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Or just include a link at the bottom of the cache description page (ON THE INTERNET) to the Help Center, which includes multiple copies of the instruction to "sign the logbook" (before the instruction to log online). For example: Intro to geocaching Log a geocache Geocaching etiquette Not to mention references like the one in the article Additional logging requirements (ALR). Oh wait, there is already a link to the Help Center at the bottom of every cache description page.

I found one on the top of a grassy hill where we couldn't see anything at GZ. Then we read the logs that said that they found the cache 60ft (18m) from GZ. Sure enough, we found the cache about 60ft from our GZ. The weird thing is that when I took coordinates so I could report the correct location, I ended up with virtually the same coordinates as the posted coordinates (one digit off, a difference of 6ft at most). I'd seen that kind of thing in steep canyons surrounded by cliffs, and in urban settings surrounded by tall buildings, but never on a grassy hill with a clear 360° view of the sky.

I've found a couple like that, where the CO stated that the EPE reported by his GPSr was 100ft (30m), or even more. One had an explicit hint that narrowed down GZ. The other had an in-theme narrative description of the route from the trailhead to GZ, similar to a few of the LBH caches that I've done.

There is no way for you to "give back" a trackable to another user. The other user has to grab it back from you.

Some people devote untold hours to building intricately detailed model railroads. Some people devote untold hours to collecting coins or stamps or ceramic unicorns. Some people devote untold hours to playing bridge. Some people devote untold hours to finding hidden containers in the woods.

Are you logged in on the app?

Based on what evidence? The way you like to go geocaching, and the assumption that no one does it differently? I'm not a numbers-oriented geocacher myself. My best days geocaching have involved spending hours on a single find. My "Best Day" statistically was only 28 caches. But those 28 caches took only a few hours. A few more hours would have brought the count into the 55-60 range. Do that twice, and I'd have the 115 needed each week for an annual count of 6000. That leaves 5 days to travel to a new location and find a new spot to spend a couple days finding a lot of caches. If you're retired, spend a lot of time traveling, and spend a lot of time geocaching, then these numbers aren't at all impossible. The only question is whether you want to keep it up for years. That kind of geocaching isn't for me. It isn't for most people. But for the few that it appeals to, those kinds of find counts are completely reasonable.

You don't even need a modern numbers trail. Back before modern numbers trails were allowed, a team set a "new record" of about 300 finds in a day (midnight to midnight). There was a lot of planning beforehand, and they did take one questionable shortcut (signing the outside of some containers, rather than signing the log inside the container). But that shortcut didn't really save them all that much time. And with similar planning in a similar cache-dense area, it should be possible to find 300 in a 24-hour day with no shortcuts of any kind.

I've met one of the high number power cachers. I haven't gone caching with him, but I know people who have. They said that it's hard to keep up with him. He moves quickly, finds caches quickly, signs logs quickly, replaces caches quickly, and moves on to the next cache quickly. He's retired and he travels a lot, so he is always visiting new locations and finding LOTS of caches there.

You don't even need a dedicated crew. Years ago, a solo cacher on a motorcycle got more than 300 in a single day on one of the numbers trails in Nevada. There were no divide-and-conquer shenanigans, no three cache monte, no shortcuts of any kind. Just a lot of identical caches along a desert highway and someone willing to do the same thing over and over and over.

Unless the CO (or seeker) doesn't know the difference between a cedar and a juniper. Or between a cedar and a spruce. Or... Nonsense. Inaccurate coordinates don't make the find more difficult. They make seekers look in the wrong place. Those are very different things. A truly difficult hide is difficult even with perfectly accurate coordinates.

What happens if you select just the "Show Hides" filter, without the "Do Not Show Finds" filter?

My favorite night cache was a multi-stage puzzle night cache. One stage used reflective tacks, another provided one piece of a physical puzzle, another used UV flashlights to read coordinates written in fluorescent paint, another provided another piece of the physical puzzle, another had an elevated reflective container and we had to find the mechanism to lower it, another provided the third piece of the physical puzzle, and so on. It took more than an hour to complete all the stages, and the county park closed at 10pm, which made it much harder to complete during daylight saving time, because you couldn't start the first stage until it was dark (about half an hour after sunset). But it might be better if you found a few multi-stage puzzle caches before you tried to create something like that.

For many caches, the difference is that a 5 difficulty requires "specialized knowledge, skills, tools, or significant effort to find, solve, or open." This is similar to a 5 terrain requiring "specialized equipment such as scuba gear, a boat, rock climbing gear, or similar." I've seen a 5 difficulty used for elevated caches where the CO expects seekers to use a tool to retrieve and replace the cache. I've seen it used for multi-caches where a tool (e.g., a UV flashlight) is needed to decode the information at each stage. I've seen it used for puzzle caches where programming (specialized skills and tools) is required to solve the puzzle. Before Groundspeak had definitions for the half-star ratings (1.5, 2.5, 3.5, and 4.5 stars), I sometimes saw 4.5 stars used as "5 stars lite", meaning that equipment/tools were needed, but the necessary equipment/tools weren't that hard to use or obtain.

If you don't trust your coordinates, then test them. Enter your coordinates into your device, and then approach the cache location from at least 100ft/30m away. The arrow should point right at the cache location as you approach. Repeat the process, approaching the cache location from various directions, from at least 100ft/30m away each time. No matter which direction you approach from, the arrow should point right at the cache location. If it doesn't, then adjust your coordinates until it does. Bonus points for repeating the test on another day when the GPS satellites are in a different configuration. Also, the Help Center article How to Get Accurate Coordinates should prove useful.

I didn't realize how much abuse the location of my first hide received from skateboarders. I had to visit the site at least once a week, trying to keep the cache going. Eventually, they destroyed the wooden steps the cache was hidden under. After they city replaced the steps, before I could rebuild the camouflage to match the new steps, they destroyed the steps again. The city gave up, and so did I. I learned a lot about choosing a location and hide style that isn't going to need a lot of maintenance from trying to keep that cache going.

The Check for minimum distance section of the guidelines says it this way: "A physical stage is any object placed by the cache owner, such as a container or a tag." There is more info in that section of the guidelines, as well as in the Waypoints and stages page in the Help Center.

Just because there is no GPS signal at GZ doesn't mean that the CO can't use a GPS device to get accurate coordinates for GZ, or that seekers can't use a GPS device to locate GZ.

And then there are the guidelines prohibiting temporary caches and caches "intended to move" (e.g., because they're on a ship that moves).

I've occasionally used Command-Shift-N to open "Incognito" windows when I need to have multiple accounts logged into a particular site at the same time. As far as I can tell, these windows and their cookies and other authentication tokens are completely independent from each other, and from the main window(s). Maybe something like that could be used to start multiple cache/event listings, so they're all ready to submit in different browser windows, without needing to install as many different browsers.

Does it have a goal to travel to a specific location? If not, then I wouldn't worry about it. It's traveling. It's okay if it travels somewhere that it has traveled before. Even if it does have a goal to travel to a specific location, were you aware of the goal when you picked it up? Was the goal on a tag of some kind that is attached to the coin? If not, then I wouldn't worry about it. It's traveling. If you feel extra generous, you could print the goal from the coin's page and attach it somehow to the coin, so future geocachers will know its goal.

Just to be clear, these are the items (generally tags and coins, but there have been a few others) with a tracking code that can be tracked on the geocaching.com site. They are NOT considered trade items. You don't have to trade for them. You just move them to new caches and log their travels on the geocaching.com site, hopefully moving them in a way that helps them towards any goals the owners might have created for them. These are all essentially the same. They are items that geocachers can trade for. The rule I learned when I started was "trade up, trade even, or don't trade." As long as you leave something of equal or greater value, you're free to take things from the cache container. But don't trade for things that need to stay in the container, like the log, or the stamp of a Letterbox Hybrid cache. Edit to add: And signature items are just things that someone left that are often homemade, with their geocaching name on them. Check my profile for a photo of the personal signature tokens that I've made.

A common recommendation for beginners is to stick with small size, regular size, and large size caches. Until you're more experienced, avoid micro size caches, some of which are smaller than most beginners can imagine (sometimes called "nanos"). Save those for later, after you have some experience. Also, stick with caches that have a difficulty rating of no more than 2 stars . Save the more difficult ones for later. You may also want to choose caches with easy terrain ratings. (The difficulty rating tells you how hard it is to find the cache once you get there. The terrain rating tells you how hard it is to get there.) And it is often best to start with traditional caches, which will be at the published coordinates. Multi-caches or mystery/puzzle caches or other cache types can require more work just to figure out where the container is located. Under ideal conditions, a consumer GPS device will be accurate to about 3m (10ft). That applies both to your device, and to the cache owner’s device, so you may find the container 5-6m (16-20ft) from ground zero under ideal conditions. Under less than ideal conditions, both GPSr readings can be much less accurate. Once you get within that distance of ground zero, put your device away and look around for places where a container could be hidden. Where would you hide something? Do you notice anything unusual? Is anything too new, too old, too organized (e.g., UPS: an Unnatural Pile of Sticks/Stones), too symmetrical, not quite the right color or shape, etc.? Don’t look only on the ground; the cache may be knee-level, waist-level, eye-level, or overhead. How might the container be secured in place? With magnets? With a hook? With string? With fishing line? With something else? Does anything move when you touch it? (Be careful when touching things though.) Go ahead and read the cache's additional hints (if provided), and read the past logs and look at any photos in the cache's image gallery. They may help you understand what you're looking for, and how/where it may be hidden. It may also help to look at some of the cache containers available online. For example, check out the cache containers sold by Groundspeak. Also, take a look at the Pictures - Cool Cache Containers (CCC's) thread in the forums, and check out some geocaching videos on YouTube. See also: How to hone your Geo-Senses (blog post)

Yep. Back in the day, I would copy-paste the content from cache descriptions into text notes on my Palm PDA. My normal geocaching routine revealed coordinates (and other information) hidden in this way.

Back in the day, before modern numbers trails existed, there was a team that found 200-something caches in a 24-hour midnight-to-midnight numbers run. They focused on easy caches near parking and planned their route in advance. They did take some heat for signing the outside of many containers, rather than opening the containers and signing the logs. With modern numbers trails, it's possible to get hundreds of finds in a 24-hour numbers run without taking any blatant "shortcuts" (like the Three Cache Monte, or any of the divide-and-conquer systems). I heard of one solo numbers run, on a motorcycle (which made blatant "shortcuts" impossible), where the geocacher found 400-something caches in a 24-hour period. Here's what a numbers run looks like on one of these numbers trails: If you add some of the blatant "shortcuts" then your numbers can go even higher, especially with the various divide-and-conquer systems where numbers are limited only by the number of sub-teams you have claiming each others finds as part of the combined "team".