Number of new caches decreasing?

4.5k · November 7, 2019

I've said this before, but certainly not decreasing in the Canberra region.

7k · November 7, 2019

5 hours ago, Goldenwattle said:

I've said this before, but certainly not decreasing in the Canberra region.

They'd better send the geo-undertakers to the Central Coast. No new caches since mid July other than my most recent two and only 15 for the year including 4 of mine. I must remember to turn the lights off when I call it quits.

4.5k · November 7, 2019

2 minutes ago, barefootjeff said:

They'd better send the geo-undertakers to the Central Coast. No new caches since mid July other than my most recent two and only 15 for the year including 4 of mine. I must remember to turn the lights off when I call it quits.

One of your past local geocachers (I seem to remember you mentioning) that puts out LOTS of caches moved to Canberra. There are other people placing caches too.

7.3k · February 24, 2020

Bump, a loss in worldwide numbers for the first time I've ever seen.

Per my post in this thread on Oct 2, 3019, worldwide count was 3,198,358

Today, it's 3,179,029

Florida cache numbers falling and the rate of decrease is up

February 24, 2020

@brenden

This is an interesting topic and one with n+1 interpretations and conclusions. I'll add mine.

Only using your original data, technically not enough data points to make strong statistical "bets." (inferences) but if I can be given some license,

All but two years behave predictably and "normally."
From an observers point of view , there are two years that seem to be outliers (the probability of occurrence is not explained by the variation in the data for the other years) and cause for examination to find out what special causes influenced the data.
Everyone wants to focus on why the 217 normalized data point was lower than expected but equal weight must be given to the 2015 data point that was higher than expected.

A G A I N not enough data to make statistical bets with high confidence. But 2015 and 2017 are so far out of line to deserve examination higher than expected as well as lower.

5.6k · February 24, 2020

10 hours ago, Isonzo Karst said:

Bump, a loss in worldwide numbers for the first time I've ever seen.

Per my post in this thread on Oct 2, 3019, worldwide count was 3,198,358

Today, it's 3,179,029

Florida cache numbers falling and the rate of decrease is up.

I'm not sure a 0.6% change in the worlds caches is really much of a difference - there are still more than anyone can find...

2.7k · February 25, 2020

Could natural disasters have had an effect on cache numbers (please leave global warming arguments for some other time or place)? Here in Oz we have experienced widespread fires as has California in recent times. I've also noticed a lot of caches here being disabled now due to floods. There have been huge floods in Europe and UK. There was also Katrina a few years back which would beg the question of how many caches wiped out by natural disasters are being replaced?

Edited February 25, 2020 by colleda
punctuation

7.5k · February 25, 2020

In general, I'm not sure how worrisome fewer cache hides are. Fewer cache finds might be more of an indication of declining interest in the game.

Any stats on cache finds over the last decade?

7.4k · February 25, 2020

7k · February 25, 2020

5 hours ago, colleda said:

Could natural disasters have had an effect on cache numbers (please leave global warming arguments for some other time or place)? Here in Oz we have experienced widespread fires as has California in recent times. I've also noticed a lot of caches here being disabled now due to floods. There have been huge floods in Europe and UK. There was also Katrina a few years back which would beg the question of how many caches wiped out by natural disasters are being replaced?

I dare say you're right, at least in this part of the world. Finds on my hides over the summer were almost non-existent, but that's not surprising as most were disabled for much of December and the first half of January due to fire closures. Then straight after that we had the floods and now there's a plague of mosquitoes.

Back in October I was having preliminary discussions with the park ranger about a proposed new cache in Brisbane Water National Park, but before it got very far she was sent up north to fight the fires. I'll wait until things have hopefully settled down in autumn (and the mozzies have diminished) before raising it again with her.

7.5k · February 25, 2020

Thank you Mount10Bike for the stats. It confirms a decline but nothing too worrisome. I wonder what happened around 2017 to increase interest a little. Lab/Adventure caches? New virtuals?

Edited February 27, 2020 by L0ne.R
typo

9.1k · February 25, 2020

I'm guessing powertrail mentality took a shot up around then for a while. I know Ontario had a period of many, many extensive powertrails of a variety of styles show up, and when people head out in groups to tackle them all, that's a whole lot of brand new finds. I haven't seen as many powertrails pop up in the past year or so, so the enthusiasts aren't racking up nearly as many high-count days (at least as easily)

7.4k · February 25, 2020

1 hour ago, thebruce0 said:

I'm guessing powertrail mentality took a shot up around then for a while. I know Ontario had a period of many, many extensive powertrails of a variety of styles show up, and when people head out in groups to tackle them all, that's a whole lot of brand new finds. I haven't seen as many powertrails pop up in the past year or so, so the enthusiasts aren't racking up nearly as many high-count days (at least as easily)

Powertrails might be a part of the puzzle. Here is a year-by-year graph of finds in Nevada, which is sort of known as powertrail central for the US. You can see that the find rate has plummeted in the past couple of years there after spiking extremely high in 2010 through 2016.

3.6k · February 25, 2020

18 hours ago, Moun10Bike said:

Interesting. Can you compare differences between USA and Germany.

7.4k · February 25, 2020

1 hour ago, SwineFlew said:

Interesting. Can you compare differences between USA and Germany.

9.1k · February 25, 2020

1 hour ago, Moun10Bike said:

Powertrails might be a part of the puzzle. Here is a year-by-year graph of finds in Nevada, which is sort of known as powertrail central for the US. You can see that the find rate has plummeted in the past couple of years there after spiking extremely high in 2010 through 2016.

Wow, yeah I'd say there's a correlation there... interesting though, the general metric is probably the only one that's visibly affected by a certain caching style; both number of hides and number of finds. A "powertrail" boost hide counts per hiding session, for lack of a better term, more than the act of 'hiding a cache', even though who may hide hundreds of individual ones. A when people go out for a cache finding day, those high count days tend to be composed of at least 1 powertrail in full or in part. But on the grander scale, those slight upward trends get exaggerated. And since not everyone enjoys every style of geocaching experience (let alone just power trails), once the initial demographic has rolled through, the activity plateaus.

The powertrails will always be there (assuming the best), so newcomers who like them will keep finding them, but that initial boom is spent. One new powertrail of 400 caches boosts the hide count for a day or two, and rockets the find count over the next couple of months or so, then it tapers off. In Ontario, it definitely felt like there was a trend towards powertrails for a while there and has recently slowed. Seems to be echoed in that Nevada graph too.

Love the graphs BTW

2.7k · February 25, 2020

53 minutes ago, thebruce0 said:

The powertrails will always be there (assuming the best)

Not always the best assumption. The one user responsible for ~24,000 hides related to power trails in nevada and California had his account shut down and caches archived. That was a dramatic drop in the number of hides available for Utah - about half the state's hides. That may explain the drop in found logs in Nevada, but it can't explain the drop in global activity on its own.

Edit: That may be one isolated incidence, but I have noticed some power trails near me that have disappeared. Enough such that the assumption that a power trail will always be there isn't a great assumption.

Edited February 25, 2020 by Mineral2

9.1k · February 25, 2020

11 minutes ago, Mineral2 said:

52 minutes ago, thebruce0 said:

The powertrails will always be there (assuming the best)

Not always the best assumption.

Correct - "assuming the best". No cache will always be there

11 minutes ago, Mineral2 said:

That may explain the drop in found logs in Nevada, but it can't explain the drop in global activity on its own.

Oh I didn't mean to imply that powertrails were the only factor. But a very significant one. And the unfortunate loss of 24,000 caches was related to power trails, as you said. There are plenty of factors, but powertrails are directly related to quantity of caches hidden/found. An increase in popularity would have a visible impact on count-based stats worldwide. Of course run the stats on regions where powertrails are loathed, and it won't have any effect It spreads out.

Are there any other stats breakdowns that correlate with or reflect the lump of activity and subsequent decline in cache counts worldwide? (honest question)

2.7k · February 25, 2020

6 minutes ago, thebruce0 said:

But a very significant one.

I guess a drop of one million finds in Nevada out of a drop of ~15 million worldwide could constitute a significant contribution. Extrapolate that to the rest of the world where power trails are big but don't make up quite as much of the cache listings and it could represent as much as a quarter of the total decline.

There's a very tight correlation in Germany regarding number of finds and number of active users which seems to suggest the distribution of finds across users could be fairly stable, at least at the mean. In the US, that correlation is tight from 2015 onward, whereas the disconnect prior to 2014 suggests the US had some very active users that burned out and stopped playing the game at a rate faster than new interest could be generated.

I'd be interested to see what the "life span" and "life history productivity" of a geocacher is - that is calling account creation a "birth" and sustained inactivity a "death." And using cohort analysis, identify the average "life" of a user as a function of when they started playing the game.

9.1k · February 25, 2020

As an aside, I might make the same argument about gadget caches in Germany in relation to other regions worldwide (though that's just based on social media observations and popularity). But any stats that could qualify as "gadget cache" isn't as simplistic as a straight-forward generic cache count.

Stats are always spun to emphasize something... but it's fun to analyze and find patterns nonetheless = )

2.7k · February 25, 2020

Data is collected to emphasize something. It's a matter of whether the data and the methods of analysis being used are appropriate to answer the question at hand.

22.1k · February 25, 2020

1 hour ago, Mineral2 said:

Not always the best assumption. The one user responsible for ~24,000 hides related to power trails in nevada and California had his account shut down and caches archived. That was a dramatic drop in the number of hides available for Utah - about half the state's hides. That may explain the drop in found logs in Nevada, but it can't explain the drop in global activity on its own.

Edit: That may be one isolated incidence, but I have noticed some power trails near me that have disappeared. Enough such that the assumption that a power trail will always be there isn't a great assumption.

The mass archival which occurred in Nevada happened in 2019. If you look at the Nevada finds chart, the decline in finds began in 2016. That event does not explain what is shown in the graph. It was also not the only mass archival of caches, though it may have been the largest.

7k · February 25, 2020

It's interesting to compare the number of new caches in my region (the Central Coast, where there's never been any power trails) with my state (New South Wales) over the seven years I've been caching:

New South Wales Central Coast

2013 3099 124

2014 2600 170

2015 2608 159

2016 2814 77

2017 1833 61

2018 2885 78 (includes 38 geoart caches for the Oz Geomuster mega)

2019 2941 22

If I just look at terrain 3 and higher caches, which will exclude most power trails, bike path series and the like:

New South Wales Central Coast

2013 304 31

2014 280 31

2015 233 25

2016 253 15

2017 191 8

2018 290 23 (includes 10 geoart caches for the Oz Geomuster mega)

2019 290 3 (all mine)

So it looks like while the state's holding up well, having recovered from the small lull in 2017, the Central Coast has all but collapsed.

2.7k · February 25, 2020

4 minutes ago, Keystone said:

The mass archival which occurred in Nevada happened in 2019. If you look at the Nevada finds chart, the decline in finds began in 2016. That event does not explain what is shown in the graph. It was also not the only mass archival of caches, though it may have been the largest.

Welp, you've reaffirmed my original suspicion that power trails are probably unrelated to the decline in find activity.

My hypothesis: There are fewer new accounts that are staying engaged with the game while older accounts are running out of local finds to keep them playing as hard as they used to. On average. Now I just need the data to test this.

9.1k · February 26, 2020

No I think the decline in finds was because more of the enthusiastic powertrail hunters had found much of those Nevada powertrails earlier on, thus the noticeable decline in finds. If that decline began tapering out before the mass archival in 2019 then that archival wouldn't have as much affect on the find count.

It would take a much more detailed analysis I'd think to start categorizing finds and publishes as 'powertrail' and not, I'd think, for a better picture of how much of an effect the Nevada PTs had on those stats... =P (unless Keystone's already got that covered too!)

February 26, 2020

I don't think that find rates and hide rates are correlated. Here in the Netherlands geocachers have a tendency to place puzzle caches. But when these COs go out and find caches they prefer traditionals because solving puzzles takes too much time. I would like to see these statistics separated by type of geocache.

9.1k · February 26, 2020

Yeah I'd agree that mystery caches can help spread the find rate out. There may occasional single-solver-big-group finds, but I'd think the window of time between "saw the listing" to "signed the log" is much broader for puzzles (even challenges) in general than Traditionals.

1.6k · February 26, 2020

To the OP:

You are tracking the number of new caches placed for you to find. You are ignoring the number of caches archived. Perhaps a similar study of the total number of active caches in that same area would be instructive. Perhaps the area has become saturated with caches?

February 27, 2020

On 2/25/2020 at 3:45 PM, Mineral2 said:

My hypothesis: There are fewer new accounts that are staying engaged with the game while older accounts are running out of local finds to keep them playing as hard as they used to. On average. Now I just need the data to test this.

For a lot of folks geocaching is a weekend, afternoon, lunchtime hobby. This means that if new caches don't get created as others here have pointed out you have to venture further and further away. Please ignore the exceptions here of vacations and summer road trips as this is not the regular day to day finds. Once an area becomes saturated with semi-permanent cache placement, for finders as stated means more driving or lessen my participation. For hiders finding quality spots . The maintenance rules have helped improve not only the findability of caches but container problems and absent COs. One of the problems is who wants to get excited about slimy smelly mess that tends to crop up a lot in urban hide area specially with absent COs. As others have pointed out, Once the slew of local finders make the find the cache finds tapper off but still do happen I see this specially with puzzle caches most of them are just not my thing but three finds the first year no finds in five years, so lets assume I spend weeks figuring it out but no one has ventured there in 5 years and the cache is missing but because no nm/na logs were filed we really don't know.

So how can you improve the experience. I propose that the listings have an expiration date. Let the complaints fly on this I know, what about my Jasmer Challenges and I love and actively maintain my cache. (But that cache has only a few finders a year now). Well have a criteria for renewal. Or offer.a reward, maybe souvineer for recovering an archived cache. Allow the owner to relist the same location after a maintenance check. Allow for highly valued caches to be voluntarily adopted to local groups and preserved.

Seriously think about it. Or at a minimum perform a maintenance check every 5 years or less.

7.3k · February 27, 2020

6 hours ago, MNTA said:

at a minimum perform a maintenance check every 5 years or less.

You might find this Help Center article interesting...

7.18. HQ emails to inactive hider accounts

7.5k · February 27, 2020

On 2/27/2020 at 9:00 AM, Isonzo Karst said:

You might find this Help Center article interesting...

7.18. HQ emails to inactive hider accounts

In these states, Geocaching HQ has disabled physical caches owned by players whose Geocaching account has not shown activity in more than five (5) years.

A good experiment and a step in the right direction (except for those who prefer a numbers style of play).

Maybe they might consider addressing stagnation next.

Edited March 10, 2020 by L0ne.R
Clearer last sentence.

4.5k · February 27, 2020

On 2/25/2020 at 5:45 PM, Mineral2 said:

Welp, you've reaffirmed my original suspicion that power trails are probably unrelated to the decline in find activity.

My hypothesis: There are fewer new accounts that are staying engaged with the game while older accounts are running out of local finds to keep them playing as hard as they used to. On average. Now I just need the data to test this.

First half of your sentence,,, Agree, there are too many fly by nighters.

Second half,,, I agree somewhat, that some areas are probably lacking in caches. But that being the main reason for why older cachers have slowed is questionable to me. Even with the archival rate being higher than the publish rate, there are still plenty of caches to find in my area. My slowness is because I'm not interested in going after them because they aren't appealing to me. It wouldn't surprise me at all if this wasn't a big reason in many areas.

Like you, no data to support this,,, just going by what I'm seeing around here.

7k · February 27, 2020

15 hours ago, MNTA said:

So how can you improve the experience. I propose that the listings have an expiration date. Let the complaints fly on this I know, what about my Jasmer Challenges and I love and actively maintain my cache. (But that cache has only a few finders a year now). Well have a criteria for renewal. Or offer.a reward, maybe souvineer for recovering an archived cache. Allow the owner to relist the same location after a maintenance check. Allow for highly valued caches to be voluntarily adopted to local groups and preserved.

Of my 1130 finds, 466 were on caches placed before March 2015 and are still active. Of those, 374 don't have an outstanding NM. Many of the higher terrain ones in particular have survived quite well without needing maintenance, simply because they're well-made, hidden where they're protected from the elements and will never get enough finds to go anywhere near filling their logbooks. Here's some examples:

GC4R0YC placed in 2013 with 14 finds, 1 DNF and 1 WN.
GCYB2C placed in 2006 with 32 finds, 1 DNF, 9 WNs and an OM/Update Coodinates in 2007.
GC2JGYH placed in 2010 with 42 finds, 2 WNs and an OM in 2012 reporting that the cache was in perfect condition.
GC5HYEK placed in 2014 with 55 finds, 3 DNFs and 2 WNs.

I could go on but I'm not going to list all 374.

For my own hides, I have two adopted caches that were placed in 2005 (one of which is still the original ammo can with the original logbook), four of my own making that are more than five years old and another that will turn five in a couple of weeks. None of those are in places that are saturated with caches (the average cache density in my region is one cache per three square kilometres) so there's plenty of room for new caches but that rarely happens (only 22 in 2019 and 5 of those were mine). So if there was forced archival after 5 years, it's doubtful any new caches or even relisted old ones would pop up in their place. All it would do is make a huge dent in the number of caches that are available to be found by newcomers to the game or the region.

1.3k · March 7, 2020

I believe we've seen the peak of geocaching for several years. It may rebound but the golden era was the mid 2010s.

Edited March 10, 2020 by TerraViators
editing

9.1k · March 9, 2020

There's bound to be a general plateau at some point. That's not inherently a bad thing. Cycling of content is more important than overall numbers. And that'll vary from place to place.

4.5k · March 9, 2020

3 minutes ago, thebruce0 said:

There's bound to be a general plateau at some point. That's not inherently a bad thing. Cycling of content is more important than overall numbers. And that'll vary from place to place.

Unfortunately, a plateau that'll probably never regain any height, and in fact, will probably sink lower. It's good to be optimistic but let's face it,,, the game that we have now is not the same as the hobby we once had. It's now an app that's played on a phone, an app that's fun at first but ends up being replaced by the next fun app when it becomes too boring.

We did actually have 5 caches published a few days ago, all by the same person. Adding these makes for a total of twelve non event caches, within 50 miles, placed since January 1st. The two monthly events are still going but they are lacking in attendance. The last one had four attendees. Just not much interest around here these days.

9.1k · March 9, 2020

12 minutes ago, Mudfrog said:

Unfortunately, a plateau that'll probably never regain any height, and in fact, will probably sink lower.

Then it's no longer a plateau.

12 minutes ago, Mudfrog said:

It's good to be optimistic but let's face it,,, the game that we have now is not the same as the hobby we once had. It's now an app that's played on a phone, an app that's fun at first but ends up being replaced by the next fun app when it becomes too boring.

YMMV.

13 minutes ago, Mudfrog said:

Just not much interest around here these days.

That's unfortunate. My local community is thriving and we're seeing new people fairly often. But I'm not examining raw numbers, I'm looking at people, which to me is a better indication of 'health'.

1.8k · March 9, 2020

3 hours ago, thebruce0 said:

3 hours ago, Mudfrog said:

It's good to be optimistic but let's face it,,, the game that we have now is not the same as the hobby we once had. It's now an app that's played on a phone, an app that's fun at first but ends up being replaced by the next fun app when it becomes too boring.

YMMV.

3 hours ago, Mudfrog said:

Just not much interest around here these days.

That's unfortunate. My local community is thriving and we're seeing new people fairly often. But I'm not examining raw numbers, I'm looking at people, which to me is a better indication of 'health'.

I'm in agreement with thebruce on this one. I'm three years new to this game/hobby/obsession, and I do play it on my phone, but also use Project GC and GSAK and the computer to keep things from getting boring! We also enjoy creating hides, puzzles, multis, to keep things interesting for us and others.

Part of the reason, I think, is because I live in an area where the geocaching community is healthy, growing, and the local geocachers are an interesting collection of people! Yes, we have names that appear, and then disappear, but we also have names that appear, then start showing up at events, then start hiding their own caches. We have a lot of long time geocachers around here too, willing to share their experiences and expertise ... a healthy community. And we have some awesomely fun events, too. I know it's not like this everywhere; I guess I'm lucky to live where I do and have found a hobby that works here and that I enjoy so much!

7k · March 9, 2020

Perhaps things are looking up in my region (New South Wales Central Coast) as there's been 9 new caches published so far this year, compared to the 22 for all of 2019. 5 traditionals, 2 puzzles, a virtual and a multi (mine), so a good mixture.

Sadly there's also been a lot of archivals after the summer of extremes (fires, gales, then floods), with one of mine that had survived since 2015 being washed away in the most recent deluge. I'll be curious to see if anything pops up to fill the 161 metre circle it's vacated, but I very much doubt it.

4.5k · March 10, 2020

On 3/9/2020 at 9:21 AM, thebruce0 said:

Then it's no longer a plateau.

YMMV.

That's unfortunate. My local community is thriving and we're seeing new people fairly often. But I'm not examining raw numbers, I'm looking at people, which to me is a better indication of 'health'.

Ok, not sure what I'm doing wrong here as I cannot get your complete reply to show when I try to quote it. Anyway, first I guess I don't know my plateaus very well but I'm sure you knew what I was getting at.

Yes, I definitely realize that mileage varies when it comes to geocaching activity. I'm not trying to say that the phone app is the root of all evil. However, I do believe that some of its side effects have contributed to our slow down.

And third, I do wish that geocaching was thriving in my area. Looking at people around here doesn't help as it's downright depressing seeing so few faces out and about, especially at our local events.

1.3k · March 11, 2020

New hides in my area have flattened considerably. Maybe a couple every month.

7.3k · March 19, 2021

2 Oct 2019 worldwide count was 3,198,358

24 Feb 2020 3,179,029
19 March 2021 3,279,066

Florida is below 40,000 but stable there for last couple of years. High was above 44,000

7k · March 19, 2021

On 2/26/2020 at 10:43 AM, barefootjeff said:

It's interesting to compare the number of new caches in my region (the Central Coast, where there's never been any power trails) with my state (New South Wales) over the seven years I've been caching:

A year on, here are the updated numbers from this part of the world:

New South Wales Central Coast

2013 3099 124

2014 2600 170

2015 2608 159

2016 2814 77

2017 1833 61

2018 2885 78 (includes 38 geoart caches for the Oz Geomuster mega)

2019 2941 22

2020 2206 49

If I just look at terrain 3 and higher caches, which will exclude most power trails, bike path series and the like:

New South Wales Central Coast

2013 304 31

2014 280 31

2015 233 25

2016 253 15

2017 191 8

2018 290 23 (includes 10 geoart caches for the Oz Geomuster mega)

2019 290 3 (all mine)

2020 331 13

So far this year there've been 392 caches placed in NSW, 5 of those on the Central Coast (and 2 of those mine).

March 27, 2021

I checked out the trend in my area, and here it is. The "län" is the region, about 70 km radius, and "kommun" is the area for my city, around 20 km radius.

Year Län Kommun

2013 1342 250

2014 1895 291

2015 1622 247

2016 1435 254

2017 1230 167

2018 811 157

2019 578 166

2020 866 329

The numbers are very, very dependent on a few COs, and very much on PTs and other mass placements where 20-30 caches are placed and published at the same time.

I can see two exact times where an active CO quit, end of 2016 here in my town and end of 2017 in the neighbor town. The first was very active in making challenge caches. The latter guy has the second to most caches in the whole Sweden. We can also see the placement of some major power trails in 2013-2016. All that are quick and easy caches to create.

What dominates the numbers are just that, numbers. They are totally unrelated to quality. In 2017-2018 I was very active placing multis, always fairly ambitious ones. They are totally invisible. The same goes for the most high-quality CO in the entire region. He has made fewer caches since some time in 2017-2018, but those are equally invisible.

Also, placement of new caches become harder. There are so many caches, not least mystery caches, that it is hard to find locations. Outside the cities, large areas are dominated by power trails, and although you can place caches by walking some 100 meters beside the trail, those caches will ineviably be treated very badly by power trailers. So a power trail area is essentially blocked from other kinds of caching, at least other traditionals.

So it is hard to tell whether there is any significant trend with so much noise in the system. A single very active CO dropping out makes a visible dent, and power trails totally destroy the statistics.

It would be more interesting, IMHO, to check whether the number of well worked, ambitious caches go up or down, but there is no way to measure that.

March 28, 2021

I ran the stats for my region in late 2017 when this thread started, and I have the general impression that the local collapse that began in 2017 has continued, so let's see...

East Kootenays, British Columbia. Event caches excluded.

2000 - 0
2001 - 5
2002 - 29
2003 - 73
2004 - 82
2005 - 103
2006 - 100
2007 - 128
2008 - 230
2009 - 251
2010 - 260
2011 - 208
2012 - 264
2013 - 256
2014 - 111
2015 - 199
2016 - 441

2017 - 67

2018 - 73

2019 - 50

2020 - 48

2021 - 5 to date (4 of them mine...)

I'm still seeing the same thing as in 2017 on new caches. Only a few of the "old" cachers who were doing a lot of the hiding 10 years ago are still active and in the area, and some of them are still hiding a few. The new crop of cachers hasn't made up the difference. Our region also feels much less like a community that knows each other than it did then. Fewer events, and often more on the fringes of our region (because that's where I live and I host about half of them these days) than in or near the main city in our area. I used to know the prolific cachers in the region - their real names, their dogs names, their email address and phone number. I know next to none of the new cachers.

4.5k · March 28, 2021

Places that already have caches, don't need as many new caches as in the past, because many of the older caches are still there. It's the number of caches that matter, not how many new caches.

Still heaps of caches here in Canberra. I can't keep up with them.

Can someone please give me the link to finding local numbers of caches, and statistics to when they were hidden.

7k · March 28, 2021

8 hours ago, Ringrat said:

I'm still seeing the same thing as in 2017 on new caches. Only a few of the "old" cachers who were doing a lot of the hiding 10 years ago are still active and in the area, and some of them are still hiding a few. The new crop of cachers hasn't made up the difference. Our region also feels much less like a community that knows each other than it did then. Fewer events, and often more on the fringes of our region (because that's where I live and I host about half of them these days) than in or near the main city in our area. I used to know the prolific cachers in the region - their real names, their dogs names, their email address and phone number. I know next to none of the new cachers.

I know the feeling all too well. When I started in 2013, I quickly bumped into all the prominent caching identities around here: Barry, Ros, Matt, Caden, Debbie, Steve, Annette, Kathy, another Matt, Kel, Grant, David, Heather, Mark, John, Chris, Robert and I'm sure a few others that I've overlooked. Some are still active but many have drifted off, either leaving the area or giving up caching. In the last five years I've only met two new local players: Paul and Will. At a recent nearby event, the first post-COVID, there were 15 attendees but only 3 of those (including me) were locals, the rest were from Sydney or Newcastle. The logs on caches around here show there have been plenty of other new players come along in that time, but they all seem to be individualist rather than community players and often only last a few weeks or months and are never heard from again.

Edited March 28, 2021 by barefootjeff

7k · March 28, 2021

7 minutes ago, Goldenwattle said:

Places that already have caches, don't need as many new caches as in the past, because many of the older caches are still there. It's the number of caches that matter, not how many new caches.

Sadly the rate of archivals has been far higher than the rate of new caches around here for some years now. Last week's floods have probably taken their toll too although the Central Coast got off very lightly compared to other regions. I've been trying to get out to check on my more flood-exposed caches but some are still inaccessible due to road closures. One cache I'd thought was in a dry hiding place was waterlogged (now repaired) but the others I've checked so far have been fine. Fingers crossed for the rest.

14 minutes ago, Goldenwattle said:

Can someone please give me the link to finding local numbers of caches, and statistics to when they were hidden.

Project-GC is a good source of that information, with options to set the hidden date range and include or exclude archived caches on most of the searches. Speaking of which, I see a rather worrying statistic on the top hiders in my region (archived caches excluded):

image.png.befd26d0c06e182a42739575b1588887.png

There's no way I'd consider myself a prolific hider and I certainly haven't been throwing out power trails of caches anywhere, but there it is and, of those ten names, only five are at all active now and a couple of those only pop up on rare occasions. Soon it'll be a case of last one out turn off the light.

4.5k · March 28, 2021

2 minutes ago, barefootjeff said:

Project-GC is a good source of that information

I tried that, but couldn't find where to get the locally hidden number of caches, as others have displayed. That's why I asked for a link.

7k · March 28, 2021

2 minutes ago, Goldenwattle said:

I tried that, but couldn't find where to get the locally hidden number of caches, as others have displayed. That's why I asked for a link.

On most of the filters you can set country, state and LGA, e.g.

image.png.60cdbbd7c41754744a69b7217742ed63.png

But for you, it looks like there's no LGA subdivision in the ACT so I don't think you'd be able to get it any finer grained than that. Maybe someone else will have some suggestions.

Number of new caches decreasing?

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