Packanack

No one really expected anything different. They were just getting up to speed. Takes them a little longer over in Wildlife Management.

I bet closer to thousands, I got two and just about all my caches are gone. This was topic on the local geocaching Facebook PAGE--CHANGES IN LATTITUDE.

? Sorry, please explain. GC5 is a remote cache that was placed in 2002, by a cacher who logged 6 caches in total and left the game about a year later. each of the cache placements ultimately became an unmaintained. GC5 was found once last year, and 4 years before that. There are literally 100s of similar caches in the field in NJ . GC5 is a metaphore for all those . responsible cachers all over the state are permitting, archiving, removing......but no one is speaking to the community standard of geolitter and abandoned caches. GC5 is still out there. Geolitter was of late given as a primary inducement for policy implementation, yet our groups continue to ignore it. So far you are the only person I have heard claiming "geolitter" as a valid reason for the state to impose draconian regulation on geocaching in New Jersey. This fallacy (that geolitter is a significant problem) cannot go unchallenged. Here are some pertinent calculations: total number of active/disabled caches in New Jersey 15,171 (includes events) Total volume of all micro caches: 167,000 cubic cm (assuming average volume of 31 cubic cm, the volume of a 35 mm film can) Total volume of all small caches: 2,612,000 cubic cm (assuming an average volume of 500 cubic cm, a typical sandwich container) Total volume of all other/unknown caches: 43,000 cubic cm(assuming average volume of 31 cubic cm) Total volume of all large caches: 840,000 cubic cm (assuming average volume of 10,000 cubic cm) Total volume of all regular caches: 4,644,000 cubic cm (assuming average volume of 1,500 cubic cm) The total volume is approximately 8.3 million cubic cm. A group of volunteer geocachers filled a 30 cubic yard (approximately 23 million cubic cm) dumpster with trash at Whitesbog last year. In two hours. It wasn't even a CITO event. ALL the currently listed caches in New Jersey: 8.3 million cubic cm; one dumpster in 2 hours at one location 23 million cubic cm. Please do not allow public officials to use geolitter as a reasonable justification for extreme limitations on our sport in OUR public lands! Point of fact: I do not and have not claimed geolitter to be a valid reason for the policy. Nik Cap who participated in the Park Personnel Discussion reported in this very thread that the DEP noted "cache abandonment" as a very important consideration in their policy determination, I like you think it is a specious reason and has a de minimist impact. However, I believe it is incumbent on the user groups to "play ball" to get that which benefits us the most. Personally, I like many think that there are much more pressing concerns than having a "geocaching policy" and I as many think that it really is a waste of public resources, given as you say the overall stewardship that cachers have shown. But I am powerless to " not allow" public officials to use geocaching litter or abandonment as justification for their limittions, I like you just don't buy into it. But that was what they reported to the discussion groups. As for the way they work, they are looking for quid pro quo, years back when Mountain Biking was coming into vogue, we worked with Ramapo State Forest, building , maintaining , setting out trails just to be allowed access. It worked well, but they were up front about it, no work no ride. I think they are looking for the same type of effort . Be well.

How many of these have you NA'd? in last few months, a few. Those were the most egregious, on several occasions I received specific e mails asking me to go get a cache and check it out from other cachers who were concerned about opining, in several of those I have requested reviewer input, I have also directly e mailed owners regarding their continued presence in the game.

sound like an imperious blowhard

? Sorry, please explain. GC5 is a remote cache that was placed in 2002, by a cacher who logged 6 caches in total and left the game about a year later. each of the cache placements ultimately became an unmaintained. GC5 was found once last year, and 4 years before that. There are literally 100s of similar caches in the field in NJ . GC5 is a metaphore for all those . responsible cachers all over the state are permitting, archiving, removing......but no one is speaking to the community standard of geolitter and abandoned caches. GC5 is still out there. Geolitter was of late given as a primary inducement for policy implementation, yet our groups continue to ignore it.

One source is reporting a net archival of 1400+ caches thus far. Who is going to handle GC5 ?

Feigning excitement upon finding 6 pill bottles wrapped in camo tape on a rail trail ,528 feet apart,usually sends people screaming off into the night, never to be seen again.

You may be on to something there. The corner to corner dimensions on both diagonals don't quite match up, about 1cm off. That also is consistent with the fact that one of the latches doesn't quite match up properly with where it's supposed to clip onto. Bar clamp it until corner to corner match, maybe a few smart whacks with a hand sledge, or wave a heat gun over to see if it springs or pops back, press against a flat concrete surface. Again don't make it a project because containersvareva dime a dozen

Very sound plan, I have done it several times from weehawken, yay on bike, also ride all thevway up to GWB. Washington DC , national mall virtuals are primo

Check corner to corner dimensions, if not the same it might be racked, try bar clamp and light torch heat to possibly adjust the rack. use bigger hammer, don't waste too much time

I think the old timers, of which I consider myself to be among that group--going back to 2002, nurtured the game locally so it could grow and expand to what it is today. During the period of 2004 to 2008 I personally organized over 100 group hikes (caching hikes, although we could not classify them as events) over 1000 people participated. I would often pre hike locations to make sure that the location was suitable and hide a cache or two ahead of the hike for people to find. . Some of those early participants became fast friends and maintain close and loving relationships with each other to this date. A few of them have gone on to become Catskill 3500 and Adirondack 46rs. It was the nurturing of the game. I sometimes wax nostalgic for those fun hikes and outings, having never evolved into a numbers cacher. Some, but not many still play the game.

I like the idea of the OP, he explains his reasons, his approach and gives opportunity to basically say his good byes. Very gentlemanly approach. I often wonder what happened to so and so or wonder if something happened to a particular person, so explaining it goes a long way. We have had a tone of cachers just walk off into the sunset, leaving their caches behind as a reminder of their visit to the game. That is not the way to do it.

And that is the way it should have been done, and that is not the way it was done elsewhere. But of interest to me is did you have pre policy discussions or were you just told this is it ?

If cachers approached and worked with the Parks Department, were they not acting within their right as concerned/affected citizens? Why do they need any sort of approval from anyone? First , it is not a Parks Department.And, secondly State Law does not allow for Public Business to be conducted in a private setting. We have what is called the Open Public Meetings Act. But it would probably take me the better part of the day to explain the nuances of that law to you. But simply put, all business of the State or its subdivisions that administer public funds , except for those specifically exempted from the law, must conduct their business in an open meeting. An open meeting is one announced and scheduled with a printed agenda for a specific time and place allowing for public comment. It would perhaps have been better if those persons ostensibly speaking for "All Geocachers in NJ" had solicited some form of input from those who form membership in the clubs, but even to this late date no one has stepped up and said, Oh yes a group constituted by Joe, Jane, John and Bill met with the Parks Personnel and formulated a policy. None of that has happened. As it currently stands there are more questions regarding the policy than answers. First and foremost in my mind is the identification of and removal of abandoned caches. Again, why does anyone, interacting with whatever agency is involved, need to consult anyone else, be it a club, or group or their neighbor? Was the policy publicly posted with an allowance for public comment? What's to stop ANYONE from submitting comments? You make it sound like no one is allowed to give their two cents without approval from any of the local caching groups. You do not know enough about what was going on locally to truly understand where this all stemmed from. No one was invited to give comment. It was fait accompli.

If cachers approached and worked with the Parks Department, were they not acting within their right as concerned/affected citizens? Why do they need any sort of approval from anyone? First , it is not a Parks Department.And, secondly State Law does not allow for Public Business to be conducted in a private setting. We have what is called the Open Public Meetings Act. But it would probably take me the better part of the day to explain the nuances of that law to you. But simply put, all business of the State or its subdivisions that administer public funds , except for those specifically exempted from the law, must conduct their business in an open meeting. An open meeting is one announced and scheduled with a printed agenda for a specific time and place allowing for public comment. It would perhaps have been better if those persons ostensibly speaking for "All Geocachers in NJ" had solicited some form of input from those who form membership in the clubs, but even to this late date no one has stepped up and said, Oh yes a group constituted by Joe, Jane, John and Bill met with the Parks Personnel and formulated a policy. None of that has happened. As it currently stands there are more questions regarding the policy than answers. First and foremost in my mind is the identification of and removal of abandoned caches.

Actually, from an environmental stand point, I think snow melt run off IS a bigger concern for the NJDEP over Geocaching. I'm pretty much with you 100% on your other points and with minimal knowledge I have and minimal discussions I've had with park supers and creating members of this policy, limiting cache saturation and abandonment are a big part of the driving force behind this policy, but more importantly a policy needed to be written that was inline with casual use of the state parks with the use of a Special Permit on the cache finder. As for the local cache groups/clubs. It's very hard to get members motivated in anything other then finding mass quantities of caches. I've heard many cacher complain/state that the local clubs are very cliche-ish. But, with that said, the input from the local groups did have an impact on the final draft. Nik, I know of no one who knows for certain the identity of the persons who engaged in discussions with the Park personnel. I would be interested in learning that and in what capacity they did so? NNJC was not authorized by by law or referendum or poll of its members to do . I'm of the opinion that those who presumed to approach the Park personnel should also be willing to explain to their fellow catchers by what right they believed they were acting properly.

Although I like your passion, I really doubt that 2 million people are going to write their elected officials over geocaching, which most likely affects fewer than 2000 active cachers in the entire state. We view our geocaching world as large and populous, when in actuality it remains small and insular. And furthermore, being that this policy did not come from any enacted legislation, the legislators could care less. The policy is a regulatory policy which comes completely from the body charged with the running of the parks. In this country, runaway regulatory function adds almost 100K new laws to the books every year. Thus is almost impossible to keep up with them. The Bureau of Land Management burdens farmers and ranchers with almost 20K new ones per year. It is mind boggling. That is one reason why I will not participate, I do not want to give any legitimacy to the idea that this proliferation of regulations is in any way proper. I mean, how ridiculous is the premise that we need to regulate a hobby such as this in the first instance. It is as if we opened a Pandora's box of nonsensical thought. So we stack cost and time and bureaucracy into a simple game for no real genuine pressing reason. In the area of Park management issues I would suspect that geocaching regulation is one up from the bottom on the level of importance, the last being what to do with snow melt. I think the entire matter could have been resolved much more easily and with less burden. I have said this before, but I do not know how it would be possible for someone to personally make 2x per year cache inspections on a cache inventory of 80 or 100 caches. So I can only conclude that the intention was to limit the number of caches owned by any one individual, and I wonder where this idea sprang from. It might have been easier to just ask for a voluntary reduction of caches by the organization, rather than beat the numbers down by regulatory action. I had a discussion with an owner of 80 caches over the weekend and he still does not know where he will fall on the issue, but admits that with job, family, other pursuits he can not personally inspect 80 caches, so he is trying to determine which ones will go. Your point about the lack of geocaching advocacy group is well taken. That is a responsibility that should have fallen to the shoulders of the groups in the state and at the risk of annoying some, I will say that any issues regarding problems in the State Parks could have been handled very easily by the Groups. Even to this date, we have no explanation of the positions taken by the groups or even who participated with the State in discussion of policy, that in my view is a group that does not act properly and is not responsive to its membership. Over the weekend, I went out to retrieve and archive one of my State Park Caches and I decided to pick up a couple along the hike to my cache. I found a cache , with no log, and placed by a cacher who had 14 finds, 1 hide and who had last participated by logging in 4 years ago. That cache was placed and abandoned on the same day. It was terribly irresponsible for our local group to not police that type of cache. An one would think that the last ten cachers who logged a find with no log would have marked it for maintenance or archival . Despite all the good things that the local group has done, it gets marked down significantly for that single failure to take some form of action, even it the form of action was to ask cachers to mark a deficient cache for maint or archival, something many seem reluctant to do even though it is better for the game, just as marking a DNF may alert an owner to a missing cache, a maintenance attribute alerts the owner to a problem. It is a little known fact that reviewers do not automatically see those attributes, but surely other cachers who form the groups do see them and can take some action. The failure of the our local group to address absentee cache owners and abandoned caches is in my mind the single most likely reason why the State Parks view it as necessary to impose 2x annual personal inspections by owners, independent contact information and 3 year cache life. Had the local organization been proactive in eliminating some of the geo litter, the entire problem would have disappeared. I can PQ 500 caches with the needs maintenance log within 10 miles of my home. Many of these placements are owned by people who stopped caching over 2 years ago. Those caches should have been archived and should have been removed. Increasingly the geo litter issue becomes an annoyance to park and land managers.

Is that a bad thing? (IMO, no it isn't a bad thing) What do the three caching groups and "self governance" have to do with anything? We have no "formal" group in RI and have no issues with the local DEM. I did not say that a change in proximity was a bad thing. I did not opine one way or the other, I simply said there is likely to be a change resulting in a fewer number of caches. Ramapo State Forest has long been thought to be over saturated by many. But if the burden of permitting is too great, the park superintendent can simply limit the number by application of the State Proximity policy. That will be a major change from that which was previously employed. The three groups failed to address the issues that the parks people were encountering in the form of abandoned un maintained and guideline violation caches. It was free range and there were associated problems. These problems came to the fore when one group attempted to become the arbiter of who could and who could not place caches, forced archival of caches for an event they sponsored and to make way for their own powertrail. The group was not anticipating the reaction and they did not go about it with a bad intent, they are nice people , but they were extremely heavy handed and they refused to discuss the matter with other in the group. They produced a bit of animus in the local community and the parks were drawn into the fray. The parks responded with a policy formation program when none had been necessary before. The animus still exist today, more than a year later. I do not say this is a good or bad thing, it simply is what it is. The formal adoption of a twice annual maintenance visit in the policy will make it difficult for the hider with 200 hides, I can't imagine certifying to 400 maintenance visits per year. That is now a policy requirement. We had enjoyed a relationship of benign neglect from the Parks in NJ, we were under the radar and caused no problems until the interaction and clashes within the community drew the parks into the idea that they now needed to police the activity because no one else was taking the responsibility to clean up geo litter or to maintain neglected and abandoned caches. Our landscape in NJ is dotted with unmaintained caches. I can PQ 5 miles and hit 500 caches with the needs maint attribute, and nearly 50% of them are owned by cachers no longer involved. The relationship that your group in RI has with your local Parks body has no relevancy to that which is occurring in NJ. In NJ there has been a woeful lack of group giveback. Aside from private cacher trail maintenance , there has been but one or two CITO events in the northern third of the state in the last year. There are currently none listed for the entirety of the state. We have one cacher , who was among the most prolific and skilled hiders, who put an extreme amount of effort and creativity into his hides who has abandoned about 100 hides, all of which are now fallen into geolitter status. Yet the local organization remained silent in the face of that. Some of this has produced a negative reaction from local park personnel. I believe that the net effect will be a great reduction in numbers of caches within state controlled lands, which in NJ is almost 1/3 of the land area. But on the positive side, many old caches will be removed and a new generation of caches will be placed. I have always believed that if we are to have a good working relationship with land managers we must show ourselves to be good stewards of the latitude given us. I think in NJ we have come up a little short lately.

the major factor is that the Groundspeak liberal proximity guideline of a tenth of a mile is probably gone, the feeling in some area is that there will most likely be one cache per trail mile. There is also an under current that the three local organization failure to self govern the local scene created some of the issues leading up to the policy adoption. we have an enormous number of caches that are abandoned and not maintained, thus the state policy requirement of two annual maintenance visits per annum and a limit of three year cache life.

New Permit requirement for New Jersey State lands http://www.state.nj.us/dep/parksandforests/parks/docs/geocaching_policy_2_37_final_form.pdf Apparently the forms and the process for obtaining a permit will be forthcoming.

His rationale is "keeping things fresh" I have always subscribed to this rationale, I have also long felt that if the hides are being placed disproportionately by too few players , it was something of an indicator that the local game was unhealthy in some respect. The old hide to find ratio is an indicator of sorts. A 5000 + finder with no hides, who at every event would announce that he was a finder not a hider kind of turned off the local hiders for they felt that they were being played rather than the game being played. I also believe that the keeping things fresh goes a long way to eliminating a great deal of the maintenance issues that crop up in older abandoned caches. I can PQ, 500 caches with the needs maintenance attribute within 5 miles of my home. that tells me that there is a problem. It has seemed to be over the course of the last couple of years while vacationing on Cape Cod that there were an inordinate number of poorly maintained caches.

What is starting to be irksome is defending the game against those who say we are not environmentally friendly. And in trying to prove that point running a PQ of caches needing maint and coming up with 500 within 10 miles that need maint and having to listen to my friend cackling NEENER< NEENER< NEENER as he talks about geolitter.

I do not mean any disrespect by what I say that follows: GC20TJG is the type of cache that should have been replaced with something other. And it should have been killed off a lot sooner than it was. You have GC18QC7, which really should be archived. I get what you are trying to do, it is a nice area for a hike, it is picturesque, but someone is just out there trying to mess with either you or with finders. That cache is out of sorts more than it is in. I DNF'd in 2009 and have checked it since. Somebody is messing with that cache for whatever reason and really when you go caching you want to be able to find. I think part of the reason why there are fewer hides is that there probably are fewer participants and frankly caching on Cape Cod by comparison to other areas leaves a little to be desired, it is just not all that much fun

I have about 125 cape cod finds. I noticed a lot of maintenance issues with CC Caches in the last couple of years. I know that if there were the same type of wet log, lousy container, missing container issues locally, the locals would be screaming. Of the 4 I looked for in August, one was missing, two were okay, but not memorable and one---was very challenging , I DNFd about 5 times and it went to archive immediately after labor day. It has always been a disproportionate type of thing, few hiders hid the bulk of the caches. Locally, due to local issues the best hiders stopped hiding. There was a lot of local political upheaval and many people stopped hiding and some have actually stopped caching. I personally hope to have all my caches out of the field within a year. Some other cachers have started to follow my archivals and have placed new caches. People move, people lose interest, I think one of the reasons why the numbers of hides had dropped is due to the idea that caches are too long in the field, inventory should be rotated.