jonboy

Personally, I don't have any caches left in Harriman, but if I wanted to place a new one, it would be hard to know how to go about it. Where the dividing lines would lie between these regions is by no means obvious. Beaver pond, for instance, is right next to Lake Welch, whilst Lake Sebago would seem to cover almost the whole southern third of the park. As these administrative boundaries are not known to us it makes it difficult to know who to apply to. When I talked to Tim Sullivan, the park super who administers the permits for Storm King, he told me he had no idea how these areas were divided. This is not to criticize you, Mark, I only point out that even those few of us who are intent on complying with the permit regulations, find the situation in Harriman daunting.

What cache owners of caches in Bear Mt/Harriman need is a map of the five regions into which the area has been divided, so they can determine which area their cache is contained in, and a list of who has to be contacted for each area within Bear Mt/ Harriman. Another thing that would be very useful is a method of obtaining permits by mail. I obtained permits in Fahnestock and Rockefeller and in each case it took numerous phone calls and three visits to the office. Right now, these permits can only be obtained during business hours, during the work week, and even if you take time off work and go to the office, there is no guarantee you will find the right person in the office. You need to make an appointment for a specific time before you make the trip to the office.

The State of Massachusetts will be surprised to learn that. Black Bears in Mass They seem to think they have 2,000.

Seven out of eight for me, and I live 40 miles away. I ain't doin no stinkin swamp cache.

I drive by there everytime I go to the Daks on the Taconic. I've been in there twice, it has boating, swimming and some hiking trails. This is a park with the opposite problem to Harriman, it is underused, hence the effort to promote the park by encouraging Geocaching. It is about 80 miles north of Westchester County.

Bears have an extremely sensitive sense of smell, so you need to be sensible about what kind of food you take with you in bear country. It would be asking for trouble to barbeque in known bear habitat. They are not looking to eat you, just your food, so keep your camp clean and store your food away from where you sleep, preferably hung from a tree on a line. They are expert tree climbers, so just looping a food bag over a branch won't work. Don't count on a cooler to protect your food or disquise it's odor from the bear. Bears that have become campground robbers are not easily deterred by yelling or banging on pots. Those of you that have not yet had a run in with such a determined food poacher will quickly tire of the novelty, nor will it seem so funny when he is tearing apart your camp kitchen and eating your food. I have seen a bear tear a backpack off the frame of a pack that was hung in a tree to get food carelessly left in the pack. A firearm is a bad idea, as these food raids occur in the dark and it would be too easy to hit another camper by mistake. A large dog may deter the bear, but you may not get much sleep as he howls his head off, and he would probably be killed or injured if you unleashed him on the bear. I did drive off a bear once by letting off an M80 firecracker, but this is highly illegal. If you are worried, I would advise that you talk to the local park officials in the area you plan to visit.

I received the first permit issued by Rockefeller State Park Preserve for Hearth on Hudson . The name of the person who issues the permits is Neoma Chefalo at 914 631-1470. As I stated before, they are only issuing permits for Rockwood Hall and with two already in this area, there isn't much room for more, given the distance required between caches. I had a little trouble connecting with her, but she was friendly and not hostile to geocaching. She said she is waiting for the state to give her a GPSr before she goes out and removes caches, but it is possible she may move to have them delisted or disabled.

I was wrong in some of my facts on my last post, first of all the term is UXO not UXB, that was a television program. Secondly, there was no unexploded ordinance found west of Rt 9W, in Area "A". Storm King Update The fact remains that there is little justification for Geocaching restrictions in Area "C", but I'll admit that this is rather small potatoes in the overall NYS Parks geocaching issue.

The ban makes sense for those areas where the possibility of UXB exists, but it makes no sense for area "C": Map. Only an narrow corridor was cleared in areas "A" & "B", but there was never any evidence of UXB in area "C", which consists of more than half of the area under consideration. It is even more strange that geocaching is to be allowed in area "A" where the greatest number of UBX rounds were found. The ruling they have made is not only wrong, it is dangerous.

I spoke with Tim Sullivan, the Bear Mt Park Superintendent, today by telephone. He has been given responsibility for issuing geocache permits for the Storm King Section of PIPC. He did not seem at all hostile to geocaching, in fact he is a long time friend of one of our geocachers, Outdoors Lady, but he did know very little about it. I took some time to explain what we do, why, what kind of containers we use and so forth. He did cite the rules to me, including a ruling that Geocaches are not going to be allowed east of 9W in Storm King because of the unexploded ordinance issue. This does not leave much, only Whitehorse Mt, but he did say he would be happy to approve any caches I wished to place there. He did say that he has no copies of the geocache permit application, only the rules, so anyone wanting a permit from him should bring an application, perhaps downloading the one from the LICO site: NY State Park Permit Application The new ruling on Storm King means that I will have to remove one of my Storm King Caches (Butter Hill North), but the other (Butter Hill South) is not on State Park land and is not affected. There is no mechanism to apply for a permit by mail, and this is badly needed. I have been trying for more than a week to get a permit for a cache in Rockwood Hall, including two visits to the Park office, with no luck.

The example of Norvin Green shown above is of a New Jersey State Park, which is a prime example of what a laisser faire attitude of land mangement leads to. Are you offering this as an model of what happens when a park system makes no tangible attempt to control dumping, illegal ORV use, geocaching or much of anything else? NY State Parks do have these kind of problems, but on no where near the scale of New Jersey Parks. I would rather have a park make efforts at enforcement than not, even if it negatively impacts me. A speeder who is pulled over might ask why the police aren't out catching real criminals, but this is merely self serving. If waste dumpers posted the details of their dumping on a website, they would be easier to identify. Illicit sexual activity goes on every where, park rangers would be stirring up a hornet's nest if they made sweeps through the park picking up homosexuals. There aren't groups of rangers in Harriman collecting up illegal geocaches, just a few zealous individual rangers. Personally, I'd rather have a zealous ranger than one who sits in their truck all day eating donuts. Let's not blow this permit business up out of proportion, there is no pogrom underway, and all the problems in NY State parks are not the result of geocache regulation.

If I saw that kind of illegal activity I would report it. The number for the park police is on the back of the Trail Conference map. Yes the rangers do not do foot patrols, but they are obligated to respond to incidents that are reported to them. It might be necessary to follow up and file a complaint in person, but this could be done at the small office in Tiorati. It does little good to relate this information here, it needs to be reported at the time it is observed, so something can be done about it. That is part of the problem, that people see this kind of activity and do nothing about it.

Regulations are posted at bulletin boards posted at major trail heads such as Reeves Brook or Long Mountain. They are in the usual form of incomprehensible bureaucratic gobbledy gook and are more for fullfilling legal requirements than informing the public. The thing to bear in mind is that Rangers patrol almost exclusively by vehicle, and the main way they are going to detect overnight campers is by the presense of their vehicles or the lights from their fires. Fires are the main reason why camping is restricted to designated sites. If you park in a legal overnight spot and follow DEC guidelines, that is be at least a half mile from the road, 150 feet from a trail or body of water and use a small backpacking stove, no one is even going to know you are there. If you must have a fire, build the fire so that it is not visible from the road, and keep it small and safe.

Unfortunately, an individual has no control over other peoples contact with any bear they may encounter. The chances are much greater of encountering a bear habituated to humans in densely populated areas. It is these bears, that have learned to view humans as food sources, that are the greatest threat. I wouldn't be afraid to go in the woods in these areas, and I wouldn't assume that every bear is dangerous, but any bear that approached me, instead of running away, I would consider to be dangerous. As the website points out, you shouldn't run, because this may trigger pursuit, and you couldn't out run a Blackbear anyway, nor could you escape by climbing a tree. Staring into the bears eyes could be viewed by the bear as aggression, so try and avert your stare. I carry a very loud whistle in a pouch on my pack belt, and would blow this as I backed away, if the bear kept coming.

I exaggerate the length of the Breakneck Ridge Trail, it's only 4.6 miles, with 3300' of elevation change. The thing is, once you reach the Mt Beacon Fire Tower (great place for a virtual), it's still 5.2 miles to loop around to all the caches. Ten miles up there will feel like 15 miles any where else. I promise you one thing, if you did this whole ridge, you will have done one of the premier trails on the whole east coast. I think Backpacker Magazine rated it as one of the nations best trails. Just don't plan on doing much hiking for the next day.

Geez Mark! I'm impressed! You went through two hundred caches, I got tired just clicking through twelve pages.

I archived two caches along the Breakneck Ridge and Optimus Prime is planning to archive Breakneck Cliffhanger, so I would say it would be best to come in from North Beacon Mountain and do a loop. There's only nine caches up there, but the hiking is out of this world. Maybe the uber-hikers could come in the five miles along Breakneck Ridge, but this is some of the toughest five miles you will find in our region. There is an easy dirt road that offers a bailout down to Mountain Avenue for anyone with sore knees, as a matter of fact, there is no reason people couldn't go up and down that route, except that you will be sharing it with ATVs. The gorge that parallels it is very nice, with a waterfall at the top, this would make a nice route to come in on.

I won't claim to have read all the logs, only those from North Virginia, but I can't find any logs indicating that a cache was ever revisited for maintenance. I saw where a wet log book was replaced by another finder, but that cuckoo style of cache maintenance, where maintenance is left to others, does not constitute cache maintenance in my book.

The posted topic for this thread was "Geolitter", not "Adopters Sought for Pennsylvania Caches", had it been that, I wouldn't have read it, so I do not accept that such discussion is off topic. I can understand that an examination of how this came about might be uncomfortable, but it is certainly not irrelevant. Geocacher burn out is a predictable reality, the bigger the house of cards that is allowed to be constructed, the greater the likelyhood that it will collapse. Along with both ownership and authority must come accountability. To refuse to examine this is to abdicate responsibility.

I agree with Brian, nobody can adequately maintain 240 caches, there should be some kind of limit on how many physical caches can be owned by any one individual, and based on my own experience, that number should be around 100, which would still reguire an average of two maintenance visits a weekend to attain the oft neglected standard of one maintenance visit per year per cache. I really don't think they should be more than 100 miles from someone's home. It looks like this individual lived in Pennsylvania and had temporary residence in North Carolina, so why the need to play Jonny Appleseed and spread them all up and down the east coast? The wilderness ethic is Carry it in- Carry it out. The geocaching community is obligated to clean up the mess this cacher created, but policies that allow such excess need to be reexamined.

Pine Meadow Brook and Lake Skannatatti have been traditional sites for litter pick up. Long Mt/Turkey Lake and Silvermine would be other good candidates. Any of the lean-tos could use cleanup as well, but require longer walks.

It is difficult to know what to expect when dealing with so many different managers with so many possible management philosophies. The person I spoke to in the office said they didn't want anyone going off trail. One could argue that they allow people to fish in Swan Lake, and you can only do this by going off trail, that this is only a pretext for doing what they wish to do anyway, and you would basically be right. My experience has shown that park managers who have been trained as naturalists tend to be inclined to be more restrictive. In a preserve, resource protection is the primary goal, and recreation only a secondary one. Along a more practical line, bear in mind that this land was donated by the Rockefeller family, with certain specific provisions stipulated. Also parts of the preserve directly abut some of the family land, right where "Town and Country" was placed. I have seen David Rockefeller driving his horse and buggy directly out of his estate into the park, I have also seen him driving around in a golf cart. It doesn't surprise me that officials might not want direputable geocaching types lurking around in the bushes. It is up to the geocaching community to win the trust of park officials. I would argue that is best to comply with these initial rulings, even if some think they are capricious and unfair. We can press for changes later, once we have demonstrated our responsibility and willingness to submit to their authority. I haven't e-mailed any cache owners to advise them of the new rules, I'm just figuring them out, and how they will be applied in each park myself.

Rockefeller State Preserve has decided to ban geocaching because it is a preserve, not a park, although geocaching will still be allowed in Rockwood Hall. They have already removed one geocache, which was described to me as being a blue container in the crook of a tree. This sounds like it could be "Town and Country", though I can't be sure. I was told they will be removing the others soon. I have archived mine, "Far From the Madding Crowd", the others affected by the ban are "Sleepy Hollow-1" and "Eagle Hill Holiday Cache", but I get the impression they will remove the caches in Rockwood Hall without permits. The person in charge of Geocaching permits in this office is Naomi Seffalo, but she is out of the office until Wednesday. The park office number is 914 631-1470. They said they will hold the caches they pick up for the owners.

I think the lists of cache owners with caches in the NYS parks should be forwarded to NYADMIN. There will be a tendency amongst some cache owners to say "Who put you in charge?". This request to obtain a permit will carry much more weight if it comes from someone with the power to enforce it. It will need to be made clear that failure to comply within a specified amount of time will lead to delisting and removal of the cache. None of us have the authority to remove a cache on our own, though some of us might be prepared to do so if delegated such authority. I think it is overly optimistic to think that most cache owners will comply without such compulsion. Many cache owners never visit a cache again after they place it. I do think that cache owners should be given specific instructions for each park, on who they need to talk to, whether or not they can apply by mail, and what the deadline is for that particular park. This type of information should also be gathered by volunteers, and forwarded to NYADMIN along with the list of cache owners. I think it is excellent that a version of the cache permit application has been posted as a PDF file on the LIGO website, but, as has been already pointed out, the version posted is not the same one that most State Parks are using. It would be nice to get a full version of both the application and the regulations and instructions posted on as a PDF file. The version I saw in the Fahnestock park office was on legal size paper, printed on both sides, printed in color, and the text was green. They only had one copy of this in Fahnestock, and were making black and white copies of it to hand out. I would be willing to contact the Fahnestock Office on behalf of other geocachers in order to clarify such questions as whether they will accept applications by mail, but they are really quite approachable in that office, and I think anyone could do it.

So Mark, Who is the contact person as regards the Harriman/Bear Mt Cache permits, Stephanie? I'm sure she will be delighted that you promoted her to Superintendent. Is there an number for her? You mentioned five regions and named four, Sebago, Welch, Tiorati and Anthony Wayne, would the fifth be Bear Mt? This is good news, but it could make actually getting the permit harder. First one will have to figure out which region your cache is in, establishing where the boundaries lie, then you will have to run down the right one of five different regional managers. It took me four visits before I tracked down Bill Bauman, the Fahnestock Superintendent, and then it was only because he has a broken collar bone, can't drive and lives right next to the office. Harriman is huge, with lots of offices tucked away. Tiorati might be easiest to find someone, they have a small,constantly manned office, I would almost go there,instead of the main office, if I was looking for someone in the field, and ask them to call around on the radio. Most of the other offices are only open when someone happens to be there, and are often located down roads restricted to authorized vehicles.