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Longest Streak Challenge


sparkyfry

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Posted

Does anybody know what the longest streak challenge in the US or the world is? Washington state has a three-year (1,095 day) challenge, and I created a 1,000 day challenge in Minnesota. Those are the longest ones that I know about. My streak is currently at 1,122 days. I might end it sometime, but I'd hate to end it at 1,122 and then have a 1,123 day challenge published the next day. I imagine there is some point at which the reviewers would say the challenge requirements are too onerous, but I have no idea how many days that might be. Thanks for any guidance.

Posted

Is everybody this unhelpful on the forums?

 

You must not be from around here.

 

If you were you would be aware of how things work. Bring up an innocent question about any number of certain subjects here, no matter how benign, and expect to get piled on with negative tangential comments and arguments. This would include, but is not limited to, such subjects as challenges, LPCs, power trails, virtuals, souvenirs, logging requirements, etc. It is an open forum and they let in all the gypsies, tramps, and thieves in addition to the philosophers and erudite commenters. Get used to it.

 

All who enter here are lost...

Posted (edited)

These forums are mostly made up of people who self-righteously pat themselves on the back for the way they play a silly outdoor game. If you don't play it the way they play it, they feel it's their job to tell you you're wrong. Usually passive-aggressively.

 

Edit: actually, that's not fair. I think the majority in the forums are nice and helpful. Unfortunately the self-righteous passive-aggressive back-patters post more.

Edited by JJnTJ
Posted

These forums are mostly made up of people who self-righteously pat themselves on the back for the way they play a silly outdoor game.

 

You mean like mentioning that you have a find streak of over 1100 days?

 

How is that a self righteous pat on the back? They simply asked a question, and proceeded to explain what got them wondering about the question.

Posted

I keep meaning to stick one out there, but as I feel I should complete the objective, first, I shouldn't be issuing a challenge. 11 more days (assuming nothing untoward happens) I should complete 1,500 straight days.

 

I figure it would be found right away by Kablooey and a couple of other cachers in the area and then it would sit and quietly rust.

Posted

Is everybody this unhelpful on the forums?

 

What about a challenge cache that requires x amount of unhelpful posts in the forums?

 

I think the "let's do another unhelpful post" joke ran out of gas a month or two back. I'm honestly interested in helping people. Nothing turns off newbies like rudeness.

Posted

The 1,095 Streak challenge is the highest one I have seen personally. Its an odd arbitrary number, almost just broadcasting what the CO's current streak was, but hey, it has 9 finds on it so far, so its not just for a couple of people.

 

Can easily say its the highest in Washington State and we have had quite a few of them around.

 

As far as the question goes. There are not many streak challenges past 500, there were more published after I stopped streaking than I thought would be from 401 to 500, otherwise, I "might" not have stopped at 400.

 

Here is a 1000 one from Sweden but I can tell they have more than 1 such challenge

http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC3PXJR_challenge-1000-days

 

I did a quick search or two and could not find one over 1000 but its not an easy thing to search for, especially with the different languages and formats and lack of icon to search by.

Posted

The streak thing is NOT geocaching. Period.

 

The general response to challenges in the forums is pretty much negative. When they get ludicrous it gets more negative. But when you post here you have to expect a truthful answer and sometimes you might not like it.

 

I think all challenges are ridiculous so don't do them but if other want to it doesn't bother me.

Posted

The 1,095 Streak challenge is the highest one I have seen personally. Its an odd arbitrary number, almost just broadcasting what the CO's current streak was, but hey, it has 9 finds on it so far, so its not just for a couple of people.

 

Actually it's not that arbitrary a number considering 1,095 days is three years (as long as one of those years isn't a leap year).

Posted

The 1,095 Streak challenge is the highest one I have seen personally. Its an odd arbitrary number, almost just broadcasting what the CO's current streak was, but hey, it has 9 finds on it so far, so its not just for a couple of people.

 

Actually it's not that arbitrary a number considering 1,095 days is three years (as long as one of those years isn't a leap year).

 

You are right sir, I never even thought of that. The challenge itself made no mention of it being 3 years long so in truth, did not think of that. So, its a 3 year streak.

Posted (edited)

Yes if I stumble across one and I meet its requirements it gets treated like a traditional. I never go out of my way to get one. For instance the 49 in Cronan. When that one was published I already had over a hundred so left it and went there just like a traditional.

 

I have been on a two month trip and am getting home tomorrow. Ran the PQ for home and looked at 10 new challenges. All went to the Ignore list since they weren't worth my trouble.

 

As I said (unlike some who seem to think if they don't like it it shouldn't be) I don't care how many challenges there are and if people want to go for it more power to them. I am happy hiking/biking along in ignorance I guess.

Edited by Walts Hunting
Posted

Yes if I stumble across one and I meet its requirements it gets treated like a traditional. I never go out of my way to get one.

 

You're not fooling anybody, Mr. Challenge Lover.

Posted

For me, the best challenge is one I set for myself. Whether it is beating Popoki Nui to the caches we plan to find that day, exceeding our daily find count record, or trying a tougher terrain - it doesn't matter. As long as I have fun the way I play the game, and others in the way theyplay, that is fine by me.

Anyone who does a challenge, be it 31 days or more, has my admiration...as long as they enjoy it. It just isn't for me. Different strokes for different folks.........

Posted (edited)

This probably isn't helpful but I don't like streak challenges either.

 

I don't like streak challenges either. I like finding them, sure, but I don't like that it seems to encourage "unethical" behavior in some (hopefully a small set of) people. And for this reason, I think we'd be better off without them.

Edited by kablooey
  • Upvote 1
Posted

This probably isn't helpful but I don't like streak challenges either.

 

This is an online discussion forum. Sometimes contributions are more about promoting discussion than an attempt at being helpful. That said, I don't care for what challenges have become. Challenge caches seem to be less about creating a cache that is fun for a lot of cachers to find and more about a competition to see who can create the most difficult challenge. If the answer to "what is the longest streak challenge" was 3 years, someone, somewhere will try to get one published that was 4 years. I agree with SwineFlew. That's not geocaching, it's one-upmanship.

 

 

Posted

This thread from 2013 was bumped today, and it appears we have a new winner for the longest streak challenge.  Note that GC5E9C9 was published in 2014, before the moratorium on new challenge caches was imposed in April 2015.  When the new challenge cache guidelines were published at the end of the moratorium on May 25, 2016, streak challenges were limited to 365 days or less. In addition, streak challenges cannot specify any further element for caches qualifying for the streak, like the cache type, D/T rating, etc.

 

So, no reader should consider submitting a 1,445 day Challenge! :P

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Posted

Of all the challenges and statistics, streaks probably involve the most shenanigans, other than most finds in a day. Friends deliberately hiding easy finds to keep the streak going. Family members and sock puppets hiding to help the streak. Stockpiling finds i.e. signing logs one day and logging the find on a later date.

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Posted (edited)

Yep, if you really want to ensure legitimacy of your streak, take a photo or do something that proves you actually went to each cache each day and signed the log then, or did whatever you're intended to do on the day you're logging.  Legit streaks are an impressive feat. Pure stat qualification though, now, meh (like smiley counts)

Edited by thebruce0
Posted
13 hours ago, JL_HSTRE said:

Of all the challenges and statistics, streaks probably involve the most shenanigans, other than most finds in a day. Friends deliberately hiding easy finds to keep the streak going. Family members and sock puppets hiding to help the streak. Stockpiling finds i.e. signing logs one day and logging the find on a later date.

 

It looks like you have a lot of experience in this area.

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Posted
15 hours ago, JL_HSTRE said:

Stockpiling finds i.e. signing logs one day and logging the find on a later date.

 

Pre-finding caches and then returning to sign the logs on the streak day is one I've seen.  To me finding the cache is the thing that is supposed to be the subject of the streak, not signing the logs.

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Posted

Doing a streak honestly was a pain and no fun. Happiest day of 423 day streak was day 424 when I decided to stop.  My strategy was when I had time drive as far away as possible and save all close ones for when time was a factor. 

 

Fortunately, I had a few really close saved for emergencies like when we had a snow/ice storm. The week I had the flu was miserable. I remember rushing out before midnight once to make a find. The one day I feel bad about was sneaking out on Christmas Day to keep my streak alive. 

 

One strategy a local streaker uses is to bunch finds close to midnight and then make a second find when the day changed. Then they only need to cache every other day. They worked nights or swing shift so that lifestyle seemed to work for them.

 

It became work.

 

 

  • Upvote 2
Posted (edited)
37 minutes ago, MNTA said:

Doing a streak honestly was a pain and no fun. Happiest day of 423 day streak was day 424 when I decided to stop.

I hear that - although it WAS fun at the beginning, and at points in between.  But I agree, the feeling at day #405 (for us) was....relief, a bit of angst (we're NOT going to find a cache today?!?), and satisfaction of the 404 days previous - WE DID IT!  The last couple of months were WORK, though, and not as enjoyable as when we started.

 

Our goal was to find a cache every day in 2018 (which included Feb. 29!); we had a few consecutive days at the end of 2017, our first year geocaching, and once we hit the end of 2018, we were soooooo close to 400, we decided to keep going to 400, rather than end on a totally random number.  We chose 404 ("cache not found") to end our streak sometime in early February.

 

We had some self-imposed rules - events didn't count, though we did count Virtuals and Earthcaches.  We had to actually go to the cache and sign the log (or gather info) on the day we claimed the find. It's a fine line about events, but we chose not to count them - if we did attend an event, we still had to find a cache that day!  It was a challenge, although we'd only been geocaching for 9 months when we started our streak, we'd found many of the local caches in our initial enthusiasm so it wasn't long before we were driving longer distances each day to find something new.  When new caches local to us were published, we either ran out to get the FTF as our COTD, or we let it go, for a day when we needed something close!!

 

But we did it - we're happy with our 404 consecutive days in our stats, and will likely never do another streak longer than that!  It was enjoyable for most of it, then it got to be a chore, then work, but we HAD to finish!  Happy to say we did, and WE know it's honestly earned.

 

ETA: We didn't do the midnight stuff, 2 days at one "outing", because we are old, and it's past our bedtime to be up at midnight!  And if we do happen to be up at that hour, it's unlikely the reason is because we are out geocaching!

Edited by CAVinoGal
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Posted (edited)
3 hours ago, MNTA said:

Doing a streak honestly was a pain and no fun. Happiest day of 423 day streak was day 424 when I decided to stop.

 

2 hours ago, CAVinoGal said:

I hear that - although it WAS fun at the beginning, and at points in between.  But I agree, the feeling at day #405 (for us) was....relief, a bit of angst (we're NOT going to find a cache today?!?), and satisfaction of the 404 days previous - WE DID IT!  The last couple of months were WORK, though, and not as enjoyable as when we started.

 

It seems I'm in a very different league. I've done two 7-day streaks, one for the Streak Week promotion in 2019 and again for the Wheel of Challenges in 2023, and on both occasions was relieved that I didn't have to go out caching on day 8. During the first one it rained on three of the days, including this torrential downpour as I dashed out to a guard rail cache on the Old Pacific Highway near Mt White.

 

0ca5506a-e1e0-48d0-b129-d7904a8aee56.jpg

 

For the second one the weather was kinder but, with few unfound local caches, a lot of travelling was needed. The first cache was a newly published one only a half-hour drive from home, but that was followed by a 450km round trip and a climb up a mountain in the upper Hunter Valley, a car-ferry-bus-bus-ferry trip to Scotland Island in Pittwater (and ferry-bus-bus-ferry-car coming home), a train trip to Hornsby in northern Sydney, a much longer train and tram trip to Newcastle, another train trip to central Sydney and finally a 70km return drive north to Mardi. Following that I did a 10-day slump to recover.

Edited by barefootjeff
Posted
20 hours ago, MNTA said:

It became work.

 

My longest streak is 28 days, done two years after I started. It was deliberate and I decided at the beginning to stop as soon as it stopped being fun.

 

I stopped when I had to drive a half hour out of my way just to get one unremarkable cache. It wasn't just tedious, it was becoming wasteful of time and gas.

 

For cachers in more cache dense areas or who travel extensively completely honest streaks are certainly possible, and without elaborate efforts.

 

Some of the lengths to keep streaks alive aren't admirable. Caching with the flu is like going to work with the flu: foolish and irresponsible, not laudible.

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Posted
1 hour ago, ecanderson said:

Fast and guaranteed way to end a streak ... an At Sea day on a cruise!

Reminds me of a conversation which I overheard at an event. Went along these lines:

- Cacher A: I'm going on vacation to <some remote place> next month. That's gonna be so cool!

- Cacher B: What about the streak you're doing? Can't imagine there are a lot of caches at <some remote place>, if any. End of the streak?

- Cacher A: Naah ... I have enough Challenges, which I fulfill, and where I have signed the log and logged a Note a while ago. I can log finds for these whenever I like.

 

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Posted

For what it's worth, Team Geo-Rangers have according to Project-gc...

Most consecutive days with finds: 6480, from 2007-04-29 to 2025-01-23 (Current streak)
  • Surprised 1
Posted
19 hours ago, Phronimos said:

For what it's worth, Team Geo-Rangers have according to Project-gc...

Most consecutive days with finds: 6480, from 2007-04-29 to 2025-01-23 (Current streak)

And Ranger Fox has 6523 (since 2007-03-02). They also have a list of streaking rules on their profile, mostly reasonable. I think I adhered to most of them during my streak, but I also included earthcaches, virtuals and events. You still have to go to a specific location on a specific date, finding the container is usually a small effort compared to that, although I have on occasion racked up an impressive number of DNFs before finally being able to go home for dinner. I have never allowed myself to bend the rules during intercontinental travel, so that way I've been stricter.

 

Regarding streak challenges, I don't think I've come across any.

Posted
2 hours ago, JL_HSTRE said:

I have no problem counting Earthcaches, Virtuals, and Events toward a streak so long as they are honestly logged on the date found/attended.

Don't forget to include web cam caches My streak included 3 though as I was relatively new to caching one I did rely on a selfie which I would not do today. Fortunately found a few other caches that day . All challenge caches were logged on the day found.

 

Tonight went back through my finds during this streak wow some memories and one regret this is one reason why I love looking at my finding history and this game.

 

Regret:  On a road trip drove right on by Mingo not knowing its significance. Visited friends one exit away and spent the night just 10 miles away so close. Even went out before breakfast to keep my streak alive. Ugh :)

 

Memories: 19 states/provinces Logged the Original Stash and GC16 (GC17 is still the best oldie)

Roadtrip: Oregon to Kansas and back. New states ID, WY, CO, KS, MO, IA, NE, MN, SD, MT

    Rocky Mountain NP, Yellowstone NP, Craters of the Moon NM,

    Devil's Tower NM (Better in person than watching close encounter), Mt Rushmore NM, Badlands NP, Minutemen Missile NHP, Wall Drug

    Got peed on by my puppy in CO while in my lap, 

    Almost killed my puppy by excessive heat hiking in the Badlands had to carry him half a mile back to the car to cool him off NOT GOOD

 

Roadtrip - Oregon to Arizona one way New States NV, UT, AZ

    First time to the Steens Mountains and the Alvord desert my favorite place in Oregon. Great Basin NP Love dark sky areas

 

Business trip to Wisconsin and Montreal Quebec

    Snowed 2 inches in April but took the rental car out to make a find. Beutiful city  New states WI, IL New country/province CA/QC

 

So it was not all a horrible experience but it did become work. 

  

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