Storming Jericho

Well it wouldn't require a 5/5. It would require one cache with a terrain of five and one cache with a difficulty of five. The former could be, among many things, an island cache, which many people have placed. The latter could be that particular user's most difficult puzzle. But the point of a challenge that I'm really hitting here that I guess most people are just disagreeing with me on is that a challenge cache doesn't have to be logged by a lot of people. We have challenge caches here for logging a percentage of states in the U.S. The upper ends of those challenges (the 40 state seeker and 50 state seeker challenges) only have about five finds after a year. Some people don't have the resources to create a cache with a five for terrain. That's fine. I don't have the time or money to take a tour of all fifty states in the U.S. That doesn't mean someone can't place a challenge cache... Does that make sense to others or is my analogy a poor one?

Alright -- you have taught me well -- thanks -- now GOODBYE : ) : ) : )

I understand the idea that challenge caches that require placement could encourage the flooding of an area with bad caches, but I personally feel that a well made one wouldn't have to. The problem I see is that a lot of cachers just place within their comfort zone. I see a lot of GR cachers who do nothing anymore except place incomprehensible "unknown" caches. It would be interesting to try to push them to place other types. I don't think that would result in bad caches, especially from a difficult challenge that only dedicated geocachers are likely to take up in the first place. The worst problem I could see would be bad earthcaches or Wherigo caches occuring because someone who knew nothing about either decided to place one in order to "fill the requirement," but if that were really a problem then the piece of it about placing types could be removed. Curse of the FTF caches are actually a good example, I think. In our county, the curse of the ftf caches are mostly really good. They have encouraged more people who have never placed a cache to go out and place a good one than they have forced people to place junk caches who would have been placing nothing. I guess the way I see it is: junk caches are always going to be there. And its not really unfair to people who don't place caches if there is a challenge they "can't" do without starting -- There are all kinds of challenges that require things of me that I can't or won't do in my current situation, and I'm responding to that by not doing them right now. Well -- that was a rant. Sorry to all the people who basically just told me to read the rules. I should have rephrased. I was trying to start a discussion about something I found out to be true, not trying to encourage people to tell me to go read the rulebook again

In my home base city (Grand Rapids, Mi) there are a lot of challenge caches (not be confused with challenges, which I am not talking about here). An example would be the Jackpot challenge cache (GC2AE6A), or some other probably familiar challenges like the fizzy and jasmer challenges, all of which have challenge caches near where I live. Here are the rules that I initially drafted, in order to make it possible: 1) You must place at least one cache for each possible difficulty and terrain rating, none of which can be counted more than once for the challenge. This will lead to a total of 18 unique caches. 2) Six of your 18 caches must be traditionals 3) Three of your 18 caches must be multi stage. 4) Three of your 18 caches must be unknown type. 5) One of your 18 caches must be a letterbox. 6) One of your 18 caches but be an earthcache. 7) One of your 18 caches must be a Wherigo. 8) Four of your 18 caches must be micro sized. 9) Four of your 18 caches must be small sized. 10) Four of your 18 caches must be regular sized. 11) One of your 18 caches must be large sized. 12) The caches on your list must have a total of at least 25 favorite points. 13) Archived caches will count, provided that the cache was active for at least three months before it was archived. 14) “Liar’s caches” or other caches with repeated complaints on the cache page that they do not fit their listed criteria will not be accepted for the challenge. Obviously, I got pretty into this challenge and trying to make a good one. Then I emailed a friend about it and he told me that Groundspeak does not allow challenge caches that require you to place particular types of caches. I was wondering why this is. Best, Jacob from Storming Jericho

For those curious, Magellan allowed me to send the old and broken GPS unit and are sending me a replacement.

Aye -- actually my magellan's USB port does not seal well at all no matter what I do and it did get water in it through the USB port (I remember shaking some water out of it from that opening after I got it out). I don't know if I have a defective USB port or if mine just got bent at some point but I can't get it to completely seal. At any rate, I contacted Magellan via email and they asked a few questions and hopefully will send me a new device. The rice trick didn't work -- its fried.

I have done that with the rice and I'm leaving it in there for a few days just to be sure. Just for stubbornness sake' I want to point out that there is a difference between some devices in the Magellan Explorist line (such as the Magellan Explorist 500) which are labeled "water resistant," and the devices in my line, which (whether or not they are actually waterproof) are called "waterproof to IPX-7 standards" on their pages and in the owners' manual, and are supposed to be able to be submerged in water six times as long as my device was and twice as deep and be okay. I'm not the sort of person to blindly trust a claim like that, and this is not something I would have ever willingly tested. But it is frustrating to discover that this designation, which is written as if it were a scientific fact on the webpage, actually doesn't turn out to mean very much of anything.

I did think about that and admit that it is possible. However, it didn't "fall" far. It fell from where I was holding it (1-4 feet off the ground) and then rolled down the rest of the incline and dropped into the water. The GPS is supposed to be "rugged" and be able to hit the ground after being dropped and still work. The place where it fell was not rocky; it was dirt and leaves and the worst it could have fallen on was a stick. What really makes me think that it was not the fall was the fact that it was still all held together when I pulled it out of the water. In fact, I didn't see any water in the battery area which means that the device did not come apart at all. About two hours after the submersion, though, I noticed condensation coming onto the screen from inside the device. That really makes me think that water got in there ....

Today, I was hunting for Alaska holds my 25th, which is a cache right on the edge of a river at the bottom of a very steep ravine. When I got close to ground zero, I slipped and dropped my GPS (a Magellan Explorist GC), which fell about four feet down the rest of the hill and into the river. I threw off my shoes as quickly as I could and dropped into the river after it, and, with some luck, had it back in my hands in under five minutes. The problem is that now my GPS device will not turn on. It was only in the water for between two minutes and five minutes, and the water went up to my knees, which means that it was about half a meter deep. What frustrates me is that when I got home, I looked at Amazon's Magellan Explorist GC page and was confirmed that my GPS clearly advertises that it is waterproof. It says this not only in the title, but also on the product's description, where it says that it is waterproof to IPX 7 standards. A quick look at "IPX 7" standards reveals this page, which says the following: "Protected against water immersion - Immersion for 30 minutes at a depth of 1 meter." According to the listed standards, then, I should be completely fine. The GPS was in water that was only half as deep as the maximum depth, and was immersed in the water for about a sixth (or less!) of the time that is supposed to be able to be immersed. I suppose my questions, then, are these: Has anyone dropped their Magellan Explorist (either a GC or another kind) into water to find that it still works? Has anyone else had an experience where their "waterproof" GPS turned out not to be waterproof at all? If I can't ever get my GPS to work again, can I contact Magellan about it and get a refund for their faulty product? Any other advice or information that people have relevant to this topic is greatly encouraged.

Thank you as well. I had the same confusion and found this with a search. Now I can hunt a *** puzzle cache : )