Is Geocaching on the Rise or Decline?

[+DARKSIDEDAN]

Is the number of Active Geocaches rising or Falling or holding steady? What should Groundspeak do to attract more people to start Geocaching? Please share your Opinions.

[+Team Canary]

Two different threads.

 

There are 3,000, 000 caches in the world and there are a handful who have found more than 1% of them. There are enough caches to last all of our lifetimes without any new ones.

 

More active players would be good for social reasons.

[+DARKSIDEDAN]

I agree with Team Canary, "More active players would be good for social reasons".

[+barefootjeff]

On the Central Coast it's been in serious decline for the last three or four years, both in new caches published and finds on existing caches. So far this year there have been 16 new caches published, compared to several hundred each year back in the mid teens. While the find counts have been reasonable on the low-terrain roadside caches, anything that requires a bit more exertion has been languishing, with just the same three or four names appearing in the logs. Of my 42 active hides on the Central Coast, 16 have had no finds at all this year and a further 12 only one, and they're not all older caches either.

 

Some of this can no doubt be attributed to the COVID lockdowns in 2020 and 2021, the fires of 2019 and the floods and persistent wet weather of 2021 and 2022, but there's also been a pronounced shift in the game away from hiking and outdoor adventure caching in favour of quick roadside smileys. Take GC9QR5W, for example, a 1.5/3.5 traditional at some impressive waterfalls just off the Great North Walk at Somersby, which was published in early April. In happier times, a cache like this would have had a dozen or more finders by now, yet after three months I'm still the only one.

 

It's a bit hard to tell what HQ's vision for the future of the game is, as the titbits we get are often contradictory, but it seems like it's moving more and more towards being a phone-based game, with new players typically starting off with premium membership before finding their first cache, never visiting the website and disappearing after a month or two.

Edited July 16, 2022 by barefootjeff

[+barefootjeff]

16 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

It's a bit hard to tell what HQ's vision for the future of the game is, as the titbits we get are often contradictory, but it seems like it's moving more and more towards being a phone-based game, with new players typically starting off with premium membership before finding their first cache, never visiting the website and disappearing after a month or two.

 

As if to prove my point, I just saw this NA log come through on a D2 traditional that's been there since 2015 and was last found a few weeks ago:

 

 

The Premium Member with zero finds has never visited the website, of course, so clearly has no idea what the different log types are for. It's one I've previously found and is a tricky one to spot if you haven't seen something like that before. Its owner hasn't done any caching since 2017 so there's not much chance of an OM log if the reviewer decides to disable it pending a CO check. Hopefully it won't come to that, because if it did get archived it'd likely just become another blank cacheless area on the map.

[+Goldenwattle]

19 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

 

As if to prove my point, I just saw this NA log come through on a D2 traditional that's been there since 2015 and was last found a few weeks ago:

 

 

The Premium Member with zero finds has never visited the website, of course, so clearly has no idea what the different log types are for. It's one I've previously found and is a tricky one to spot if you haven't seen something like that before. Its owner hasn't done any caching since 2017 so there's not much chance of an OM log if the reviewer decides to disable it pending a CO check. Hopefully it won't come to that, because if it did get archived it'd likely just become another blank cacheless area on the map.

Having never found a cache I find that extremely arrogant to log a NA. I also thinks it demonstrates they are not the smartest person out there, as a smarter person would think, now what I am doing wrong, not arrogantly presume things they know nothing about. Surprised they were able to find the NA.

 

 

[+Mausebiber]

On 7/15/2022 at 4:20 AM, DARKSIDEDAN said:

I agree with Team Canary, "More active players would be good for social reasons".

 

Maybe where you come from.  Here, in my area, there are so many geocacher that I would prefer there would be less.  Many started this hobby while at home during Corona, never read any guidelines nor have any idea how to behave searching for a hidden container.  Many new published cache are only good for a short period of time and never get maintained.

 

Events within the last 4 weeks, max. 30 min driving from my home location:

https://coord.info/GC9GDYB    1350 visitors

https://coord.info/GC9VXTV      28 Visitors

https://coord.info/GC9VMGZ     42

https://coord.info/GC9TGB0       33

https://coord.info/GC9V11V       39

https://coord.info/GC9TG5Y       43

https://coord.info/GC9VRAF      86

https://coord.info/GC9W2Y4      54

https://coord.info/GC9W2XP      63

For social reasons, smaller events would be much better.

[+DARKSIDEDAN]

On 7/17/2022 at 5:55 PM, Mausebiber said:

 

Maybe where you come from.  Here, in my area, there are so many geocacher that I would prefer there would be less.  Many started this hobby while at home during Corona, never read any guidelines nor have any idea how to behave searching for a hidden container.  Many new published cache are only good for a short period of time and never get maintained.

 

Events within the last 4 weeks, max. 30 min driving from my home location:

https://coord.info/GC9GDYB    1350 visitors

 

https://coord.info/GC9VXTV      28 Visitors

 

https://coord.info/GC9VMGZ     42

 

https://coord.info/GC9TGB0       33

 

https://coord.info/GC9V11V       39

 

https://coord.info/GC9TG5Y       43

 

https://coord.info/GC9VRAF      86

 

https://coord.info/GC9W2Y4      54

 

https://coord.info/GC9W2XP      63

 

 

For social reasons, smaller events would be much better.

Wow thats amazing, I would love to see that many events comming up here.

[+DARKSIDEDAN]

Stats taken from Project.gc today (7.5.24) clearly show here in Australia a decline in caches and geocaching in general.

[+barefootjeff]

18 minutes ago, DARKSIDEDAN said:

Stats taken from Project.gc today (7.5.24) clearly show here in Australia a decline in caches and geocaching in general.

 

Those Project GC stats can be misleading, particularly the "last week" and "last month" since there's so much variability. For example, for the past month the weather on the east coast has been pretty atrocious for caching with frequent heavy rain, so it's not surprising those numbers are down compared to this time last year when the weather was pretty good. Also the "whole year" stat compares all of last year with the numbers for just this year to date, so unless you run it on the 31st of December it's pretty meaningless. The "1st January until today" comparisons are probably the most meaningful, since they're comparing like-for-like over a longer time span (four and a bit months) and it's encouraging that they all show small increases.

[+Goldenwattle]

On 7/15/2022 at 11:28 AM, Team Canary said:

There are 3,000, 000 caches in the world and there are a handful who have found more than 1% of them.

When there were fewer caches where I live I was keener to go find them and try to find them all. There are so many caches now and there's no way I will be able to find them all, so when a new cache comes out it's ho-hum, and I can't be bothered going out to find it.

 

I now show interest in a few series of caches, as the smaller numbers make it easier to find many of them, if not all. For instance, I now have found most of the Mary MacKillop series here in Australia. Found those in NZ, UK and Ireland too. I had found almost all the Sidetracked caches in Australia. I spent two weeks in Melbourne and cleaned out all the SideTracked caches there (about 60) using trains, buses and trams, but then they continued to breed in Melbourne and Victoria. There's at least another 61. Victoria is due another outing😏. There's 11 new ones on the way to Sydney and in Sydney. More locally, one out Crookwell way too. And a scattering in other places. It's things like SideTracked that keeps me interested. Smaller numbers to find are not so overwhelming.

Edited May 7 by Goldenwattle

[+barefootjeff]

9 hours ago, Goldenwattle said:

When there were fewer caches where I live I was keener to go find them and try to find them all. There are so many caches now and there's no way I will be able to find them all, so when a new cache comes out it's ho-hum, and I can't be bothered going out to find it.

 

It's the opposite situation here on the NSW Central Coast. When I started in 2013, there were new caches popping up every few days, but now they're a rare treat, particularly in the southern Gosford City half of the coast. These are all the new ones that have been published around here this year (three of them are mine):

 

 

Almost all my caching these days requires travelling at least 50km from home to either Sydney or Newcastle.

[+Goldenwattle]

1 hour ago, barefootjeff said:

When I started in 2013, there were new caches popping up every few days, but now they're a rare treat

I think one of the prolific placers of trail caches moved from your area to Canberra, which explains why you now have less and one of the reasons that Canberra now is packed with caches. (Not all due to this person, which is why I wrote one of the reasons. 

 

 

Showing some of the trails going out from Canberra. The centre bit is shown in more detail above.