Dj Storm

I have 5 FTF's which are also LTF's, where the cache is still in place! I suppose there is little incentive to find caches in remote locations, especially once the FTF was grabbed. I scored my first FTF on a cache 273 days after publishing. Apart from a maintenance visit, the cache wasn't found (logged) by the STF 385 days later.

Since your wife works at said hospital, she probably knows who to ask, and how to ask to get a positive response.

Depending on the satellite constellation, it happens sometimes to have most of them blocked either by buildings or terrain. If the chosen location has a decent part of the sky visible, return several hours/days later to get a more accurate waypoint. If the view of the sky is severely restricted, you can either place an offset cache (where you give coordinates to a location with good reception and directions to the cache), or increase the difficulty of the hide, letting the seekers to "do the math" in order to locate the cache.

I abandoned a hunt for such a cache, 2500+ km from my home, on which I could be FTF. It was 3:15 in the morning (I was going to the airport to return home), and stopped searching less than 2 minutes into the hunt, after the 4th car passed by; didn't want to explain to police what I was doing near the airport in a foreign country, especially as I had to go to that airport. I didn't like this kind of placement, I was only hunting because of the chance to score my first FTF at that time. I also hate the difficulty 5 hides where the difficulty is caused by muggles; the kind where the cache is a camoed nano hidden in a plaza with 24/7 human presence (went near one of these, and continued walking).

Also happened to me. You can read my log here: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LU...d0-af4ff6824a6e

I think the question should be "Is specialized equipment required to retrieve, open, sign and/or replace the container?" By what I saw in the forums the past couple of days, a nano in a pipe, guarded by yellow jackets, might score close to 5 for difficulty...

By what I read in this topic: - About half of the cachers were told about geocaching by someone (or told to check out geocaching), taken out caching by a friend, or heard about it on TV/radio. - About half of them found out while searching for something else on the net (or just lurking around), or by reading an article on a magazine/newspaper. - A very few (lucky) ones found out by accidentally finding a geocache. I'm in the second category, found out by following a link, while searching for a GPSr to buy.

I have FTF-ed 8 caches. Fastest FTF: 12 days after publishing. Slowest: 273 days after publishing. 6 out of the 8 caches are yet to be found (logged online, actually) by the STF. FTF hounds usually hunt for urban caches. By choosing remote caches, you might get those FTF's.

Encountered brown bears (the only kind of bear in my country), on three occasions, while hiking solo. Background: While hiking through forest where visibility is low, I shout a "Yeee-ooow" from time to time, or when I hear a suspect noise, see bear markings, or when I feel uncomfortable. Also shout in response to somebody else's shout (hasn't happened lately), so he knows I'm human. First encounter, while hunting for this cache. Didn't found the right trail, walked on an unmarked one, with low visibility. Heard some people ahead talking, shouted yee-oow, they didn't answer (in my mind: something is wrong with these people). Found a huge area with raspberries, saw two people 40-50m on a side trail, went forward without greeting them. At that time thought they were locals collecting raspberries to sell to tourists, and that they haven't answered my shout because they didn't want me around, so I shouted no more. 275m from the cache the trail ended, the raspberry bushes were so thick that I could barely see 1m ahead. While considering if I should push through or search for another trail, I heard a noise some 10m in the bushes. I shouted yee-oow, and because no answer come back, stopped thinking: "You stupid human, answer me, I know you are there, you know I'm here!". A few seconds later heard a "Buh!", and the bear started running away. Only caught a glimpse of him, it was smaller than what I expected a bear to be. When a bear runs, it makes a heavy panting sound, like a fat guy (with asthma) after climbing several flights of stairs. At that time didn't knew this, (wasn't sure it was a bear), but this was confirmed the next encounter. Second encounter, while hunting for this cache, was the scariest. I was walking on a marked trail, that was used also by horse carriages several years before. There were raspberries on the sides of the trail, which I ate from, forgetting to announce my presence. A bear heard me coming, and started announcing his presence. I started shouting loudly, knowing from the previous encounter that he will run away. But he didn't! After 10-15 seconds, he came out of the bushes, about 10 meters from me. Saw me trying to look big and scary, and quickly turned back, running into the forest. He was smallish, and the hair on his nose was gray, similar of what you can see in qlenfg's current avatar. Because of the gray nose (interesting how one "sees" only the dangerous part of the beast, and ignores the rest) and the small size, I was afraid that it's a wild boar (more dangerous than a bear), but after he started running and panting I concluded it was a bear. Third encounter, a week ago, while hiking in a completely different area. The bear was far away, 100 meters or more, heard me shouting, and run away, panting. It was scary because I couldn't determine if he was running away or towards me. Didn't saw him, nor the movement of the vegetation, only recognized the panting sound. Some people I know took pictures of bears they encountered (they were in a larger group), but at that time pictures were the last thing on my mind.

I am pretty new to geocaching, but I have some ideas regarding this TV series. First thing, don't use all your ideas in the first episode. The bushwhacking, wrong coordinates and depleted batteries seem to be all that can go wrong, except injury. They have their place in geocaching, but use them simultaneously. Another thing that many commented doesn't pertain to geocaching: the snake. Many cachers, myself included, try to avoid close animal encounters. It's nice when you see rabbits, deer, other non dangerous animals, any kind of birds, and get them on film, but handling them pushes the limit too much. Also, get a camera (you have the filming crew behind, but most hikers/cachers don't, and they use the camera for picture taking). Regarding more or less dangerous animals, they might be interesting from a distance, like seeing a bear or buffalo from a quarter mile away (you could use the telephoto to take a picture of them), but not on the first episodes. I like finding (and eating) wild berries (in my area - raspberries, wild strawberries, bilberries, blackberries), and collecting mushrooms. I also refill and drink water from streams. For urban folks this may seem more like surviving, for me is extra fun. You could include a plant per episode, with short description, how to recognize, etc. Mushrooms are more tricky, use them later on the show, or leave them out completely. Geocaching is (or was) all about location. Research the caches beforehand, go to the scenic/interesting ones. Try to alternate between different terrain types and cache types. Go to an event (like Geowoodstock) or organize your own event. Educate by example about CITO. Help moving trackables around (be careful about how you present them, to avoid starting muggle waves). You could try (later in the show) a night cache, or a two day hike with the night spent in a tent. From time to time introduce some new piece of equipment into the show. You could start with the GPSr and printout of the cache page, and add camera, hiking stick, extra batteries, flashlight, raincoat, PDA and/or other electronic gadget, water filter, solar battery charger, camping gear, cool things like the hiking stick that converts into a tripod, etc. If geocachers are the target audience of the show, then I subscribe to what the others said: go to out-of-the-ordinary places, with scenic views and/or historic value, or where specialized equipment (scuba, boat, rock climbing gear) is required, try to meet some famous cachers (if they agree), go to Geowoodstock, the APE cache, the oldest/highest/remotest cache in a specific area.

I perform maintenance on a "special cache", the first in my country; the owner is missing since 2004. I planned to ask to adopt the cache after the third maintenance visit, but this is no longer possible. All I could do was to ask the reviewer to remove the "needs maintenance" attribute (which he did - many thanks). The cache I talk about had notes about the need of a new container for some time, and 17 cachers before me found it in the meantime, some of them saying the same, but nobody changed it. I went and added a container, and said that the cache will need a new logbook soon (added a few pages for emergency). I added the logbook this year, some logs mentioned the logbook becoming full, but nobody changed it, and somebody "cleaned out" the emergency pages. The cache is 200+ km from my house (125+ miles), so there are several more local cachers, but it looks that around here the community doesn't help keeping caches going. I don't carry a cache repair kit while caching, unless I know I will do maintenance on a specific cache. If I read the logs mentioning that the cache needs maintenance, I will either do the maintenance, or choose not to hunt the cache. If I find a cache needing maintenance, all I can do is alert the owner.

In Romania, when I joined (August 24, 2006), there were 44 geocaches published on geocaching.com. The newest one was published on August 13, and probably no caches were archived between August 14-24, so 44 can be considered a correct number to be included in the comparison. This gives a 88.6% growth rate 2006-07.

Congo-go, Congo, 966.1 km (600 miles)

I live in an area with few geocaches. The closest to me is 54.2 km (33.7 miles) away, and it was placed a month ago (previous was 104.2 km - 64.7 miles away). I have not logged any armchair caches. Usually I travel, finding caches during vacation. To get my "fix" when I cannot go caching, I read the forums, read the description and logs of some interesting caches, solve puzzles that I will never find, planning trips so I can find -one- cache during a 15 hour caching day (including some museum visits / mountain hikes), etc. I have read the description of some armchair caches (I know about the "4 windows" one), sometimes I solve the riddle, but I never log one (not even with a note - it isn't worth it)

Nice! I can see it includes caches published less than a month ago (probably even more recent caches). You could get the cache coordinates, than search the area around those coordinates with a larger radius. The closest cache to Mount Soche is 379 km (235.5 miles) away.

You might also alter your online log, to include that you found the cache with your friend. Think of it like a confirmation of the trueness of his log.

I checked a logbook against the online logs, and found several instances of one physical log, two online logs. Usually the physical log mentions finding the cache "with friend Friend1" or "with some friends" or is signed as "Team ABC", so the second online log has some "proof" in the physical logbook, and I consider it a valid find. If the physical and the online log of Cacher1 doesn't mention finding the cache with Friend1, and some time later Friend1 logs online as finding together with Cacher1, I would be bothered as a cache owner. I would be bothered more if I'm Cacher1, for not being consulted, as I would have altered my online log to mention my friend. So my view on this situation: you could talk with your caching friend to mention you in his online log, and then log your find, writing some words about why you log it so late. It doesn't bother me even if he edits his online log today.

How the caches "evolved" since I started (august 2006): At that time geocaching.com listed 44 caches in my country: 42 traditionals and 2 multis. Micro: 3 - 7% Small: 5 - 11% (and this is a small: http://img.geocaching.com/cache/log/fa1ebd...c2f23e09f25.jpg ) Regular: 31 - 71% (78% if we add the 3 unknowns) Large: 0 Unknown: 5 - 11% (of which 3 are regular, 1 small, 1 really unknown) Now there are 257 caches listed (+ 1 event): Traditional: 244 Multi: 11 Puzzle: 2 Micro/small/regular/unknown: 2008: 31 / 20 / 69 / 1 - 18% micro (26% of new placements) 2007: 10 / 19 / 43 / 0 - 11% micro (14% of new placements) 2006: 4 / 5 / 24 / 3 - 8% micro (11% of new placements) 2005: 1 / 1 / 11 / 0 - 4% micro (8% of new placements) early: 0 / 1 / 12 / 2 - 0% micro

305.9 km (190.1 miles) for 200 caches 355.7 km (221.1 miles) for 200 not found caches Yea... I'm in the middle of nowhere....

Performed two searches, one for a radius of 100km (62 miles) around my residence, and the other for 100 miles (161 km). Here are the results: Traditional: 2 (17 on the 100 miles search) Multi: 0 (0) Puzzle: 0 (0) Virtual: 0 (0) And how many of them are disabled? 0 (1) Micro: 0 (1) Small: 0 (5) Regular: 2 (11) Large: 0 (0) Unspecified: 0 (0) You might think there are very few caches in my country (correct!), the majority of them being traditional regulars (not quite). Let's search around the capital , 20 km (12.5 miles) radius: Traditional: 30 (35 on a radius of 100 km / 62 miles) Multi: 7 (8) Puzzle: 2 (2) Virtual: 0 (0) Event: 1 (1) And how many of them are disabled? 4 (6) Micro: 26 (29 on a radius of 100 km) Small: 9 (9) Regular: 4 (7) Large: 0 (0) Unspecified: 1 (1) So, around the capital many caches are micros.

Very interesting idea, perfectly done! I thought, too, about creating a puzzle that should be solved by everyone before logging, but my approach was somewhat different (and more complicated): An ammo box with an internal electronic lock; a small lcd that shows the encrypted key; The key should be decrypted on site using an algorithm specified on the cache page; input the decrypted key using some buttons; once successfully inputed, the box unlocks, and a new encrypted key is loaded (the box is preloaded with 100-1000 encrypted keys, of which I keep a copy); when logging online, the cachers are required to write also the decrypted key. Using this method, I also know how many times was the box successfully opened. The drawback is the $$$ needed to create such a box, and after it the maintenance (replacing the battery, keeping the moisture out of the electronics, repairing the damage done by someone with a crowbar, etc). The web-based puzzle that gives the coordinates is a better method. (I might use something like this for some puzzle caches). And to brag a little, my token is: 2KWaqV9q9oPW+xAjWu6n/gbE+bc6QviF I won't seek your cache, because I'm on the other side of the planet, but the puzzle was fun to solve!

Responding to the OP's question: People usually order 20+ coins (sometimes 100+). Some of this geocoins will be released in the wild, the rest are for trading or sale, and end up in the personal geocoin collection of cachers. So you can order several "cool dragon" geocoins, keep a couple of them, release some, and trade the rest for other cool geocoins.

In a case like that, I'd note in my find log (for the cache) that I checked for such-and-such item and it wasn't there. The cache owner can remove missing items from the list on the cache page. As far as leaving a note on the trackables page... it doesn't hurt. DCC First, if the trackable is not in the cache, read the last logs. If the logs don't mention the taking of the trackable, wait for a week or so, before mentioning it. I took a coin on August 15 (and written about this in the logbook), but was without internet access until the 21st. On August 16 someone wrote both on the cache page and on the geocoin page that it isn't there, and "the logbook is not clear about this". I'm sure the seeker after me had good intentions, but many of us are caching while on vacation, and several days may pass until we can log the visit. So my $0.02: Don't rush mentioning it, and when you mention it, do it in a polite way, no need to suggest that the previous finder took/stole it.

I like finding caches (oops, I'm the first 'finder' in this topic). Would hide some, but I live in an ordinary city, surrounded by plains used for agriculture. There is nowhere to hike from here, and the few forests nearby are used by weekenders/barbecuers, usually are crowded enough and not very clean. The places where I would hide (and I found many great locations) are far from home, and a bit of a problem regarding maintenance. ... and I like Snoogans' hides!

Funny, and... markwelled