1/5 caches (wheelchair accessible)

[+Zinnia88]

Recently, I've gotten into the addiction of hiding caches as well as simply searching for them. I'm trying to "think outside the ammo box/film canister" and create really new things, but something I've noticed is how few 5/1 caches there are, or at least ones that are truly difficult mentally. Does anyone have any good ideas for cool places to hide, cache ideas, etc?

 

-Z

Edited September 5, 2011 by Zinnia88

[+pppingme]

I think you mean 5/1. Difficulty is usually listed first, then terrain.

 

But yes, I agree, the greatest majority of easy terrain hides are also pretty simple.

 

I just looked, and the closest 5/1 to me is 11 miles and is probably only because of the difficult hours and contact with people needed to get it.

 

The next closest is 129 miles, its hidden by someone that has a good reputation for hard caches.

[+Zinnia88]

I think you mean 5/1. Difficulty is usually listed first, then terrain.

 

But yes, I agree, the greatest majority of easy terrain hides are also pretty simple.

 

I just looked, and the closest 5/1 to me is 11 miles and is probably only because of the difficult hours and contact with people needed to get it.

 

The next closest is 129 miles, its hidden by someone that has a good reputation for hard caches.

Wow, yes. Fast fingers, slow brain.

[+RIclimber]

There are two ways to get a 5 Difficulty. A very hard puzzle, or a well hidden cache. Wheelchair accessible leaves minimal locations to look, so it's almost always going to max out at a 3 or 4. Also people who hide the hard puzzles want to give the finders a larger box, so they almost always go slightly in to the woods, making it a 1.5T or up.

 

The only 5/1 I know of is a tiny fake bolt on an old machine gun. I was never able to find it.

[+niraD]

The D5 caches I've found have generally required special equipment/skills.

 

One was a traditional that was arguably overrated. (It was a tough hide, but a flashlight isn't really special equipment.) But assuming the D5 rating was accurate, it still couldn't have been a D5/T1 because of the location, and the location was the whole point of the cache.

 

The others were puzzles. One required special software and skills to solve a very difficult puzzle to get the cache coordinates. If the final were in a wheelchair accessible location, then it could have been D5/T1. The other was a puzzle multi-cache, and special equipment was needed to solve the field puzzles at each stage. I suppose it could have been D5/T1 if the stages had been closer together, and all the stages had been wheelchair accessible.

[+Walts Hunting]

Special equipment causes the terrain to be a 5. It does not affect the difficulty. A difficult puzzle that lead you to a Loc would work but most people who go to all the trouble of making a difficult puzzle seem to want to place the cache in a place with the terrain over a one.

[+Chokecherry]

According to the knowledge book special equipment can affect difficulty as well.

 

I may need climbing gear to get to a cache which would affect the terrain rating. However once there to make the find I may need to have a black light. This affects the difficulty of the cache and not the terrain.

 

http://support.Groundspeak.com/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=82

[+NYPaddleCacher]

I think you mean 5/1. Difficulty is usually listed first, then terrain.

 

But yes, I agree, the greatest majority of easy terrain hides are also pretty simple.

 

I just looked, and the closest 5/1 to me is 11 miles and is probably only because of the difficult hours and contact with people needed to get it.

 

The next closest is 129 miles, its hidden by someone that has a good reputation for hard caches.

 

The closest 5/1 cache to me (a mystery cache) is 253 miles away (and in a different country). The closes traditional 5/1 is 468 miles from me and it's rated a 5 for difficulty as it requires "special equipment" to retrieve the container. That makes it kind of difficult to complete a fizzy challenge in my area.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

Special equipment causes the terrain to be a 5. It does not affect the difficulty. A difficult puzzle that lead you to a Loc would work but most people who go to all the trouble of making a difficult puzzle seem to want to place the cache in a place with the terrain over a one.

 

For the one that I mentioned, no special equipment is required to get to ground zero but it requires something that one would not normally carry in the cache kit to retrieve the container. I suppose it would depend on how you define ground zero because one might use a terrain rating of 5 if the coordinates brought you to the base of a tree that required special equipment to climb. For the cache I mentioned, the container is accessible from the ground but still requires special equipment to retrieve.

[+niraD]

I suppose it would depend on how you define ground zero because one might use a terrain rating of 5 if the coordinates brought you to the base of a tree that required special equipment to climb. For the cache I mentioned, the container is accessible from the ground but still requires special equipment to retrieve.

Yep. I've seen "elevated" caches listed as 5-star terrain or as 5-star difficulty, depending on whether the CO expected you to use special equipment to climb to the cache location, or to use special equipment to retrieve the cache while standing safe on the ground.

[+AmphibianTrackers]

I really appreciate you thinking of the mobility impaired. As I read your post I thought about the time I went to Saint Augustine and visited the fort in a wheelchair. Quite an experience and no the place is not wheel chair friendly. However, there are some parks designed for the mobility challenged. Do you have any near you? You could let the special equipment required be things like a black light, or tool that anyone could use it would just take brain power to sort out. I saw a video on youtube that required a person to figure out they had to blow open the cache as there was no other way to open it. I think you are on to a great idea of creating a low terrain/high difficulty cache and I commend you for it.

[+dakboy]

The closest 5/1 cache to me (a mystery cache) is 253 miles away (and in a different country). The closes traditional 5/1 is 468 miles from me and it's rated a 5 for difficulty as it requires "special equipment" to retrieve the container. That makes it kind of difficult to complete a fizzy challenge in my area.

 

What about http://coord.info/GCV6VZ ?

 

Or am I misremembering your location, and that's the cache you're referring to?

[+NYPaddleCacher]

The closest 5/1 cache to me (a mystery cache) is 253 miles away (and in a different country). The closes traditional 5/1 is 468 miles from me and it's rated a 5 for difficulty as it requires "special equipment" to retrieve the container. That makes it kind of difficult to complete a fizzy challenge in my area.

 

What about http://coord.info/GCV6VZ ?

 

Or am I misremembering your location, and that's the cache you're referring to?

 

Oops. Turns out I had the cache size selected in my pocket query to exclude micros (it's a PQ I reuse for adhoc queries) and there are several less than 100 miles from me. However, the closest has a 94/3 Find/DNF ratio, the next 63/1, and the next 38/3. Compare those find/dnf ratio to a 4 star cache in my area that has a 70/69 ratio and it looks to me that most of those 5 star difficulty caches are overrated.