Could We Run Out Of Benchmarks?

[Photobuff]

It just occurred to me that I'm exhausting the supply of missing benchmarks nearby, and have to go further and further for the hobby. And that's in only a year or so. Others have said the same thing. Does anyone foresee the time when there will be mostly routine recoveries, everything else that still exists having been found?

[+NorthWes]

Here in Alaska? Perhaps the easy ones within 300 feet horizontally and 50 feet vertically of the road system... but there will always be another mark waiting for my visit - perhaps around the next headland, perhaps at 5,000', perhaps (ha ha) only a few hundred miles distant...

 

Gosh but I'd sure love to recover some up in the far far north of this state - like TT3769 - Prudhoe 2... that's about 630 cromes from the homestead here - and you can drive to it (sometimes)...

[+BuckBrooke]

Some folks have been looking at the numbers; I'm trying to track them right now. I have the feeling that the number of non-FTF benchmark finds is increasing; I have the sneaking suspicion the number of FTF finds is going down. I would bet we're going to settle down in the number of new stations found, top out somewhere between 100,000 and 110,000 PIDs logged as FOUND in the next four years, and log several thousand new each year after. There are a LOT of disks that noone's going to ever log (24000 in AK alone).

[+bicknell]

It just occurred to me that I'm exhausting the supply of missing benchmarks nearby, and have to go further and further for the hobby. And that's in only a year or so. Others have said the same thing. Does anyone foresee the time when there will be mostly routine recoveries, everything else that still exists having been found?

 

I dunno. We just moved from the DC area (lots of hunters) to the Memphis area (almost no hunters). Several thousand new marks within an hour or two's drive.

 

I think some major areas are about mined out. Of course, it would be nice if marks were visited every 1-2 years to make sure they are still there. That said, there's a lot of the country almost untouched, and may remain that way for a while. You can look at it as further from home, but for us we just moved closer to new marks!

[Photobuff]

Well, that sounds better! The area around here is known as the Finger Lakes, and the Power Squadron has worked this area extensively for decades. I was still able to get a couple FTFs, but the pickings are getting slim. IMO, my vacation spots are typically popular with others, so those areas won't be much better. My best bet looks like whatever route I take to and from vacation, to hit some areas less searched over.

[+seventhings]

With respect to FTFs, it's called diminishing marginal returns: more time, gas and effort for fewer and fewer finds.

 

I agree with BuckBrooke: my sense is that the slope of the line that describes FTFs is flattening out, and will continue to do so. There will always be FTFs, but just not so many.

 

I started out in the DC area a few months after Black Dog Trackers and ArtMan, so I've always had to hit the road to get FTFs. Now, even that is getting costly - it's one thing to drive several hours to hunt marks, it's another thing to drive so far that you've got to figure in a motel room and a few more meals.

 

Like the Photobuff, I do most of my hunting while enroute from here to somewhere else. In another thread, I mentioned that I was about to embark on a 6,000 + mile trip out west. The primary purpose of the trip is not benchmark hunting, but I do plan to hunt along the way and I have about 150 datasheets with me. Well, yesterday I began reviewing those stations and what do you know: Me & Bucky has been out and about and several dozen of my planned FTFs will now be follow-on recoveries (plus, a team of Geocachers "spoiled" another half dozen or so in another area). In the April Statistics thread, I said that I intended to attempt a benchmark hunting feat about which I would brag shamlessly upon my return. That feat is no longer very attractive so I probably won't attempt it: I hereby withdraw my notice to brag shamlessly about anything in the near future.

 

Will

[+PFF]

Will wrote:

 

I hereby withdraw my notice to brag shamlessly about anything in the near future.

 

But, if everone stops bragging, there won't be as much to read in the forums!

 

Don't stop. Crow whenever you have a chance. I enjoy reading about everyone's great finds!

 

-Paul-

[holograph]

If by FTF you mean marks that no agency has recovered since the monumentation date, then there are probably not many of them. If you mean FTF by a geocacher, well we've recovered less than 10% of the ones that are out there, but probably most of the ones near major population centers.

 

There is a lot of the country that remains untouched, but the areas around major population centers are getting covered pretty quickly. I'd say we have a few more years before the typical benchmarker runs out of nearby locations. See the map of recoveries.

 

Since I'm in a relatively rural area, it didn't take very long to visit most of the marks within a 20 mile radius. I still have a lot of places that no one has visited, but it's taking longer to reach them.

[stvanme]

Here in Alaska? Perhaps the easy ones within 300 feet horizontally and 50 feet vertically of the road system... but there will always be another mark waiting for my visit - perhaps around the next headland, perhaps at 5,000', perhaps (ha ha) only a few hundred miles distant...

 

Gosh but I'd sure love to recover some up in the far far north of this state - like TT3769 - Prudhoe 2... that's about 630 cromes from the homestead here - and you can drive to it (sometimes)...

 

In my line of work (oil exploration) we or the contractors working for us recover many of the survey monuments on the North Slope. I tried to take a picture one time but the camera had frozen (good thing I didn't take my good camera). I could have the surveyors take pictures to "prove" their control but it isn't the same as visiting them myself. Can't remember if we ever used Prudhoe 2. We usually don't work near the "populated" areas.

[+BuckBrooke]

And remember, your local agencies (state, city, county, etc.) are probably very willing to have you work on their projects, recovering local marks.

[mloser]

I recently offered my services to the State (actually Commonwealth) of PA and got no response!

[ArtMan]

I was going to post a link to Holograph's maps until I saw that he did it for me. (He really has done some terrific data crunching, for which we all owe him a lot of thanks.)

 

What's interesting to me is that even in the well-shopped DC area, there are nearby counties with relatively few recoveries reported: 25 or fewer in populous Howard, Anne Arundel and Charles counties in Maryland, Prince William and Fauquier in Virginia.

 

I believe he is tallying our ("GEOCAC") reports to NGS, not logs in Geocaching.com, but it suggest that even around here you don't have to drive two hours to do some hunting.

 

Also, don't forget that notwithstanding the frozen nature of the Geocaching database, the NGS db changes all the time. I recently found a bunch in nearby Fairfax County that were apparently added to their database after 2000 but were actually monumented around 1991, most of which have had no reports since then, so a 15 year update would certainly be welcomed by NGS even if there is no way to log them at geocaching.com.

 

-ArtMan-