What is the average number of the most geocaches one has hidden?

[Fireflying]

Is 100 too many geocaches to put out? I would guess the most a hardcore geocacher would hide, would be around 40. What is it?

[Pup Patrol]

Is 100 too many geocaches to put out? I would guess the most a hardcore geocacher would hide, would be around 40. What is it?

 

There is no "average". Millions of cachers around the world have hidden from 1 to more than way more than 100 caches.

 

It depends on the cacher. If they feel they can adequately maintain 1, or 10 or 300 caches, then that's what they do.

 

Check out the profile for King Boreas (3,839 non-event cache hides, over 200 events hosted):

 

http://www.geocaching.com/profile/?guid=3434ebbf-7b30-42c0-a876-24249b7c495e

 

 

B.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

Is 100 too many geocaches to put out? I would guess the most a hardcore geocacher would hide, would be around 40. What is it?

 

I have no idea what the average is but in general, the number of caches an owner might have shouldn't be more than the cache owner can adequately maintain. There are quite a few people that are able to maintain well over 100. There are others that can't seem to adequately maintain less than 10. For many years, King Boreas was credited with being the cache owner with the most hides and I don't know that if that is still the case, but his profile currently shows 4059 caches owner (many of them have been archived...and he hosts lots of events). With the proliferation of power trails since 2009 there are probably lots of geocachers that have well over 100 hides, but with the commonly accepted practices of container swapping and and finders throwing down replacements it's arguable whether or not they are being adequately maintained.

 

[+T.D.M.22]

There is a group of cachers who have over 600. Plus their own personal caches. There are powertrails with over 1000 caches-someone owns and maintains them.

[cezanne]

Such averages do not make sense that caches are very diverse.

 

Consider a cache like this one

http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC3EFT1_vulkanland

 

(a hike of about 180 km)

 

A powertrail with 300 film cans along a road causes less effort and work.

 

Cezanne

[+niraD]

Is 100 too many geocaches to put out?

Maybe. Maybe not.

 

To paraphrase the cache maintenance guidelines: The number of caches which a cacher is considered able to maintain responsibly will vary from person to person.

 

It depends on the person's schedule (geocaching and non-geocaching), on the types of caches the person hides, on the locations chosen by the person, on the hide techniques used by the person, and on many other factors. My first hide took a lot of work and frequent visits to the site. I learned a lot from trying to maintain it though, and my current hides take relatively little work.

[+StarDoc]

room104 in South Dakota has surpassed King Boreas in total hides.

 

It has been my experience that when cache owners have hundreds of caches out in the wild, they tend to rely on other cachers to maintain them if the cache needs help when found. On the other hand, I've seen a couple of power trails where the owner/owners specifically asked people not to replace them, as the owners wanted to keep the various types of hides consistent.

[+JohnnyVegas]

Is 100 too many geocaches to put out? I would guess the most a hardcore geocacher would hide, would be around 40. What is it?

It depends on how well a cacher can maintain them. Hiding is one thing but maintaining can take more work. I fell way behind when I went back to school full time but now I am catching up. It seems going to college and geocaching while in school full time is not a very good idea

[+The_Incredibles_]

I think for the average person 100 is too many to maintain. I've put out over 50 and sometimes it's a PITA, even if you have a good container, someone's bound to leave it open it in the rain. I would start with a few a see how it goes.

Edited October 27, 2013 by The_Incredibles_

[+Walts Hunting]

There is a group of cachers who have over 600. Plus their own personal caches. There are powertrails with over 1000 caches-someone owns and maintains them.

Power trails don't get maintained. It is up to the users to replace missing ones with throw downs.

[+Ma & Pa]

here is a list of most hides. Not sure about accuracy

 

http://www.zinnware.com/HighAdv/Geocaching/most_caches_found.php?OrderBy=hides&Ordering=DESC&Limit=3500

[+Don_J]

There was a thread a short while ago about multiple finds on a Challenge cache where the CO had over 6000 hides. Total number of hides is really irrelevant if you don't know how many of them are active. When you add in self maintaining power trails, you could have someone with 500 hides where 400 of them are on a PT, and 75 are archived, leaving him with 25 that he actually has to maintain.

 

I have also seen cachers with hundreds of hide that simply archive their caches with the first hint of trouble, and others with hundreds of hides that rarely archive any of them, leaving the reviewers to do the job for them.

 

Personally, I have hidden 197 caches, 137 are active with 2 in definite need of maintenance and 6 more with the last log a DNF, (no multiple DNFs in a row). I have only had 3 Needs Archived posted to my caches, one in retaliation, and only one reviewer note because I forgot about a cache and left it disabled for an extended period.

 

I know that the OP is new and is thinking about hiding caches, and is asking the right questions about doing so. The biggest advice that I could offer to a new cache hider is to take it slowly. I have seen people get excited about hiding caches and they hide 10 or 20 in a short period of time, many times with identical or similar containers. Later on, all of the caches start to have issues at about the same time and doing the maintenance can become overwhelming and frustrating. If you hide your caches at intervals and use different containers, you will learn what works and what doesn't and get a feel for how many caches you can keep active and maintained at one time.

[+OZ2CPU]

we got about 300 active hides, on two accounts :-)

it is about what we can handle, my wife and I

if others can handle 1 or 1000 I care less..

what is importent is you hide them, AND maintain them..

better hides = less problems and less total work.

[+bflentje]

room104 in South Dakota has surpassed King Boreas in total hides.

 

Greater than 90% of Room104's caches are park and grabs. Greater than 90% of King Boreas hides are hidden in the woods.

 

The power trail concept for find count also applies to hide count. I have much more respect for KB's hide count than I do for Room104's microspew across eastern South Dakota.

[+Harry Dolphin]

I have 97 active hides. On most I could perform maintenance within a few weeks, if I deemed it necessary. Some might take more than a few weeks planning the maintenance. I do have some caches with quite some hiking. A month or so, if I really thought it need maintenance. Hey! They'd probably take most of a day! And I really do like to get out geocaching. But, if I deem it necessary, I will schedule it. Let's see: I used up a whole day because a cacher insisted that the first stage of my multi was missing. Nope! Right where it has been for the last eight years! And I did find five other caches in the neighborhood. But I seldom have a full day available for such things. I did archive a cache that I really liked, because the last five cachers were unable to find it. It was right where it was supposed to be. They just were not very good cachers. But an hour's drive each way, and an hour's hike, to find the cache was right where it always was? Not worth the effort. I'd rather be geocaching. Oh, well.

[+NeverSummer]

I looked on cacherstats and noticed that most of the folks in my find range have very few cache hides. Of hundreds of cachers, only about 5% had over single digits of hides for their 4 digits of finds.

 

More important than number of hides is, as others have pointed out, how you intend to take care of them. Anyone can place 4000 empty sour cream and peanut butter containers, but can they keep up with wet logs, chewed or broken containers, migration from original spot, or all-out missing containers? Not really. Quantity of caches is only as helpful to the game (and your own time spent maintaining them) as the containers and logbooks you choose.

 

100 caches for containers that leak and logbooks that aren't weatherproof is bad for everyone. 100 caches that are watertight (or waterproof) and have a weatherproof logbook in an unholey (yuk it up, folks) ziplock are better for everyone.

 

I'm slowly archiving the caches which I cannot take care of. 3 states of movement means I've adopted out many, and have remote maintenance help for others. Some I've just had to let go. If I can't respond to a Needs Maintenance log or multiple DNFs on a cache within a week or two, I either adopt it out or archive and remove the container.

 

So, just ask yourself, can I maintain these caches I plan on placing? Am I prepared to adopt out, and/or archive and remove any caches that I realize I can not maintain?

[+WarNinjas]

We have out 145. We try and think before placing them as we don't want to archive any of them. We did accidentally archive one in the begging because we didn't know about disable but we fixed the coords and it is still active. We had them all under control because I am all over the place but recently had a problem with our house that has made us move and takes up almost all of my time. If that didn't happen it still wouldn't be a problem. We do keep them up to a decent level. I know one we need to fix one but needs bolt cutters and a new lock. It is on our list to fix soon. We are also slowly putting out special ones. A lot of our require kayaking to them or very long hikes but we try and keep them up. Never had a needs archive.

[+StarDoc]

room104 in South Dakota has surpassed King Boreas in total hides.

 

Greater than 90% of Room104's caches are park and grabs. Greater than 90% of King Boreas hides are hidden in the woods.

 

The power trail concept for find count also applies to hide count. I have much more respect for KB's hide count than I do for Room104's microspew across eastern South Dakota.

 

As someone who has found several hundred of room104's caches and only two dozen of KB's caches, I'm not arguing with you. I have one KB cache on my "Really Want to Find" list (GC1CE4), but never get a chance when I'm driving by it.

[+hzoi]

I just realized this thread title makes absolutely no sense. How do you average the most? Is it the most, or the average? Can it really be both?