What are your Geocaching Goals for 2024?

[+DARKSIDEDAN]

What are your Geocaching Goals for 2024 & have you Achieved them?

[+Wacka]

Had a kidney transplant on Feb 15th. Just wanted to cache again. Got to go to an event last month and did a coupe of traditionals. Have done 6 stages of Adventure labs. Monday  is another monthly event and I plan to do 2  5-stage adventure labs and some of the 10  mysteries I solved last year in a local county park  in that town.

[+barefootjeff]

I'm not much of a goal-oriented player as, for me, that would turn caching into a chore rather than a treat. There have been a couple of times when I've conscientiously worked towards qualifying for a challenge cache but even then, until I reached the point of only needing a handful more finds, it's been more a background thing that hasn't greatly changed the way I cache. One of those, published late last year, required having at least nine finds in each square of the D/T grid out to 3/3 and, at the time of publication, I needed a fair few more finds in the D1 row and T1 column, so I made a bit of an effort earlier in the year to target such caches and finally qualified in May. Included in that effort was a 160km drive up to Nelson Bay north of Newcastle where there was a 1/3 traditional, only to end up DNFing it as the hiding place had been vandalised and the cache had gone. It was still a fun day out, though, and I was able to do a nice virtual at the Fingal Bay lighthouse.

 

Another challenge I have a bit of an eye on is GC5KEY1 that requires finding 40 caches that are terrain 4 or above with all of the Scenic View, Cliffs/Falling Rocks and Difficult Climb attributes. While I haven't put any effort into finding qualifying caches, my tally has gradually increased and I now have 27, but getting to 40 is still a long way off so it's not something I'll be explicitly going out of my way for yet.

 

My find count is currently sitting on 1876 so I'm 124 short of the 2000 finds milestone, but at my current rate I probably won't get there until early next year. Once it becomes imminent, I'll start planning something special to mark the milestone, probably a group outing to a challenging high-terrain cache like I did for my 1000th find, but it's too early to be thinking about that yet.

 

As a CO, I've tried to put out around half a dozen new hides each year but that tends to happen more of its own accord rather than being consciously planned. I was fortunate this year to receive a Virtual Rewards 4.0 so my long-planned virtual at Spion Kop became a reality (GCAJHJV) and, a couple of months later, I finally received formal approval for a cache in Brisbane Water National Park (GCAK18B) that I initially approached the ranger about in 2022. There's another cache I'd like to place at Gap Creek Falls in Watagans National Park but, while that should be quite straightforward as my hiding place is right next to the constructed steps at the base of the falls, it keeps getting derailed by track closures, floods, fires and retiring rangers. I'm currently toying with an idea for a short series of caches around a group of islands in Tuggerah Lakes near The Entrance, but I need to get out on the kayak to see how feasible it is and the weather isn't being too cooperative for that.

 

So I guess my goal this year, as in previous years, is to keep caching as an enjoyable pastime in my retirement and I seem to be achieving that.