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Ontario GPS Treasure Hunting to undergo change


murfster

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This is posted on their website! Thought some of you might be interested!

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Fellow Geocachers:

 

Ontario GPS Treasure Hunting (OGPSTH) has decided that we will no longer be placing and hosting geocaches and will concentrate on geocaching events and GPS training.

 

The geocaches themselves will not be disappearing; organizations in the areas in question will be adopting the caches under their own names. For the next while, we will be removing caches from this website as they are adopted by their respective areas.

 

It has been a pleasure working with you.

 

Sincerely,

 

Ontario GPS Treasure Hunting (OGPSTH)

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Whether their caches have a place in the geocaching world is a matter of personal opinion. I do know Bill Steer and can assure you that their training is top notch. If you want to learn about your GPS, map, and compass (other than finding tupperware), these guys are top notch. The course is far more about map and compass and how to tie these in with your GPS than just geocaching (in fact, geocaching hadrdly came up in the course at all).

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Does anyone know if anyone ever won anything from this organization??

 

We won a one night's stay at a hotel in North Bay one year and a free night at the Canadian Ecology Center (where they are based) at Samuel de Champlain Provincial Park (they have a bunch of nice cabins there) which we did not get a chance to use.

 

I do know of a cacher who won a quality canie one year and another who won a weekend package at a resort up in Thunder Bay.

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The one cache of theirs I found (my first btw) was not bungee corded to anything it was a regular Tupperware cache hidden fairly well. I know nothing negative about them.......

 

They had a bad rep because what Bill did was hire a few guys in the first few years who didn't know geocaching well and were basically just marketers for the companies that paid for the caches. This is where the bad tastes started with cachers.

 

For the last 2 years, they had a fellow named Rob who was putting the caches out up north (not sure if he did the ones around Thornbury or the ones near Ottawa) and his are much more challenging. They usually involved much longer hikes in more remote areas. You probably did one of his. Maybe in the Huntsville to New Liskard corridor??

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Exactly what was wrong with their caches? We've found several of them over the years and each one had always taken us to an interesting spot or some place in the woods that we had never been to before. The only problems we had was that the coords were off by a fair amount in some cases, but that didn't stop us from finding their caches.

 

What I liked about their caches:

--Took us to neat spots

--Decent sized containers

--Information sheet in the caches that contained interesting stuff about the area.

--Those that were bungeed to trees I thought were a good idea since it means that you don't have to destroy an area in order to find a cache that is hidden just a bit too well.

 

I would rather go find one of their caches than find a cache in a high muggle area where I am going to spend too much time and look too suspicious searching for.

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Exactly what was wrong with their caches?

 

A bunch of people took a hatin' to them, for some reason. If you search the forum, you'll find an old thread with a whole lotta bashing going on.

 

I did a series of them in 2006 (I think) up the east shore of Lake Simcoe and most were perfectly fine. There were a couple I didn't care much for, but the percentage of those was LESS than the overall percentage of "not so good" caches as a whole. Overall, the experience was quite enjoyable.

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Exactly what was wrong with their caches? We've found several of them over the years and each one had always taken us to an interesting spot or some place in the woods that we had never been to before. The only problems we had was that the coords were off by a fair amount in some cases, but that didn't stop us from finding their caches.

 

What I liked about their caches:

--Took us to neat spots

--Decent sized containers

--Information sheet in the caches that contained interesting stuff about the area.

--Those that were bungeed to trees I thought were a good idea since it means that you don't have to destroy an area in order to find a cache that is hidden just a bit too well.

 

I would rather go find one of their caches than find a cache in a high muggle area where I am going to spend too much time and look too suspicious searching for.

 

This issue I have with them in our area is they are all placed in spots where there already is a cache, so they don't take you to any new area. They also have no thought in the hide. Just bungeed to a tree in plain view, where I can see them from 50 metres away. On the plus side, the containers are good and I never found a wet log.

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This issue I have with them in our area is they are all placed in spots where there already is a cache, so they don't take you to any new area.

 

There's a 161m guideline on cache distance. I don't think these caches broke that guideline. If that is a legitimate complaint, then the majority of caches have the same problem. How many caches are singular and by themselves in an area? If there are already caches along a certain stretch of trail, is there an issue with a geocacher placing more in that area? I don't think so.

 

They also have no thought in the hide. Just bungeed to a tree in plain view, where I can see them from 50 metres away.

 

I found 18 of them. A couple were bungee corded to a tree, the rest were not, so that is not a fair generalization of these hides. Even some of the ones that were bungee corded to a tree were not bad hides at all.

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I think they had good intentions, but they missed the mark.

On the one hand....

The cache placements were not clever. And were often hidden in uninteresting locations. I've found a few that are (too) close to some fabulous /scenic /interesting hiding spots. (Now those spots are available to place new caches!) I found one cache that was hidden in the middle of a huge patch of poison ivy. Yikes!Those are problems when (non-local)people try to hide caches in areas that aren't familiar to them. Local

OGPSTH caches were never maintained. That's a problem.

On the other hand...

The clear tupperware attached to trees with bungee cords were great for kids and newbies. Very easy to find. Kids an newbies get pretty excited when they make a find. And conversly, they get pretty discouraged if they keep getting DNFs.

Not all caches need to be difficult. It's nice to have variety.

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The whole issue of hating these caches started when most of the caches were placed and then forgotten. The idea of clear Tupperware bungeed to a tree worked for most, and took us to some wonderful and historic spots, with easy finds. That part was great, but within a few months of being placed, each one I visited and loved, was getting soaked log entries, full of water entries, laying on the ground in the open entries, and yet no maintenance was ever recorded. The maintenance logs I did see were the odd one that stated "We are in contact with so and so, and this cache should be fixed soon". The sooner the geo mush is cleared out and the spots open for realistic hiders, the sooner I will visit some wonderful areas again.

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