Lyra

I actually started to read the thread and posted before I read far enough to see that there was some reasonable doubt as to the illegitimacy of the caches hidden. I withdraw my objection.

I actually started to read the thread and posted before I read far enough to see that there was some reasonable doubt as to the illegitimacy of the caches hidden. I withdraw my objection.

Went to the Micro-3 cache hidden by 4Finders http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.asp?ID=25338 on August 4 en route to another cache hidden in the vicinity. Took the wife (not really into caching, but she decided a hike was not out of the question) and my 14 month old daughter with me. After a hike through the woods that would have been easy but for lugging a 24 pound squirming human being, I found the cache location and began searching. Couldn't find it, so decoded the hint and found it almost immediately. Removed a wadded up wheresgeorge dollar and logged my visit. Meanwhile, wife and daughter are down the trail playing around near a creek. After I logged the visit, I heard a splash and the child started screaming. Turns out she thought that it would be neat to sit down in the middle of the creek. She was okay, but soaked to the bone. In my urgency to attend to her, however, I accidentally left the wheresgeorge bill sitting on the ground next to the cache site and didn't think about it until the next day. Dope slapped myself on the head for leaving it and hoped that someone else might find it. This past Monday morning, I checked my e-mail and received a notification from wheresgeorge.com that one of my bills had been found. I clicked on the link to the tracking report and learned that this bill had been found by someone, apparently a non-cacher, hiking the trail. They had registered it from Cincinnati, Ohio and it turned out that IT WAS A BILL I HAD PREVIOUSLY ENTERED WEEKS AGO! Here's the link to the tracking report: http://www.wheresgeorge.com/report.php3?key=04997ff569f480cca34f11c869ca8908&entcnt=1 Kinda neat, huh? Best I can figure is that it was a bill I stuck in another cache that some other cacher liberated and decided to hide it in this one. Still, it was a "small world" encounter for me.

I guess its inevitable that in any pleasurable endeavor, some idiot will show up to ruin the fun for the legitimate participants. I think the logs should be deleted by the cache hiders and the suspect new caches he placed be archived until someone actually goes out and verifies that they're not real.

I guess its inevitable that in any pleasurable endeavor, some idiot will show up to ruin the fun for the legitimate participants. I think the logs should be deleted by the cache hiders and the suspect new caches he placed be archived until someone actually goes out and verifies that they're not real.

One summer several years ago, while camping on Mount Rogers in Virginia, we encountered a black bear on a day hike away from the campsite. Having never encountered a bear before, we were all suffering from the jitters, not realizing that the bear was just as uncomfortable about seeing us. That night, my tentmate (and girlfriend at the time) poked me in the ribs and woke me up. She whispered that she thought the bear was outside of the tent, as she had heard something moving around outside for about half an hour prior to waking me. A bit nervous, I dared a peek outside the tent and saw only complete darkness. I didn't realize it until a few seconds later, but I was face to face with a turkey. At that point, the turkey let out the loudest protestations I have ever heard any animal make. The tent was not standing after my GF and I attempted an emergency exit through the non-flap end of the tent. Adrenaline is good stuff!

The question of liability for injury suffered by a cacher in search of treasure falls under the legal area of negligence. Typically, in order for someone to be held negligent, they must have some legal duty owed to others, must have breached that duty, and the breach must have been the proximate cause of the injury suffered by the injured party. Along with that is a principle known as Assumption of the Risk. Jeremy's disclaimer makes it clear that anyone relying upon the information on the site assumes all risks involved in seeking a cache. Jeremy's adequately protected. As for liability of others, if the cache is located on publicly owned land, the governmental entity owning the land would be protected pretty well by sovereing immunity (you can't sue the government, unless the government agrees to be sued). For caches located on private land, typically a landowner is liable only for forseeable risks (assuming that the injured party is not a trespasser, in which case the landowner is completely protected, unless there exists some "attractive nuisance" such as a swimming pool which might attract children "of tender years" who don't know any better than to go drown in your pool). Plodding through the woods is commonly recognized as entailing some risk to the explorer, the nature of which risks are more than likely unforeseeable to the landowner. As for liability to the hider of the cache, unless it was intentionally placed with some idea toward harming the unwary, there would be no liabilty. That, in a nutshell, is the law in every state. As for other countries, I have no idea, but would assume that, for the most part, it is the same. BTW, I am an attorney and regularly handle personal injury cases. A cache hunter who falls into an abandoned mine shaft? I wouldn't touch the case.

July 3rd, I headed out to the Smith Mountain Dam Overlook cache, which described a 1.5 mile hike over an inhospitable old mountain fire road. Looking at the GPS, I realized I was a mere 0.2 mils from it as the crow flies, and decided to bushwhack it. About halfway there, I heard the distintive rattle of a rattlesnake and decided the fire trail wasn't such a bad idea after all. At least it was wide enough that I'd have a visual of it before I stepped on it. RSL