Summer Geocaching

[+JL_HSTRE]

It's been an unusually hot summer across most of the USA. Maybe Europe too?

 

How has the heat affected your geocaching this summer? Other than hydrate, hydrate, hydrate what's your strategy for geocaching despite the heat? Or do you hibernate in a hot summer like this, awaiting cooler weather? (That's me.)

[+Jayeffel]

early in the day when possible

[+capsai]

5 hours ago, JL_HSTRE said:

Maybe Europe too?

 

Not really, in my area, there where a few hot days weeks ago, but now it's quite cold for summer and this week it rained cats and dogs, but that didn't stop me from going out caching.

[+terratin]

It's cold, stormy, and the weather alternates between drizzle and storm, or torrential rain and storm. Have not seen drizzle with torrential rain though. Was tempted to turn on the heating a few times in the morning as it was only 17C inside. Yeah, it's summer here.

[+RecipeForDisaster]

The heat and bugs cause me to do more paddle caches and little hiking. I just don’t enjoy being out in the woods and exercising when it’s very humid and buggy.

[+colleda]

It unusually warmer here ATM with a month to go until spring - 20C-24C. Plants in my garden are flowering now, much earlier than usual. A very hot el Nino summer  is predicted.

[+Goldenwattle]

1 hour ago, colleda said:

It unusually warmer here ATM with a month to go until spring - 20C-24C. Plants in my garden are flowering now, much earlier than usual. A very hot el Nino summer  is predicted.

Warmer in Canberra too. 17C the other day, which was 5C warmer than average.

[+paulohercules]

My tactic is to practice geocaching early in the morning and rest in the shade or indoors in the afternoon.

[+CAVinoGal]

On 8/5/2023 at 5:47 AM, JL_HSTRE said:

It's been an unusually hot summer across most of the USA. Maybe Europe too?

 

How has the heat affected your geocaching this summer?

 

We've had many days of 100° F plus (predicted 104° F today even), and we just don't go out on those days, or we do a quick park n grab if we really feel the NEED to find a geocache.  We've been able to choose our 20 days for the Out and About souvenir, and we didn't bother with the streak; we simply didn't cache if it was too hot.  We'll see what the weather is like and how many days we need to go out and cache to get all 8 cache types.  

 

Now that we've "been there, done that" with a year plus streak, we cache when we feel like it, and grab those souvenirs offered up IF WE FEEL LIKE IT!  Sometimes we want to be challenged, and it gives us a goal to reach for.  But if we don't get there, it's not a big deal.  Sometimes family, health, life in general takes precedence.

 

So, to answer your question, yes, the weather DOES affect our geocaching - I guess you could call us "fair-weather" geocachers!

[+PlantAKiss]

I've been out for the past couple of months placing new caches so I was outside sweating like a pig as I worked on them. Now published, I've been a little surprised how light "traffic" has been for the new caches including "FTF." I was wondering if the heat has kept cachers more quiet. I don't have AC so I sweat indoors as much outdoors so it doesn't make much difference to me. I enjoy the hell out of AC but I can tolerate the heat. HATE the sweat part though. But I haven't passed out outside...yet. 

[+captnemo]

Very hot here, it hit 120F here.  over 110 for the whole month of July.  This has pretty much stopped me and very few fines on my caches. Put out a new Gadget cache  on 6/3 and FTF wasn't until  6/9. So far only 3 finds and its right off route 66.

[+cerberus1]

On 8/5/2023 at 8:47 AM, JL_HSTRE said:

It's been an unusually hot summer across most of the USA. Maybe Europe too?

How has the heat affected your geocaching this summer? Other than hydrate, hydrate, hydrate what's your strategy for geocaching despite the heat? Or do you hibernate in a hot summer like this, awaiting cooler weather? (That's me.)

 

Still have to mow the grass n stuff (in slo-mo...), so heat isn't much of an issue.  The smoke from Canada kept me in the house a while.

Our four seasons go from freeze yer can off to hazy, hot n humid, so I guess we acclimate well.   

Still waiting for that BCG treatment carp after finding yet-another thing wrong after a stent though, so there's good days n bad.

I actually looked at my stat page and apparently, I find most caches in August. This year I'll get Int'l Geocaching Day and be happy...

I did find a few the end of last month, and finally got to NM a cache that's needed it since 2013. 

[Keystone]

I split off a number of off-topic posts from this thread into this new thread.

[+DreamMachine74]

It's been a seasonal summer for people in my area. (Southern Ontario, Canada). Well, mostly seasonal. It's for sure been a few degrees hotter some days and nights, but that can be expected with climate change. The biggest barrier to caching was really the wildfire smoke, which was at it's worst in late June in our area.

Anyways, I've still kept in mind ways to beat the heat, like wading in rivers for caches, or going for a swim around the time of an event at a beach.

 

[+vw_k]

I've found myself staying indoors during the day and going out caching/hiking in the afternoon/evening when it's cooler.

[+barefootjeff]

6 hours ago, DreamMachine74 said:

The biggest barrier to caching was really the wildfire smoke, which was at it's worst in late June in our area.

 

It's still winter here but, with a challenging fire season forecast for the coming summer, hazard reduction burn-offs have been underway in earnest this month. I've already had to disable three of my caches while there were burns in the vicinity, with one coming within a few metres of the cache (it's well protected and survived undamaged).

[+DreamMachine74]

17 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

 

It's still winter here but, with a challenging fire season forecast for the coming summer, hazard reduction burn-offs have been underway in earnest this month. I've already had to disable three of my caches while there were burns in the vicinity, with one coming within a few metres of the cache (it's well protected and survived undamaged).

Sorry to hear that. At least they're doing controlled burns to minimize the devastation these fires could commit to. I'm lucky in my part of the world to live away from substantial wooded areas, in the case of fires. Rarely, my city has substantial floods, like in 2013...but I figure they'll be more likely in the coming decades.