AJC Team

The majority of caches that I have found are within biking distance of my house. Or if I'm taking public transit to get somewhere I'll make a list of caches in the vicinity of my destination and I go to find those if I have time. I know I'll never have hundreds of finds, but as they say it's the about the journey rather than the destination.

Someone a few pages back mentioned: "This hobby can be dangerous and individuals have to take responsibility to back out when uncomfortable." It's unfortunate that the young man died while hunting a cache, but in the end we are responsible for our actions. Look at the the terrain and difficulty level on a cache, read the logs. There is a cache near where I live that requires you to climb out on a steep rocky embankment. One misstep and you could potentially fall into the river, which has a very fast current in that area. The cache is not marked difficulty 4.5 for nothing. I've also seen cache listings which require a boat to reach. Bottom line is, when we go out cache hunting we need to be as prepared as possible for whatever we might encounter.

A great many cachers seem to have had this experience, including myself. There are several caches in my area where the CO is still active but not maintaining them. I have informally "adopted" several such caches, where the original CO is still on the listing but I maintain the cache for the most part. Requests have been made to officially transfer the cache to my ID but there was no response. I just didn't want the listings to be archived because I thought those particular caches were fun.

In a similar vein, I'd like to know if it's possible to find an archived cache on GS. Archived caches no longer appear on the map and cannot be searched by name or location, only by their code or owner's name. I know there are a number of archived caches in my area - multi or enigma caches that have become impossible to find because some of the clues required to find them no longer exist, and were subsequently archived. I'm interested in bringing some of them back as traditional finds because the owners just left the containers at the final location instead of removing them. How can you find the listings if you don't know the owner's name?

I can agree with you here. People can underestimate the value of the microcache. Geocaching has actually helped my "team" learn more about the area. We recently moved to a part of the city that was totally unfamiliar, but with many caches in the vicinity, most of them micro. Hunting them has helped us become more familiar with the streets and landmarks, not to mention we've found several that offered terrific views or a memorable location.

I can agree with you here. People can underestimate the value of the microcache. Geocaching has actually helped my "team" learn more about the area. We recently moved to a part of the city that was totally unfamiliar, but with many caches in the vicinity, most of them micro. Hunting them has helped us become more familiar with the streets and landmarks, not to mention we've found several that offered terrific views or a memorable location.

Since we live in a suburb of a large city, we have 472 caches within a 5 mile radius of our home coordinates. Of those we've only found about 50, so there's a lot of work to be done.

I know of a few caches in my area that are literally hidden in plain sight. Nobody other than a geocacher would recognize the object for what it is. There's one that's stuck on the underside of one of those shopping cart shelters in the middle of a mall's parking lot. It's painted exactly the same colour as the rest of the structure and it looks like it's just part of the shelter.

There are a few micro caches in my area that have been hidden inside chain-link fence posts. The film container is attached to the underside of the post-cap by twine or a small chain. The first one I encountered took me three visits to finally figure out where it was.

We've been lurking on and off since the spring of 2007. Probably we still are considered newbies since we have found fewer than 100 caches, but we're working on that. Lately I've been caching on my own, the other two members of the team are way busy. Usually I cruise through the forums looking for any posts about upcoming cache raids in our area, because it's more fun to go out with other cachers. Aside from geocaching we like to do genealogy research, play D&D, and hang out with our friends.

I believe it all depends on the situation. Last summer I came across a micro-cache that had clearly been vandalized by a group of punks who had been partying in the vicinity. Since I lived nearby I replaced the cache myself and wrote a note to the owner, who was grateful that I had done so.