Logbear

OK, some quick numbers. 1,392 7.5 minute maps cover Washington State. 3/4 of those would be 1,044. I looked at some of the "Cache Restricted zones" like National Parks, Indian Reservations, Hanford works, National Wildlife Refuges, National Recreation Areas, Military Bases, Wilderness areas. Several of these areas have several 7.5 minute quads completely inside of them. I quit counting when I got to 100 quads that can't have caches, and I know there are a lot more. As much as I'd like to explore areas of the Pasayten Wilderness some day, visiting the 24 or more quads in that wilderness to find or place caches (and technically caches aren't allowed in Wilderness Areas), just won't happen in my lifetime. And I'm sure there are some quads where I've found the only cache in that quad. Heck I think there are some DeLorme Gazetteer pages that I've done all the caches in. Doing the DeLorme Challenge, County Challenge, and the Lookout Challenge covered a lot of ground. I love maps, and I love challenge caches, but this is too much for me. I say downsize this challenge to the 100K series maps. That would be about 57 maps I think. That would be a little more fun. And it would still take you on a tour of the state.

I saw a news article in the Everett Herald that mentioned that Geocaching was outlawed in US Forest Service land designated as wilderness areas. The article was specifically about the new Wild Sky wilderness near Index. http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/07/05/06/...1wildsky001.cfm I talked to the USFS Wilderness coordinator to confirm this, and he told me that geocaching is prohibited in all Wilderness Areas. It's unlawful to leave any kind of a cache or supplies unattended for more than 48 hours. I didn't think about it when I was talking to him, but there are "Summit Registers" on most major peaks in the all Wilderness Areas. I wonder if a Summit Register could be considered a cache. If the Summit registers can stay then I think that a "Log only" cache would be OK. "Some activities will be outlawed in wilderness Despite the ease of access, the wilderness designation will make it tougher for some people to enjoy the forest the way they do now. Logging, mining, new structures and roads will all be banned in Wild Sky, said Gary Paull, wilderness and trails coordinator for the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. So will using chain saws to clear trails, holding treasure hunts called "geocaching" and using electric drills to bore boltholes for rock climbing".