Earthcaches

[+TerryDad2]

The earth caches are not showing up on geocaching.com maps. They show up on the lists. Any thoughts?

[South Surrey Scavengers]

It seems you have asked this question before in another thread but didn't get much in the way of an answer. I was reading another topic that asked about missing icons on the geocaching.com maps and the response was "they're working on it"

[+TerryDad2]

I wasn't sure that the other one posted. I never could find it. I've set 10 or so in Southern California and haven't had much activity. I'm working on a paper for the GSA conference on the response to earthcaching and want to have some data to work with.

[+Hard Oiler]

Sounds like you need a premium membership and a pocket query - that way you can run a search and see all the all the active earthcaches everywhere.

[+ADKcachers]

What's an Earthcache?

[+geoaware]

An earthcache is a type of virtual cache that takes people to places where they can learn something about the earth. Go to www.earthcache.org for more informtion.

 

 

Gary

[South Surrey Scavengers]

Holy cow! I've got competition. I thought I had the most Earthcaches listed but you've got me beat. The problem with many of my Earthcaches is that there locations are quite remote so they have not had many visits. Unfortuantely, you can't put Earthcaches where you want to, you have to list them where they ARE. But check out my Burns Bog Earthcache which has had a lot of visits to it because its located in the middle of the city. Also White Rock Earthache is becoming popular as well although it hasn't been listed long yet.

 

Earthcaches seem to be pretty well received from a large number of people in the geocaching community. Remember that geocaching was originally just about finding things that were hidden by other caches so virtual cache types are not as popular as the traditional type.

 

Good luck with your paper for the GSA. Oh, I've posted some listing statistics in this Earthcache Thread

[+Hoppingcrow]

I was pretty dismayed when I looked at the earthcache.org site because there were only two caches listed for WA, but as I was prowling around geocaching.com, I found a whole lot more. I didn't see a "page 2" button at earthcache.org, so can anybody tell me how to get a listing of WA earthcaches that does NOT require the use of Pocket Queries? Thanks!

[South Surrey Scavengers]

The best way I know is to run a search by keyword "Earthcache" which will give you all of them. Then you will have to scroll through about 10 pages of them to find any from WA. The GSA website though is a bit out of date. They seem to be missing about 20-30 Earthcaches. I don't think they've been able to keep up with listing them.

[+Hoppingcrow]

Thanks, SSS! Never occurred to me that you could search TYPES of caches with the keyword.

[+geoaware]

Yep - our webmaster is on summer holidays (so sorry the list is not up-to-date...but it will soon be!)

 

As a matter of interest, there are now 220 live earthcaches, 130 of these are in the USA, 26 in the UK, 24 in Canada, 18 in Germany and the rest spread over another 14 countries. Every weekend (or just after) i get another 10-15 coming in for approval. We reject a few of these as they don't meet the gudielines. The rest are approved withing a day or so and sent to geocaching.com who convert them within a day or so as well. We then list them on the www.earthcache.org site once they are live.

 

Cheers

 

Geoaware

[South Surrey Scavengers]

If Geoaware stats are correct about there being 220 Earthcaches now, a search by the keyword Earthcache only turns up 187 as of today. So me thinks that there may be 33 of them that do not have Earthcache in the title.

[South Surrey Scavengers]

Using the keyword Earthcache for a search will turn up about 90% of them. There are a few that do not have Earthcache in the title so they will not show up. Alternatively, if you click on Hide & Seek a Cache then click on a Search button without entering an criteria should get a new screen that allows you to select a cache type and a country. Unfortunately for the US, you will have to select a state so you can't search for Earthcaches in all of US without doing 1 state at a time. But for all other countries you can run the search for the whole country.

[+TerryDad2]

I tend not to put the word earthcach in my titles. It just takes up too much space.

[+Team Perks]

Using the keyword Earthcache for a search will turn up about 90% of them.

Not necessarily. Only three of the 14 earthcaches within 100 miles of me include the word "Earthcache" in the title.

[South Surrey Scavengers]

I meant overall, not in one specific location. However, even that may not be accurate anymore. When the first Earthcaches were coming out, pretty much all of them had Earthcache in the title. That doesn't seem to be the case anymore. More and more are being listed without it.

[+ShowStop]

Using this search string:

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.asp...dd-759cd2f18db8

 

will bring up the advanced search page where you can enter coords or zip code or whatever.

 

You can also search by other cache types on the advanced search page:

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.aspx

[+caderoux]

This PQ:

 

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.asp...6d-c4569f0f9604

 

gives 273 Earthcaches

[+TerryDad2]

I am noticing that cachers are missing earthcaches. I have 2 earthcaches and a traditional in the same general area. I am noticing that one earthcache is getting logged (GCP3GQ ) while the other two (GCPFR9 and GCP2WJ ) are getting passed by. (You have to go past GCPFR9 and GCP2WJ to get to GCP3GQ)

 

Why would someone pay the parking fee at the state park just to log 1 earthcache when there are 2 other caches in their path?

 

My guess is that they aren't seeing them on the maps and thus don't get the details. (and yes a premium membership would likely fix the issue, but not everyone has a premium membership)

[+TerryDad2]

I am noticing that cachers are missing earthcaches. I have 2 earthcaches and a traditional in the same general area. I am noticing that one earthcache is getting logged (GCP3GQ ) while the other two (GCPFR9 and GCP2WJ ) are getting passed by. (You have to go past GCPFR9 and GCP2WJ to get to GCP3GQ)

 

Why would someone pay the parking fee at the state park just to log 1 earthcache when there are 2 other caches in their path?

 

My guess is that they aren't seeing them on the maps and thus don't get the details. (and yes a premium membership would likely fix the issue, but not everyone has a premium membership)

[+TerryDad2]

Pardon my studdering

[+Team Neos]

My guess is that they aren't seeing them on the maps and thus don't get the details.    (and yes a premium membership would likely fix the issue, but not everyone has a premium membership)

I am not sure that premium membership is the complete answer here anyway. I just used my premium account and a non-premium account to look at these earthcaches.

 

The result: the earthcaches did not show up on ANY of the maps.

 

Clicking the link on the first cache that allows a search for "nearest caches of this type" got me the same 14 earthcaches on both accounts.

 

Is it possible that folks are not visiting every earthcache in the area because they are saving it for another visit, or only interested in certain parts of the park for that day, or just interested in certain types of experiences? Have you communicated with any of the cachers to ask them why they did some, but not all of the earthcaches?

Edited July 28, 2005 by Team Neos

[+KKTH3]

Hmm... this gets me to wondering. We live in Wyoming, where a good number of earthcaches would be well placed, but I have yet to find one in our state. We were starting to get some research together to place several earthcaches in Wyoming, but now I wonder if there are already earthcaches in place here and I just am unable to see them when looking for caches.

 

I think the second issue that may come up is that there are not a large concentration of caches in Wyoming anyway and we don't want to place an earthcache at, say, Natural Bridge and prevent someone else from placing a traditional cache there. Even though it could avoid the 528' rule quite easily, there seems to be a bit of an unspoken rule of caches being placed in more of a spread out manner. Usually once a park gets a cache placed in it - even a 200+ acre park - it could be some time before another cache is placed in a different area of the same park.

 

For now, due to a few reasons, I will probably wait a while longer before attempting to place an earthcache. However, I do think Wyoming deserves to have a few of these and we would be willing to place one if we could be sure it wouldn't cause more problems than not.

[+TerryDad2]

I checked on http://www.earthcache.org/ for Wyoming earthcaches, and sure enough there are none. They have updated thier listings page and it is now sortable by state among other things.

 

I would encourage you to go ahead and get some listed. I have had to end up locating some earthcaches almost on top of some traditional caches. They have oked these because there is no confusion between a traditional and earthcache, and the earthcaches don't have much of a choice about where they go. I also didn't want to ask someone to give up their preexisting cache just so I can put one there instead.

[South Surrey Scavengers]

Since an Earthcache is a type of virtual cache it does not follow the 528' rule. Technically, it could be in the exactly the same place as a traditional cache and still get approved as long as www.earthcache.org approves it. It does get a lot of people asking questions about its location however so be prepared to the answer them.

 

While Canada is doing quite nicely with the number of Earthcaches listed it would be nice to see a few more still. With the topography and geology of the country it should be able to rival any country in the world for possible Earthcache sites. If we just had a few more people here to help get some listed. (hmm, I wonder if an igloo would quality as an Earthcache)

[+TerryDad2]

I did a comparison of the number of finds for a traditional cache and earthcache that are 0.2 mile apart. Both were listed within a couple of days of each other and are on the same trail. The traditional Cache GCPC3Q has be found 22 times wile the earthcache GCPAFB has been found 10 times.

 

I figure this discrepancy is due cachers not knowing about the earthcaches because they are not showing up on the maps.

[+TerryDad2]

I think I see why this issue is not being fixed. I saw on another discussionSOV that earthcaches, along with virtuals, locationless, and others, will be moved to Waymarking.com. I have not seen that notice myself and I don't know the source.

 

If it's true, no point in fixing something that isn't planned to be around.

[+The Leprechauns]

I think I see why this issue is not being fixed. I saw on another discussionSOV that earthcaches, along with virtuals, locationless, and others, will be moved to Waymarking.com. I have not seen that notice myself and I don't know the source.

 

If it's true, no point in fixing something that isn't planned to be around.

Bingo. Sorry that those of us "in the know" could not disclose this information earlier. (I was part of the beta test group for Waymarking.)

[+Faith the Aquariaqueen]

I for one would like to see earthcaches being quite limited. I would love to keep them for extremely outstanding natural phenomenoms, habitats, historical value, etc.

 

I have only been to one earthcache, to visit the only remaining 1% of the prairies in the midwest.....it even came with instructions on how to walk through the prairie, which is very different than walking in the woods. It wasn't hard to find, but it made you think and appreciate.

 

Other submissions that don't cut the mustard could be down-graded to virtuals which aren't approved as much, for good reason.

 

I have really started changing my views on caching, it used to be the prize (especially since I'm toting children) but now I want to go for historic, natural and educational value. They seem so much safer too!

 

Toodles,

Queenie

[+TerryDad2]

The Google Earth interface displays the earthcaches!!

[+ODragon]

The Google Earth interface displays the earthcaches!!

But uses the ugly Waymarking icon, not the cool gc.com one!

[+TerryDad2]

Too bad it doesn't show both the GC and Waymarking earthcaches with the GC icon.