Orphan Caches

[+woffles]

So I'm out hiking, not actually looking for a cache just checking out the area and look under a log and see an altoids can. Found a cache that was hidden by someone called Cowboy 4570 in 2003. Still intact, shoe string tied around the can had rotted. Opened it up and saw it hadn't been found yet. Went ahead and signed the log, noted my coordinates and checked back on here. Nothing listed for that spot and the user doesn't exist. What do you do with caches like these in this situation?

[+Vinny & Sue Team]

So I'm out hiking, not actually looking for a cache just checking out the area and look under a log and see an altoids can. Found a cache that was hidden by someone called Cowboy 4570 in 2003. Still intact, shoe string tied around the can had rotted. Opened it up and saw it hadn't been found yet. Went ahead and signed the log, noted my coordinates and checked back on here. Nothing listed for that spot and the user doesn't exist. What do you do with caches like these in this situation?

Well, there are dozens of other pre-existing threads on the forum on variations of this same topic, but briefly, the cache container that you found may fall into any one of the following categories:

• a cache that was intended to be listed at Geocaching.com or one of the other smaller geocaching sites, but was, for one reason or another, never listed.
  
• a cache that was listed at Geocaching.com or another listing site but then archived and perhaps the cache owner also changed her/his username, making it hard to track them nowadays. There seem to be not accounts at geocaching.com at this time under this name or under any common variants of that name.
  
• a cache that is currently listed at one of the other smaller geocache listing sites.
  
• a private cache intended for use by a family, a club, an organization, etc.
  
• there is one more possibility: a Google search indicates that there is a ham radio operator (amateur radio call letters unknown at this time) who often goes by the handle "Cowboy 4570" on the web, and it appears that he lives in Colorado. Although you have not told us where you found the cache, it appears from your profile that you currently reside in Colorado as well, and thus I will speculate for the moment that you found this mystery cache in Colorado. It may be that the ham radio operator who uses the web handle of Cowboy 4570 was, back in 2003, participating in any one of several ham radio-based RDF (radio directino finding) treasure hunting contests, and perhaps he had hidden this container as a waypoint marker object or target marker object, and then forgot about it. In that case, it is still a cache, but rather then being a geocache or terracache or geostash, it is really more of a ham radio cache.
  

[+wapahani]

You are the

UFTF....

Unknown First To Find

[+woffles]

Well, I signed the log but can't post it. Figures it's my first FTF!

 

It had a sheet inside also telling about geocaches and listing the rules of geocaching and to go to this site for more info if found so I don't think it was a ham cache or anything. It stated on the outside also that it was a geocache. I'm surprised that no one found it all these years even if it wasn't listed. I hadn't been disturbed in years by looking at it. The shoelace tied around it to keep it shut just fell apart when I pulled on it. Second mystery I found in the same park on the same day! The other was a dog tag nailed to a post that looks like it's been there for years too. Old style with an actual service number on it not a SSN. Wonder why it was nailed into the pole in the middle of a park?

[Keystone]

The cache was not listed because the owner did not reply to the reviewer's request to confirm permission from the City Parks Department.

 

There are some other caches nearby and they were placed with permission from the Parks Department. If I recall correctly, Colorado Springs was one of the earliest city-level land managers to regulate geocache placements.

[+woffles]

Should I just remove it then? It might as well be trash if it isn't serving any purpose. There is another cache listed like 66 feet away from this one.

[+sbell111]

Should I just remove it then? It might as well be trash if it isn't serving any purpose. There is another cache listed like 66 feet away from this one.

You probably would be fine removing it, but why don't you shoot him an email first? Here's his profile page.

[+woffles]

Thanks, will do. My search didn't show him up. Had a space between the name and the number.

[+BlueDeuce]

Thanks for taking the time.

[+PJPeters]

Should I just remove it then? It might as well be trash if it isn't serving any purpose. There is another cache listed like 66 feet away from this one.

You probably would be fine removing it, but why don't you shoot him an email first? Here's his profile page.

He's a non-validated member who hasn't been active since 2003. I'm thinking he's not interested in getting the container back...

[+Vinny & Sue Team]

Should I just remove it then? It might as well be trash if it isn't serving any purpose. There is another cache listed like 66 feet away from this one.

You probably would be fine removing it, but why don't you shoot him an email first? Here's his profile page.

Hmmmm... this is very interesting. You have, in sharing the account profile page, inadvertently created a bit of a mystery. You see, "Cowboy4570" was one of a number of variants on the name originally given by the OP that I tried, using the "Find another player" feature on my My Account page, at about 10 PM last nite -- in fact I tried this one twice, because the server seemed to hesitate on it, with much the same results each time -- and the server told me on each of my attempts that there was no such account. And then you came along at about 9 AM this morning (in my time zone, at least) and were able to offer a link to the account profile page, and, weirder, I was even able to view it this afternoon, using that link provided. So, a few minutes ago (about 5:10 PM my time), I tried using the "Find another player" feature again to find this account, and on my first try, the server returned nothing (meaning that it simply returned me to my query window), indicating that the account did not exist. On my second attempt, the server stripped the final character from the account name, rendering it as "Cowboy457" and still returned me to the same data-entry window, indicating that the account did not exist. Now, wait.. it gets weirder....! Then, on my third and final try using "Cowboy4570", the server returned the following message in red font:

The user selected has invalidated his or her account. You cannot send email to this user.

and repeatedly refused to allow me to see the profile page (at least via that route...!) So, unless there are multiple servers in operation on the Groundspeak backbone for the membership database, each containing a slightly variant version of the database (at least for this one account) it seems that it is likely that an administrator at Groundspeak has, since my first attempt last nite to find this account, first resurrected it from some kind of archival limbo (where it had perhaps resided due to its never-activated status and its age), and it looks like someone with admin authority may have then returned this member's profile to some kind of inactive/not available status. And, to add to the mystery, the link which you provided still works for me if I go to the URL directly... all very odd....

Edited September 14, 2008 by Vinny & Sue Team

[+sbell111]

Should I just remove it then? It might as well be trash if it isn't serving any purpose. There is another cache listed like 66 feet away from this one.

You probably would be fine removing it, but why don't you shoot him an email first? Here's his profile page.

Hmmmm... this is very interesting. You have, in sharing the account profile page, inadvertently created a bit of a mystery. You see, "Cowboy4570" was one of a number of variants on the name originally given by the OP that I tried, using the "Find another player" feature on my My Account page, at about 10 PM last nite -- in fact I tried this one twice, because the server seemed to hesitate on it, with much the same results each time -- and the server told me on each of my attempts that there was no such account. And then you came along at about 9 AM this morning (in my time zone, at least) and were able to offer a link to the account profile page, and, weirder, I was even able to view it this afternoon, using that link provided. So, a few minutes ago (about 5:10 PM my time), I tried using the "Find another player" feature again to find this account, and on my first try, the server returned nothing (meaning that it simply returned me to my query window), indicating that the account did not exist. On my second attempt, the server stripped the final character from the account name, rendering it as "Cowboy457" and still returned me to the same data-entry window, indicating that the account did not exist. Now, wait.. it gets weirder....! Then, on my third and final try using "Cowboy4570", the server returned the following message in red font:

The user selected has invalidated his or her account. You cannot send email to this user.

and repeatedly refused to allow me to see the profile page (at least via that route...!) So, unless there are multiple servers in operation on the Groundspeak backbone for the membership database, each containing a slightly variant version of the database (at least for this one account) it seems that it is likely that an administrator at Groundspeak has, since my first attempt last nite to find this account, first resurrected it from some kind of archival limbo (where it had perhaps resided due to its never-activated status and its age), and it looks like someone with admin authority may have then returned this member's profile to some kind of inactive/not available status. And, to add to the mystery, the link which you provided still works for me if I go to the URL directly... all very odd....

It may just be a glitch in the search function. I found it by looking for caches that he had found and pulling up the profile from one of his logs.

[+Boots...]

FWIW, I visited the profile linked by SBell. On a whim, I decided to check his Trackables page, and I found that he had 2 TBs listed. Upon checking the one, "I've been working on the railroad", I see that he had grabbed it on 8/14/03...

 

It then sat dormant for three years. It was then Discovered by a cacher by the name of BirdDogBiker who posted the following note:

 

"Found this after a long time. Formerly known as Cowboy. Sorry, the war took me away for a while. Will get it on it's way as soon as I can."

 

So, I checked into BirdDogBiker, and it appears that he, too, is no longer caching. He created an account November 21, 2006, and hasn't been back to the site since.

 

Just thought that was interesting.

[+Vinny & Sue Team]

Should I just remove it then? It might as well be trash if it isn't serving any purpose. There is another cache listed like 66 feet away from this one.

You probably would be fine removing it, but why don't you shoot him an email first? Here's his profile page.

Hmmmm... this is very interesting. You have, in sharing the account profile page, inadvertently created a bit of a mystery. You see, "Cowboy4570" was one of a number of variants on the name originally given by the OP that I tried, using the "Find another player" feature on my My Account page, at about 10 PM last nite -- in fact I tried this one twice, because the server seemed to hesitate on it, with much the same results each time -- and the server told me on each of my attempts that there was no such account. And then you came along at about 9 AM this morning (in my time zone, at least) and were able to offer a link to the account profile page, and, weirder, I was even able to view it this afternoon, using that link provided. So, a few minutes ago (about 5:10 PM my time), I tried using the "Find another player" feature again to find this account, and on my first try, the server returned nothing (meaning that it simply returned me to my query window), indicating that the account did not exist. On my second attempt, the server stripped the final character from the account name, rendering it as "Cowboy457" and still returned me to the same data-entry window, indicating that the account did not exist. Now, wait.. it gets weirder....! Then, on my third and final try using "Cowboy4570", the server returned the following message in red font:

The user selected has invalidated his or her account. You cannot send email to this user.

and repeatedly refused to allow me to see the profile page (at least via that route...!) So, unless there are multiple servers in operation on the Groundspeak backbone for the membership database, each containing a slightly variant version of the database (at least for this one account) it seems that it is likely that an administrator at Groundspeak has, since my first attempt last nite to find this account, first resurrected it from some kind of archival limbo (where it had perhaps resided due to its never-activated status and its age), and it looks like someone with admin authority may have then returned this member's profile to some kind of inactive/not available status. And, to add to the mystery, the link which you provided still works for me if I go to the URL directly... all very odd....

It may just be a glitch in the search function. I found it by looking for caches that he had found and pulling up the profile from one of his logs.

Interesting! It turns out that the method that you used is the same one that I surmised that you had used, only because it was the only way that I could find a working link to his now-defunct and disabled account, and so I assumed that you had done the same thing! This uncovers some very strange, but harmless, quirks in the system!

[+sbell111]

Strange, harmless, and quirky. Sounds like dating.

[+Renegade Knight]

So I'm out hiking, not actually looking for a cache just checking out the area and look under a log and see an altoids can. Found a cache that was hidden by someone called Cowboy 4570 in 2003. Still intact, shoe string tied around the can had rotted. Opened it up and saw it hadn't been found yet. Went ahead and signed the log, noted my coordinates and checked back on here. Nothing listed for that spot and the user doesn't exist. What do you do with caches like these in this situation?

Well, there are dozens of other pre-existing threads on the forum on variations of this same topic, but briefly, the cache container that you found may fall into any one of the following categories:

• a cache that was intended to be listed at Geocaching.com or one of the other smaller geocaching sites, but was, for one reason or another, never listed.
  
• a cache that was listed at Geocaching.com or another listing site but then archived and perhaps the cache owner also changed her/his username, making it hard to track them nowadays. There seem to be not accounts at geocaching.com at this time under this name or under any common variants of that name.
  
• a cache that is currently listed at one of the other smaller geocache listing sites.
  
• a private cache intended for use by a family, a club, an organization, etc.
  
• there is one more possibility: a Google search indicates that there is a ham radio operator (amateur radio call letters unknown at this time) who often goes by the handle "Cowboy 4570" on the web, and it appears that he lives in Colorado. Although you have not told us where you found the cache, it appears from your profile that you currently reside in Colorado as well, and thus I will speculate for the moment that you found this mystery cache in Colorado. It may be that the ham radio operator who uses the web handle of Cowboy 4570 was, back in 2003, participating in any one of several ham radio-based RDF (radio directino finding) treasure hunting contests, and perhaps he had hidden this container as a waypoint marker object or target marker object, and then forgot about it. In that case, it is still a cache, but rather then being a geocache or terracache or geostash, it is really more of a ham radio cache.
  

 

Building on this list. You could also have found an active cache by an active cacher listed on another site. The two main ones to check would be Navicache and Terracaching. Those sites do not generate finds at anywhere near the rate this one does. An Unfound cache would not be a huge suprise.

 

Edit: Reading the rest of the thread, looks like the mystery was solved.

Edited September 15, 2008 by Renegade Knight