociopathic traits. Humanity is not uniformly lovely if you step outside your bubble. Ask any police officer. Was the behaviour reported to Groundspeak through the proper channels ? Yes, more than once and by more than one victim .

Yep, I've seen a few mistakenly owner disabled caches like that where someone thought they were archiving it , but I think I posted a note as a first step with an explanation of how to archive , and the CO sorted the archive themselves soon after. I have NA'd some I've not visited when I've noted them before a planned visit and see they have apparently slipped through the algorithm or reviewer's net unnoticed , like this , this or this. On the other hand, I can see that overenthusiastic officious use of the NA without visiting ( sometimes known as 'cache police' ) is a bad thing, but very, very occasionally it makes sense to NA, when you spot a long standing problem, especially when there can be such reluctance to NA from cachers who maybe don't understand the system, or are perhaps worried about giving offence. Over 9 years and 29 NM logs I think I've only posted those three without actually visiting GZ Usually it's more like this sort of situation where I just know if I leave it at needs maintenance and let nature take it's course, some cachers will come along, log a 'find' on the string , the algorithm will be placated for a while, the cache will limp along , and even more folk will think logging a find on a bit of string is acceptable.

Nope. My cache, my cache page, my decision about what it says, my assessment of the D/T. This is a listing site, it doesn't own the caches, it just has the privilege of publishing them to an audience. If the audience disagrees with the cache owner's D/T rating , they are free to comment in their logs, but change it ? So D/Ts are dynamic, constantly fluctuating ? That's not going to please the C.O.s, or the grid fillers and most especially those interested in the associated challenges ... I can easily imagine a cabal of cachers co--operating to upgrade an innocent cache to a D/T that is rare in their area, or to get at a C.O. they don't like by reducing their 4.5/4.5 to a 2/2 . If you think that's far fetched, think about all the hundreds of armchair loggers of lab caches who went to great lengths to claim a smiley in a country they have never visited . Then there's persistent cache thieves with a personal agenda (at least three I could name, all known to the local cache setters and currently active as setters and finders themselves) , disparaging logs placed by a cacher deliberately stalking someones caching activity, then following them to the hide and claiming they did not replace the cache properly (over and over again this was done to the point where the victim waited weeks to log caches online so someone else would find it after them and the stalker could not log it next and claim they 'found the cache left carelessly out in the open', or 'bison cross threaded') . Caching, and caching groups on social media include all sorts of characters, the gamut of humanity, the majority are good, but there are also inevitably manipulative , rule flaunting and frankly unpleasant individuals. When groupthink gets dominated by one or two individuals like that, normal decent principles of behaviour get overruled and the easily led go along with the local norm as they are shown it. You want a full grid ? We can sort that ! Here's the solution to a tough bonus at the end of a puzzle series, no problem, you don't need to solve or even visit any of the feeder caches, as long as your name is on the log book, you have that D/T . No abseil or boating capability, but you want some T5s ? We can manipulate some T2s to sort that too now we can all rate someones caches to what we want ...

Dead right. If this thread devolves into a squabble about trails/series/attributes etc, it lessens the point of it, which is to try and get some action to solve the map problem.

That thread title should really have the word 'Find ' on the end of it ... There is, of course, a chance the cache has gone, but there is also a chance it was there and you just couldn't see it. It was your first search, and it's difficult to spot something when you just have no idea what you are looking for, I mean, how do you recognise something you've never seen before ?! Plenty of good advice on this thread already about the sort of caches to target as a beginner, I'll just add something that works for me: Go to look for a cache in an area you would enjoy going to even if there was no cache there to search for. That way, if you come home with a DNF, you will still have had a pleasant time.

Why on earth there has been no meaningful reaction from TPTB to the howl of annoyance that is this entire thread I do not know. It's a simple request : the overwhelming majority of contributors want the default map that appears when we click see larger map to be the 'browse map'. It is a waste of time and , frankly a stupid arrangement to have to wait every time for the 'search map' to painfully slowly load then click on the link for the 'browse map' you actually want. Even if end users' map selection preference came down as shared 50/50 between the two map types (and it doesn't, does it ? Hands up anyone who would always want to go to the 'search map' ?) surely it makes more sense to have the faster loading map as the default . Do I really have to wait and hope that some smart amateur can come up with yet another add on script for my browser to make this website function in an acceptably efficient manner ?