brendan714

I guess I'm just not seeing the distinction here. Yes, an extremely difficult Challenge cache would be very difficult to find. Only a few people are likely to claim a find for that kind of Challenge cache. But what if that same casual geocacher also noticed an unfound, 5-year-old Traditional cache that required a multi-day backpacking journey up and down mountains to a cliff that one needed to rappel down to reach the cache? Wouldn't they also think that only a few people are likely to claim a find for that kind of Traditional cache? In a world where extremely difficult Challenge caches are allowed, some of those challenges would restrict finders to the "big numbers" club. Just as extremely difficult hiking/climbing caches restrict finders to very fit and skilled geocachers. Just as extremely difficult Puzzle caches restrict finders to very clever solvers (and the people with whom they might share the final coordinates). Just as extremely deep SCUBA caches restrict finders to a small subcategory of the small group of SCUBA-trained geocachers (and the folks who might sign the log at the water's surface). Just like the International Space Station cache restricts finders to the few astronaut-geocachers who travel there. I always thought Groundspeak allows extremely difficult caches to inspire some people to stretch their limits or perhaps to vicariously share in the adventures of others. I've always considered this wide diversity to be a good thing. Most new geocachers quickly learn that they don't have to find every geocache that's out there. They eventually figure out what kinds of caches they most enjoy and probably focus their efforts on them. They, too, come to appreciate the diverse smorgasbord of geocaching options that are available to them. This is just more speculation, but perhaps it has to do with accessibility. I can find the physical cache to a hypothetical "Find 100,000 Caches Challenge" that's located 100 meters from my home. But I will never be able to log it as found online. Does it bother me? No, I don't care in the slightest - at worst I'll just put it on the ignore list and find some other cache that interests me. But it could easily bother someone else. When I talk about accessibility, I mean that challenges can usually be found in the city limits of big cities, and they are usually easy to visit, find and sign. Caches with very challenging terrain are inherently (but not always) in remote or difficult to access locations. In many cases they require a conscious effort to visit. Also, what about perceived difficulty? There's a big difference between knowing that something is impossible and knowing that something is doable with difficulty. To a newbie, a difficult challenge like my hypothetical "Find 100,000 caches" would be seen as impossible. A tough puzzle, multi or trad is definitely doable - they might not want to try but they know it can be done. Again, it helps to look through the eyes of a newbie. Apart from all that stuff, think about this: It's Geocaching HQ's job to make money. They make more money by making more people happier. If people said in a survey that they don't like certain things about a certain cache type, Geocaching HQ will probably listen to make people happy. Unfortunately, they don't necessarily need to keep the veterans of the game (including many challenge cache enthusiasts) quite as happy because they know most will reapply for premium membership anyway. This might also explain why a lot of work goes into the Geocaching phone apps, when lots of veterans don't care. This game is a business to GHQ, and from a business perspective what they did was probably the right call. Again, I don't necessarily agree with any of this and it's all speculation, but it might be one possible explanation.

Why should Groundspeak ban a Challenge cache that is unattainable to geocachers in a particular area? It just means cachers must travel outside that area to qualify for those kinds of challenges. The "Jasmer Challenge - Alberta" is unattainable without traveling long distances from Calgary, but 23 people still have managed to find/complete it. That's 23 more than the number of folks who have found certain technical rock climbing caches, difficult hiking caches, hard puzzle caches, etc. Additionally, there are certain multi-caches whose stages are thousands of miles apart and thus unattainable unless a local geocacher travels great distances. Yet Groundspeak will go ahead and publish those locally unattainable multi-caches while banning a locally unattainable Challenge cache. Why? I agree that those factors can increase the difficulty for some Challenge caches. They even could make a particular Challenge cache extremely challenging and "almost like a private cache." But certain single Non-Challenge caches can be even more difficult and even more "almost like a private cache." For example, I could create a 25-stage multi-cache than included an extremely hard puzzle to get the coordinates to Stage 1, a multi-day backpacking trip up and down mountains to a cliff that you need to rappel down to get the coordinates to Stage 2, a deep-lake SCUBA dive to get the coordinates to Stage 3, travel across the ocean to Stage 4, a multi-day canoe trip through the wilds of Northern Ontario to Stage 5, etc., etc. Yet Groundspeak probably would ban my relatively easier Challenge cache while publishing my more difficult single Non-Challenge cache. It's kinda hard for me to understand why that is. A reviewer posting on another forum had some good insight. They said to consider the viewpoint of a casual geocacher who will probably never qualify for difficult challenges. In the eyes of the casual cacher, many challenges restrict finders to the big numbers club. On the other hand, they might be more understanding of a T5 climbing cache or D5 puzzle because if they manage to sign the log, they get to log a find. I'm not trying to argue whether challenging challenges should be allowed (because that's not our decision to make), but something like this might be one possible explanation to help understand why Geocaching HQ could shape things this way. One opinionated non-factual hypothesis is that since Geocaching HQ likely gets a lot of revenue (or potential new revenue) from casual / newbie cachers, placing a bunch of challenging challenges might be disheartening or frustrating if up to 10 years of grinding is required to claim a find. This might lead newbies away from the game, causing them to lose interest - revenue lost for HQ. There are countless rebuttals to this, I know, but it's just a thought - it might have some sort of business aspect too.

Oh I know, I wasn't implying that at all. By "you" I didn't mean specifically you, I meant anybody. It was just something that I can see happening often. If it becomes a problem maybe local reviewers will start requiring a percentage based on the number of total cachers. Just a guess. I certainly hope Groundspeak never resorts to replacing good judgment with magical numbers (or percentages). See my earlier post as to why very few people might have completed the challenge at the time of publication but it still can "appeal to and be attainable by a reasonable number of cachers" if they make a deliberate effort to qualify. I don't disagree. I just wonder how reviewers will turn a subjective quality into an objective quality - unless it always stays subjective and opinionated. Then we're back to the central problem with appeals when COs don't agree. I guess we'll see.

Oh I know, I wasn't implying that at all. By "you" I didn't mean specifically you, I meant anybody. It was just something that I can see happening often. If it becomes a problem maybe local reviewers will start requiring a percentage based on the number of total cachers. Just a guess. As a fan of very challenging trads and puzzles, I agree it is inconsistent to restrict very challenging challenges. But for my style of play, it doesn't bother me. I'm sure there will still be interesting and challenging (to me) challenges for me to work towards.

This is true. And if one was adamant about their challenge being published after being rejected by a reviewer, they might go to appeals. Their case could be that one or two people in the area have actually completed it. I'm worried that this alone might reintroduce the appeals problem GS was trying to avoid. Unless the reviewer warns that if a CO tries to do that too often that challenges will disappear again... but next time forever. Edit: clarity

For the most part, I love the new changes. I'm looking forward to working towards some challenges this summer! I agree with you that there is room for challenging challenges, just like there is room for challenging traditionals. As a somewhat unrelated aside, my technical climbing cache GC6C3P3C was found just today. These caches have garnered attention by many cachers. Perhaps something that is thought of as difficult will be conquered by many in due time. If I was required to prove that a "reasonable" number of cachers could find those climbing caches, that would be impossible. And yet, they are being found (granted not very often). Like you've mentioned, many challenges seem unobtainable until cachers try and succeed.

I really enjoy lonely caches. I don't usually actively search them out, but I do find it interesting to see when a cache was last found. That said, a few friends and I have a fun self-challenge to find our province's oldest unfound geocaches. Typically they're up some mountain but most can easily be reached in less than a day. I guess my hiking and ramblings in the Canadian Rockies just lead me to a bunch of unloved caches. I've also hidden a bunch of lonely caches myself. I'm not a GSAKer at all, but I did decide to take the time to download all the logs of my recent finds and run the macro. Here's what I came up with: On a 183 day threshold: 354 qualifying caches totalling 159976 days = 438 years I couldn't get the macro to work for anything over 183 days, so I'll just list the others from Excel: On a 1 year threshold: 140 caches On a 2 year threshold: 50 caches On a 3 year threshold: 18 caches On a 4 year threshold: 7 caches 5 years and older threshold: 6 caches Longest gap on a single cache - nearly 7 years: http://coord.info/GCH0V3 It's also worthwhile to note that I adopted a bunch of caches a couple months ago that were placed in the early 2000's. 2 of these caches have been unfound for over 12 years, and might very well be some of the world's loneliest caches (GC5A79 & GC5A78). Which is funny because they are both only a couple kilometers away from a major highway - granted one's on top of a mountain and the other is across a big river. I'm going to make an effort this summer to visit them (as a cache hunter / cache owner). It seems fitting that I'm going out tonight after work for a hike, and along the way is a cache that hasn't been found for nearly 2 years.

Hmm, might be yet another reason to become a premium member of Project-GC. Thanks for the responses.

Is there any way to mute trackables? I really don't need to get an email every time someone discovers or moves certain trackables. The only way I can think to do it is to set up an individual filter on my email. Thanks!

Not sure if this is possible, but here goes. Looks like there was a cacher who recently archived somewhere around 750 caches (pretty much his entire caching career) all at once. Not a power trail or anything, all individual unique hides. Not sure of the reasoning but that's another question for another day. I'm looking to get all of those archived caches onto a bookmark list or in a GPX file. Is there any way to do it easily without going 1 by 1 through every single cache? Thanks.

Screen shot? not interested, too much work to look them up. Now a link to a publicly shared bookmark would have been cool. Sorry, this made me laugh. I worked for literally 2 weeks to trace this person's life halfway across Canada, I contacted several people, I worked with the CO and GC HQ and somehow looking up the caches from the GC codes I provided is too much work. Awesome! Hope you can get to the other ones sometime soon! I'm finishing up my Master's in the next few months and I'll probably take the summer off. Should give me lots of time to explore some of these lesser-visited site! Can you say road trip! I'm really looking forward to it! Screen shot? not interested, too much work to look them up. Now a link to a publicly shared bookmark would have been cool. Wasn't very hard to click on his username, click on geocaches, geocaches owned and then repopulate by date placed. Took about 5 seconds. Looks like some nice caches. I was able to do the same thing in my area, contacted an inactive user (who then contacted a friend that had some old ones in the area) and adopted a couple, and got some more adopted by others, that I knew had a connection to certain old caches. They were even willing to adopt some virtuals to me, but Groundspeak doesn't allow it for some reason. Looks like you'll have fun hunting down your own caches. Cool to hear that others have done something similar! It sure felt cool getting that first email from the original CO! Nicely done! Here you go. Thank you! I've already passed on the link to someone who wanted to plot them out on a map. I suppose I should have done that in the first place but I didn't think to.

Today I adopted 13 historic geocaches placed in Alberta, Canada in either 2002 or 2003 by Shadow Dog - with the original CO's permission. Although Shadow Dog was last active in 2005, I was able to find her contact information and send her an email. She was very excited to hear from me and was very eager to transfer ownership of her old geocaches to me! The geocaches themselves are hidden in the backcountry of the Canadian Rockies. One of them in particular, GC5A79, is North America's (possibly the world's?) second lonliest geocache behind the famous "4.5lb Walleye" cache in Ontario, according to Project GC. While several are very lonely caches, many are not and have been enjoyed by backcountry travellers for the last 15 years. I look forward to visiting all of the old Shadow Dog geocache sites this summer and maintaining them for hopefully the NEXT 15 years, at least! I'm very happy that I could do my part to help these pieces of Geocaching history avoid the archival bin! PS - here's a link showing the 13 caches, if you're interested: http://i.imgur.com/xUHR2Ng.png

Well, it is very naive to imply my ECs are "inadequate" without knowing the facts. In fact, I TRIED to make them more in-depth. They are all inside national parks and as such required permission from the land manager (Parks Canada). Parks Canada required me to edit the ECs to make them as simple as possible. That way it's friendly for all the tourists and foreigners. They required me to go through many rounds of editing (sometimes taking up to a month). Often I was forced to just ask cachers to take information off of signs. It's not ideal, but hey, something is better than nothing. We are lucky that geocaching is allowed in our national parks (although there are strict regulations). We are forced to abide by their rules which, unfortunately, doesn't always mean you end up with the product you envisioned. Even if they are just "regurgitating" information, at least they have to stop, take the time to acknowledge the question and identify the answer. Given the location and the type of expected visitor, sometimes a quick and simple lesson of some underlying principles is fine. I'm trying to work with them right now to make a more complex EC. We'll see how that ends up. Anyway, that's all quite off topic and neither of you answered the question set out in the original post. What would you have done if you were in my shoes?

Yes, I think so.

Probably not. But if they did do this, they would have made a legitimate attempt to solve the Earthcache. As it was, I was sent sloppy answers 3 times, and each time the answers were incorrect. There has to be a certain amount of effort involved. Sending me a photo of the sign is the laziest logging I've ever seen. I would have very likely accepted the following: "I was quickly rushing through but I had 5 minutes to stop and visit your Earthcache. Really interesting! I read through the description and found a sign that gave me the answers to the first 4 questions. Here's what I got: (Answers to first 4 questions). Unfortunately, I visited during the night so I couldn't see the answer to the 5th question. However, I knew that I could Google the answer so I went ahead and did a little research. Here's what I came up with as an answer to the 5th question: (...). Fascinating how (abc) results in (xyz)! I'll be sure to stop in next time I'm driving by to see what this excellent Earthcache looks like during the day!" Doesn't that sound a lot better than: "Attached is a photo showing the answers to the questions" I have to draw a line somewhere that divides enough effort from not enough effort. In this case, I think they failed. Unfortunately, now I look like the bad guy. Really, it's only fair to those who actually put in the work to learn and understand.

Maybe it might be a good idea to mention this in the cache listing just to avoid any irritations. Absolutely not. If the cacher had read the description, it would have been completely obvious that additional research would be required if the site was visited after dark. Earthcaches are not meant to be power-caching friendly. They are intended to be educational, and, like it or not, education requires some actual thought. In my mind, photos of signs are not acceptable as responses to EC questions; direct quotes from signs might be in some circumstances, but in my responses I always re-word them in some way that indicates that I understood what was going on. Earthcaches are an opportunity to learn something new. I know that some cachers view the questions as hoops to be jumped through, but that attitude is directly opposed to what they are all about! Even if you already know the answers to every question posed for an earthcache, there is always something new to learn. If you don't want to be bothered with learning new things, then don't do Earthcaches. (BTW: I only own one EC, and it's never been logged. So take what I say as coming from a finder, not a hider) 100% agree. Thank you.

Where, from the sign on site or maybe close by? Regards, MB Within 10 meters of the sign. It might be difficult to see in the dark but it's VERY obvious in the daylight. You could also use any search engine to reasonably find the answer. I think this is what the cacher did, but they answered it incorrectly. I fully intended for cachers to use the obvious items within 10 m of GZ to answer the 5th question.

Well, my EC includes the "Not 24-7" attribute and the "Not Recommended at Night" attribute, but that's because the location is open only 8 AM to sunset. The necessary on-site information is available on signs that can be read by flashlight, but no one should be there in the dark. Great point, I'll definitely add in the "Not Recommended at Night" attribute. In this case, they can access the site on any day at any time. But, going at night greatly takes away from the purpose of the EC.

Agreed. All logging criteria were not met, and I figured 3 incorrect attempts was enough. I have to admit that their attitude didn't help their case. If they were polite and willing to learn where they made mistakes, I would have been much more understanding. As it was, they were quite rude. It was almost like my EC was a chore. Exactly. I'm not expecting the answers to be 100% correct 100% of the time. The idea is that the cachers read the information at the site and that helps them to interpret the geological item they are seeing (in daylight, of course). However, by coming at night the educational experience is greatly diminished. I've now realized that the questions CAN be answered in the dark, but that's really against the educational lesson I'm trying to accomplish. I'm still stuck on this one. Perhaps I do have to include a clause that says they have to be there during daytime (I thought that was implied for most ECs).

Yes, there is a way: log the cache again and chose "Unattempted" as log type. Hans That's a roundabout way of solving the problem that doesn't really solve the problem. I'd still like to log a "did not find" or "needs maintenance" on my Etrex when appropriate. Choosing "unattempted" skirts the issue.

Well, it's yet to be fully tested but I think deleting the "geocache_visits.txt" file may have solved the issue. My Etrex is also running a lot faster now (on startup anyway).

So I'm CO on an Earthcache. I received a found it log, followed by an email for the required answers. The cacher simply took a photo of the sign which contains 4 out of 5 answers and emailed it to me, saying that the photo should suffice. I kindly responded saying that I need answers to all 5 questions, and simply taking a photo of the sign does not answer any of the questions at all. The cacher responded with written answers to 4 out of 5 questions. I responded that, again, all 5 questions must be answered. The cacher responds again saying that since they were there in the dark, they could not answer all 5 questions. However, the answer to the 5th question can easily be looked up. So the cacher includes the answer to the 5th question, stating: "If you would like me to lie, then: (Answer to 5th question)". The cacher then goes on to explain that I should put a note on the cache page saying it must be performed during the day. The answer they provided for the 5th question was actually incorrect, so I deleted their found it log and explained that I'd be more than happy to accept their "found it" log if they returned to the EC site during the day and correctly answered all 5 questions. So, what would you have done? Would you have deleted the log (or perhaps even sooner than I did)? I'm not too sure of the rules, but isn't it kind of implied that most ECs must be completed during the day? Usually you are looking at some sort of geological feature - that would be tough to do without proper lighting! I'm expecting some sort of rebuttal pretty soon. If they respond with the correct answer for #5, I suppose I have to let them log a found, don't I?

I always delete the PQ and load up a new one onto the Etrex. No, they show up as found online. After finding a cache, I go on my Etrex - menu - log attempt - found - find next closest. The issue I have above is when I go menu - log attempt - did not find - find next closest - etc. On the Etrex interactive map the caches I've logged as "did not find" appear as open chests rather than a traditional (for example) icon. Sorry, I meant how are you logging your finds from your GPS to the Geocaching.com web site? GSAK, field notes, etc. No GSAK, no field notes, just geocaching.com entry logs. I'll give this a shot. Yup, I'll give it a shot and report back in a few days/weeks. As an aside, I deleted the geocache_visits.txt file and my GPSr is running MUCH faster (?!). Maybe it was just a fluke. But usually it takes 10 minutes at least to load up when I load a 1000 cache pocket query. After deleting that file, it booted pretty much right away. I wonder if it parses through that geocache visits file (which for me had at least 4,500 lines for my 4,500 finds - I've been using this thing since day 1 and never cleared that file) and that somehow slows it down. Like I said, maybe just a fluke. But maybe others could try too?

After finding a cache, I go on my Etrex - menu - log attempt - found - find next closest. The issue I have above is when I go menu - log attempt - did not find - find next closest - etc. On the Etrex interactive map the caches I've logged as "did not find" appear as open chests rather than a traditional (for example) icon.

Hi, maybe this will be the best way to outline my problem: 1) Look for geocache, can't find it, go onto Etrex 20, log attempt "did not find", find next closest. Continue with caching day. 2) Months later (with new PQ), load up new caches onto Etrex 20. 3) My DNFed caches (ones I marked as "did not find" on the Etrex 20) appear as open treasure chests (ie look like found caches) on the map display. Also happens when I log attempt "needs maintenance" on the Etrex. Lately I've simply not logged an attempt at all on the Etrex unless I find the cache. That way when I return months later there isn't an open chest on my map where there's a cache I haven't yet found. So is there a way to "reset" the geocache memory so it doesn't think I've already attempted the cache? Shouldn't the caches I've logged as "did not find" remain closed boxes on the interface rather than open treasure chests? I think this worked properly way back with a different software version, but lately it hasn't been working. Hope this makes sense. I can upload some pictures if it doesn't!