essap2

I'm curious about what drives the geocaching culture in major caching countries around the world. From my perspective, I live in the US and have found thousands of caches in the US. I've spent the last 3 weeks in Australia (caching quite a bit) and found a lot of the caching norms in America don't apply. In general, the average Australian cache seems to require more effort than the average American cache. For example: Australia doesn't seem to have a lot of the park-n-grab culture that the US has. Many areas of the US you can find industrial parks and shopping centers proliferated with sign post and LPC caches; I haven't seen that at all in Australia (although, they don't have skirts in their lampposts like the US). This doesn't even go into the massive power trails you can find in the deserts and plains of the US (ET, Eastern Colorado, BLT, etc) The percentage of multi caches seems much higher in Australia and the multis themselves seem to require more effort (more stages/more research) Australia seems to have a more strict view on geocaching ethics. This point would take too long to explain but essentially I picked this up from the average log and messaging cachers I should mention that parts of the US definitely vary as well but in general, my statements about American geocaching I would say generally apply. So with this in mind, what makes these differences? I'm not specially talking about just Australia and the US, its just the only two countries with geocaches everywhere that I've cached for quite a bit so I've drawn examples from there. Is it just the layout of the cities/geography of the areas (Ie American cities have a lot of open space compared to the rest of the world)? Do reviewers guide culture based on what types of caches they allow and how strict they area about seeking permission? (For example, in the US, I've heard some states reviewers will make you seek permission for LPCs in a Wal-mart for instance while other reviewers seem to let it slide) Does it have to do with the age of geocachers? I'm fully convinced that average geocaching age is much younger in Europe than America which would make you think that younger people are more likely to hide tougher caches. Look forward to any insight people may have.

One of my lifelong goals is to find every 2000 cache in the world. So far, I have found 49 of the 112 active. In my travels so far, I have found that the 2000 caches tend to be much more adventurous and off-piste than your average cache. This made me wonder, what is the hardest 2000 cache in the world to reach. Off the ones I've found so far, I think either GCD - (Washington's oldest) GCBC - (Monte Cristo) could make the argument of being the hardest to reach. However, looking across the pond, GCF7 (Australia's Used-to-be-highest) definitely looks like quite the trek in the mountains to get to. The CO definitely stresses that getting to the cache is no easy feat in the cache description. I suppose an argument could be made for GC35 (Power Island) GC20 (Marooned) given that they are located on islands, but those seem to be more of a financial strain considering the majority of finders use chartered boats to both of them. Opinions? My best guess would be GCF7 as it seems like a longer and more strenuous hike than any others but I'm not familiar with Australian mountain ranges so idk.

The graph at 7:39 is very interesting. Why does the US have close to a 22 percent DNF rate for 6 months + inactive cache owners compared to Germany's 8 percent. Is it cultural? - Are Germans less likely to muggle geocaches Are German Reviewers more aggressive with archiving caches? My best guess would be this: From my observations, Germany seems to have a much more dense geocacher base than the US. I think this may cause the average German geocache to have many more logs than the average American geocache. This would mean, because the German geocache is searched for more often, the cache health score would deteriorate quicker than an American geocache and would subsequently be marked and archived by a reviewer quicker than its American counterparts. Therefore, the gameboard is cleared quicker in Germany resulting in less caches that are in a "zombie" state as the graph shows.

I started caching with my dad when I was 10 years old. I'm now 24 and still caching. But yes, I see where you come from. Not very many younger geocachers. I do have a couple geocacher friends also in their 20's but they are definitely few and far between. I think geocaching is generally more popular with older generations as they have more free time as well as it can be a relatively low-impact activity if you choose to make it so. Will be interesting to see what geocaching will look like in 20 years time.

This is a really tough question to answer without the total number of finds everyday, total number of active user, etc. that I'm sure HQ has, but from my own perspective I think it has decreased somewhat. The two biggest signs that I notice personally are: The number of lonely caches in many areas is increasing a lot, particularly in areas where there are many caches Looking at the number of attendees on annual mega events, it seems generally the number of people has been going down The problem with the above observations is that the number of geocaches and mega events has also increased significantly since I started geocaching in 2009. So does this mean that there is roughly the same number of finds, just spread across a lot more geocaches? I also think that geocaching culture has shifted quite a bit since I started geocaching that might explain why so many caches are becoming super lonely. I would say, generally, that People are much less likely to look for DNFed/lonely caches now that a decade ago Stats has always been a big part of geocaching, but it seems to have grown even bigger and many cachers will mostly target specific caches to work towards stats/challenges and pass by many other great geocaches that don't have anything significant about them stats-wise The above observations would led to a gap in which the caches found often would be found even more often, and the caches found less often would be found even less often. Has anybody investigated this in the past? Agree/Disagree?

Existing software still requires maintenance over time. I'm sure that this was a calculated move from a numbers and funding perspective. Anecdotally I only know a single cacher who will actively search for them and only a handful that will log them even if there is a geocache placed on top of one.

WOW! I hadn't realized someone was that close. I knew a couple people have finished an earthcache fizzy which is also an impressive feat.

I was thinking the same thing. My hope is not that people inflate simple virtuals to high D/T's but actually hide virtuals with accurate D/T's that are rare. That said, it is very hard to hide a high difficulty virtual. I think the hardest virtual I've ever found was GC7B7FY or GC9073. Both of those examples deviate from the norm of go to a site and take a picture or gather info. I guess what I'm hoping for then is that people think outside of the box when they are placing their new virtuals and hopefully that will lead to some more interesting D/Ts.

Thank you Hugh and geoAware! Very interesting. I wonder who will be the first to achieve this massive feat.

With the release of virtual rewards 3.0, I'm curious if it would be theoretically possible to get a virtual only fizzy grid. Has anybody looked into this/know if this is possible? If not I hope that people consider hiding the unhidden d/t's when publishing their new virtuals.