Finding "OLDER" Caches and other SEARCH Parameters

[+Inmountains]

I have been a Geocacher for a while, since 2002, and have been enjoying the sport at a leisurely pace. I did a cache in the Durango, Colorado area that required you to find the 10 OLDEST caches in the County. Since the entire county had less than 100 caches at the time, it was quite easy to figure out the ten oldest. But I was wondering, is there a way to do a SEARCH of caches by "Date Hidden?" Obviously, you can do a search and then click on the HIDDEN column to sort by date hidden and you can put them into GSAK and again, sort by Date Hidden. But is there a way to do a direct SEARCH for the oldest caches on the Geocaching website?

 

Other parameters that I do not know if they are available:

1. Favorite Votes

2. Number of Times Found

3. Number of Times DNFed

 

As a final question, are there any statistics that you would find interesting? Sports fans LOVE statistics, so why not bring them into Geocaching? Here is what I would find fascinating:

1. Find/DNF percentage. If a cache were found 100 times and had 2 DNFs, the rating would be 50, 100/2. But if a cache has 50 finds and 40 DNFs, the rating would be 1.25 50/40. (The biggest problem here is folks not logging DNFs)

2. Finds per year. If one cache had 100 finds in one year and another cache has 100 finds over five years, they would be vastly different. (The biggest problem here is demographics as a cache with 1,000,000 living nearby is different than a cache with 5,000 living nearby)

3. Finds over time. Similar to finds per year, but this would be "Days per Find."

 

Are there any statistics you would find fascinating?

Edited September 14, 2011 by Inmountains

[+t4e]

you are a Premium Member, the Pocket Queries allow you to specify the "Placed During" date

 

once you got the list of caches from the Pocket Query you can sort it by favorites, but its not an available parameter yet, i think it is in the works

Edited September 14, 2011 by t4e

[+PokerLuck]

You can make a pocket query that specifies a date range for the date hidden. You could make one up that looks at caches hidden in 2000 and see if it has 10 caches in it. If it doesn't, increase the number of years until it does. Then, sort by the date hidden to get your 10. However, I don't think a pocket query will search by county. You can get around that by just searching a large area and use GSAK to sort by county and date.

 

I don't think pocket queries will do the other searches you asked for, though.

[+lamoracke]

I have a bookmark list which shows all the 2000 caches whether active or archived. GC6 was just found by the way, but its locked so no one can say its been found.

[Pup Patrol]

When you use the Hide & Seek page to get a list of caches, click on the column heading "Placed". This will sort the caches from oldest to newest placed.

 

The result you would get for Colorado:

 

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.aspx?state_id=6&sortdir=asc&sort=placed

 

You can also sort that list by clicking on the various column headings: D/T, Favorites (the blue ribbon), and Last Found, in addition to "Placed".

Edited September 14, 2011 by Pup Patrol

[+t4e]

However, I don't think a pocket query will search by county.

 

 

of course it does "Countries" as well as "States / Provinces", one at the time though

[+Ecylram]

However, I don't think a pocket query will search by county.

 

 

of course it does "Countries" as well as "States / Provinces", one at the time though

 

It's easy to confuse "Counties" and "Countries" since they are only one character apart.

 

This is doable in GSAK. They have a free macro you download/run called "CountryStateCounty" and it will add the county information to each record. You can then filter by county and age to find your caches. It's really pretty easy.

[+t4e]

However, I don't think a pocket query will search by county.

 

 

of course it does "Countries" as well as "States / Provinces", one at the time though

 

It's easy to confuse "Counties" and "Countries" since they are only one character apart.

 

This is doable in GSAK. They have a free macro you download/run called "CountryStateCounty" and it will add the county information to each record. You can then filter by county and age to find your caches. It's really pretty easy.

 

right, reading fail on my part

 

now out of curiosity based on what information does GSAK break them down into counties?

[+Ecylram]

right, reading fail on my part

 

now out of curiosity based on what information does GSAK break them down into counties?

 

The coordinates.GSAK accesses the polygon information for the counties.

[+hzoi]

GC6 was just found by the way, but its locked so no one can say its been found.

 

Interesting. If I came across a locked cache and signed the log, I'd be pushing for the listing to be unlocked so I could log my find. Who found it, and do we know why TPTB won't unlock the listing?

[+lamoracke]

GC6 was just found by the way, but its locked so no one can say its been found.

 

Interesting. If I came across a locked cache and signed the log, I'd be pushing for the listing to be unlocked so I could log my find. Who found it, and do we know why TPTB won't unlock the listing?

 

no idea, but perhaps its something to do with its an actual Dave Ulmer listing. Every single one of his caches seem to be locked. Am sure there is an old story regarding that which may or may not be worth repeating. The person who found it is a friend of mine and has pictures of the original log and container, he showed them to me. However, he does not log finds anymore, so probably would not have logged them anyway. There is a new power trail in that immediate area so perhaps others will go looking out of curiosity. Container is not in best condition, but log is there.

[+lamoracke]

oh, apparently I was wrong. The original container is there, but the log sheet, I guess he added that along with a throwdown next to the original bucket, just for fun.

[+B+L]

oh, apparently I was wrong. The original container is there, but the log sheet, I guess he added that along with a throwdown next to the original bucket, just for fun.

The "tribute" cache is .1 miles away from GC6, Which is probably because GC6 is very likely to be on private land, not to mention being right next to active RR tracks. The lid to GC6, complete Dave Ulmer's handwritten label is kicking around somewhere. The bucket is still there, but that's it.

 

[+Hypnopaedia]

oh, apparently I was wrong. The original container is there, but the log sheet, I guess he added that along with a throwdown next to the original bucket, just for fun.

The "tribute" cache is .1 miles away from GC6, Which is probably because GC6 is very likely to be on private land, not to mention being right next to active RR tracks. The lid to GC6, complete Dave Ulmer's handwritten label is kicking around somewhere. The bucket is still there, but that's it.

 

 

The Tribute part was added in the last two days after I contacted him about archiving his cache. He instead has put up coords that encourage people to cross a railroad track. I was in the process of planning a boat cache to near the spot that would not require crossing of tracks and that would bring people to an important part of caching history. But a Power Trail is much more important than what is, in reality, the oldest existing cache container in the world. But who cares, just bring on the number runs. I'm sure all the people who do that power trail will really read the page and understand what that spot means. God forbid you have to go .2 miles instead of .1 to get your next film canister.

[Keystone]

Let's move away from the focused discussion of one particular cache, and back to the general subject of search techniques for spotting older listings. Thanks.

[+B+L]

The Tribute part was added in the last two days after I contacted him about archiving his cache. He instead has put up coords that encourage people to cross a railroad track.

It may be one of the earliest geocaching sites, but these days it appears to be more popular as place to scurry into the trees when nature calls.

 

It was called "Rivertracks" for good reason. The remains of the cache are on RR land next to a double set of active tracks. The "spur road" mentioned on the powert trail page is the RR's with a gate that has been locked the few times gone by lately. The parcel of land between the river and the tracks is privately owned. It's better to leave it be. It was a never a good place to put a cache.

[Keystone]

When you use the Hide & Seek page to get a list of caches, click on the column heading "Placed". This will sort the caches from oldest to newest placed.

 

The result you would get for Colorado:

 

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.aspx?state_id=6&sortdir=asc&sort=placed

 

You can also sort that list by clicking on the various column headings: D/T, Favorites (the blue ribbon), and Last Found, in addition to "Placed".

Thank you for this useful post. I've found the new sorting capabilities to be quite useful in searching for subsets of caches, like "old" or "high terrain," within a set of search results.

 

Let's see some more on-topic tips like this one, please.

[+B+L]

Let's move away from the focused discussion of one particular cache, and back to the general subject of search techniques for spotting older listings. Thanks.

Sorry. I had that post sitting around for awhile before I noticed I had not submitted it.

[+hzoi]

Back to the wider topic, then. Outside of sorting pocket queries, I have a few ways of looking for older caches, 'cause I love finding them.

 

One is going to "Hide and Seek a Cache," selecting the "Search by Country" or Search by State (as appropriate), then hitting the >> link at the top of the listings to get to the end.

 

Another is as above: when you're doing proximity searches, you can change the sort by clicking on the "Placed" column. This may get you some caches that are further away than you want.

 

A third way is to use the old geocaching.com Google maps, which have a list on the right side of the map of all the caches on the map, starting with the most recently placed. You can scroll down to the bottom of the list, and there are the older ones. This does have a pretty limited scope due to the zoom and cache limits on the old maps.

[+thebruce0]

One is going to "Hide and Seek a Cache," selecting the "Search by Country" or Search by State (as appropriate), then hitting the >> link at the top of the listings to get to the end.

 

Another is as above: when you're doing proximity searches, you can change the sort by clicking on the "Placed" column. This may get you some caches that are further away than you want.

Actually what I've noticed about these two methods is that the PQ count limit has an effect on what's returned, at least in the preview listing.

 

1) If you do a PQ for 1000 caches and jump to the last page of the preview listing, you'll be 1000 caches from the 1st result (not necessarily the oldest possible for the query)

2) But if you then sort by Placed date descending, it'll actually return the 1000 oldest caches, so jumping to the last page won't show the most recent, it'll actually only show 1000 caches from the 1st (oldest) result.

 

ie, the preview doesn't sort the 1000 results that would be returned by the completed PQ, it actually requeries and previews 1000 caches from the 1st result.

 

If you download the PQ, then you'll only have the first 1000 that the PQ resulted in (sorting at that point won't give you the oldest any more).

 

So the Preview option for a PQ is a neat backdoor to getting the oldest caches that match the query. But I don't think you can actually get the PQ to run in reverse Placed order to download those caches in the final GPX.

 

As an aside: the PQ preview does the same for the other sortable columns. eg: If your search radius is 500 miles, and you return the closest 100 caches to home, the preview will show the 100 closest caches to home. Sort the preview list by distance descending, and you get the 100 farthest caches from under 500 miles. The PQ won't execute and return those farthest 100 though - only the preview can show them.

Edited September 15, 2011 by thebruce0

[+hzoi]

One is going to "Hide and Seek a Cache," selecting the "Search by Country" or Search by State (as appropriate), then hitting the >> link at the top of the listings to get to the end.

 

Another is as above: when you're doing proximity searches, you can change the sort by clicking on the "Placed" column. This may get you some caches that are further away than you want.

Actually what I've noticed about these two methods is that the PQ count limit has an effect on what's returned, at least in the preview listing.

 

Actually, I wasn't talking about pocket queries.

[+thebruce0]

Actually, I wasn't talking about pocket queries.

uh, yeah, sorry, forgot about general searches haven't used that in ages. Nonetheless, the PQ angle is another useful trick