The_Saints

Yes

1 mile per difficulty star, plus two miles per favorite point. For me it's that simple

The "Available During Winter" attribute can be a poor measure of the cache's availability in the snow. I have abandoned it's use in my PQs. Because 50% of the caches I went to that displayed this attribute were buried by snow or deep in evergreen trees. There is no clear definition of it's meaning. In my area it seems that some people think that it means that you can drive to the area of the cache, not that you can actually find the cache. I have had much more success by parsing the information by hand. Use the satellite image mapping feature and hints to exclude hides in trees, rocks and such. Look for magnetics, as they tend to be off the ground.

If you have a good quality smartphone, the Groundspeak Geocaching app option should not be discounted. An iphone 4 or a Droid can now be had relatively cheaply, and will be leaps and bounds better than your Tom Tom. It makes paperless really easy. I have seen that this position can stir up a hornets nest here. That is not my intention, just making light of another option.

I am new to geocaching. I only have 160 finds in the last three weeks. In that time I have encountered several caches that have logs that were so wet I could not remove them from the container without damaging them. I have started carrying a repair kit and enjoy helping COs out when I can. It makes me feel like I am contributing to the sport. I do wonder what the written and unwritten protocols are for maintaining another person’s cache. What should I do if the log is wet and moldy, and there is not room to put in a new log without removing an old one? Do I replace it, and if so, what do I do with the old log? Do I still log it as a find? Or, should I just enter a “Needs Maintenance?” Is it wrong to do both? I recently found a tree cache from a large tree that had been blown down in a wind storm. The cache was in the root crater under several thousand pounds of unsteady tree. I feared that another cacher might try to retrieve it, and get themselves injured by causing the tree to shift and possibly crushing them. I happen to be in the business of remediating dangerous situations and have the training, tools and experience to handle this type of situation. I used such to safely remove the cache. Though the tree did shift, my equipment limited it’s movement. I moved the cache to a similar location 30-40 feet away so that cachers could continue to enjoy finding it. The question I have here is, was it appropriate for me to remove and/or relocate another person’s cache? What should I do if I find another cache in a dangerous place?