High Cache Finds: Are They Real?

[+niraD]

8 hours ago, JL_HSTRE said:

Are any of the number hounds vloggers? That would give some sense of what their day-to-day caching experience is like. But I'm guessing probably not as the video editing would take too much time away from geocaching. 

I don't know of any high number cachers who vlog. But there is this video of a team doing a few caches on a numbers trail, which gives a good idea of what numbers trails are like:

 

[+JL_HSTRE]

4 hours ago, niraD said:

I don't know of any high number cachers who vlog. But there is this video of a team doing a few caches on a numbers trail, which gives a good idea of what numbers trails are like:

 

I think there are some for ET Highway as well.

 

However, it's one thing to make a video about 1-2 days. It's quite another to document finding an average of 1000-2000 caches per month, for a year or more.

[+briansnat]

22 hours ago, JL_HSTRE said:

Are any of the number hounds vloggers? That would give some sense of what their day-to-day caching experience is like. But I'm guessing probably not as the video editing would take too much time away from geocaching. 

The legit super high numbers cachers are too busy geocaching to spend time filming and editing vlogs.  I've known a few of the legit "super cachers" and geocaching is essentially all they do all day, every day.  If they aren't actually geocaching they are planning for the next day's geocaching.

Edited January 7 by briansnat

[+thebruce0]

Seconded. I love quantity, at times, but if I were to vlog it, I would focusing on content more than signing, so I'd be with other people and not doing much actual caching myself, and the video would be coverage of an 'event', not some form of daily documentary of regular geocaching activities. There's no audience for that really either. ie, if I were vlogging then I'd have done a video of our 3 day ET Highway adventure, but it might have taken an extra day (it was intensely marathon-like).  And people who any sort of daily geocaching vlog series typically don't get much audience because the videos aren't very produced and tend to drag on.

"Natural" numbers caching and decent vlogging aren't really compatible.

[+TeamRabbitRun]

3 hours ago, thebruce0 said:

Seconded. I love quantity, at times, but if I were to vlog it, I would focusing on content more than signing, so I'd be with other people and not doing much actual caching myself, and the video would be coverage of an 'event', not some form of daily documentary of regular geocaching activities. There's no audience for that really either. ie, if I were vlogging then I'd have done a video of our 3 day ET Highway adventure, but it might have taken an extra day (it was intensely marathon-like).  And people who any sort of daily geocaching vlog series typically don't get much audience because the videos aren't very produced and tend to drag on.

"Natural" numbers caching and decent vlogging aren't really compatible.

 

True enough, but GeoElmo6000's done some fine vlogging. I recommend spending the time.

[+thebruce0]

52 minutes ago, TeamRabbitRun said:

True enough, but GeoElmo6000's done some fine vlogging. I recommend spending the time.

 

Oh I know...

[+GeoElmo6000]

52 minutes ago, TeamRabbitRun said:

 

True enough, but GeoElmo6000's done some fine vlogging. I recommend spending the time.

 

Thank you, that's very kind!  FYI the person who wrote that (thebruce0) is a vlogger with a channel called Cache the Line (with a much bigger following than mine), he knows who I am and we've collaborated a bit.

 

I agree with his points about daily geocaching vlogging, it's hard to create a daily vlog and make it high quality unless that's what you're doing full time, which we aren't. I consider myself a geocaching filmmaker since my main love is creating GIFF entries, though one time I challenged myself to create two weeks of daily vlogs to learn about vlogging and I burned out after around 9 days.  It's a lot of work.  The people who make good geocaching vlogs have good outgoing personalities where I'm an engineer who would rather talk about geocaching analytically.

 

Geocaching videos are a niche subject and a lot of people who participate in geocaching would rather be outside geocaching than watching geocaching videos.  So for us who create geocaching content, it's really a labor of love for something we enjoy doing.

Edited January 7 by GeoElmo6000

[+igator210]

A few years back, there was a blog about a group of Lackeys that did a 24 hour 800 cache run. I tried to find the blog, but failed. Anyone else remember that?

[+MNTA]

4 hours ago, igator210 said:

A few years back, there was a blog about a group of Lackeys that did a 24 hour 800 cache run. I tried to find the blog, but failed. Anyone else remember that?

Hope they had a lot of folks to rest and switch. If I did my math correctly that is averaging 108 seconds per cache and that would need to include the .1 miles of driving or assuming 35mph it would take about 10.3 seconds. Man they had to hustle. 

 

Hope you find the blog.

[+The_Jumping_Pig]

2 hours ago, MNTA said:

Hope they had a lot of folks to rest and switch. If I did my math correctly that is averaging 108 seconds per cache and that would need to include the .1 miles of driving or assuming 35mph it would take about 10.3 seconds. Man they had to hustle. 

 

Hope you find the blog.

Geofriend of mine did a run on the ET highway over ten years ago w/ two other cachers in which they got over 1000 in a day. Almost certain this was done legitamitely. Twas before I discovered geocaching, I'll have to ask him about it

[+MNTA]

10 hours ago, igator210 said:

A few years back, there was a blog about a group of Lackeys that did a 24 hour 800 cache run. I tried to find the blog, but failed. Anyone else remember that?

 

Found these ones:

https://www.geocaching.com/blog/2010/11/24-hour-epic-adventure-nets-more-than-a-1100-geocaches/

https://www.geocaching.com/blog/2013/11/116-geocaches-an-hour-and-aliens/

 

[+igator210]

6 hours ago, MNTA said:

 

Found these ones:

https://www.geocaching.com/blog/2010/11/24-hour-epic-adventure-nets-more-than-a-1100-geocaches/

https://www.geocaching.com/blog/2013/11/116-geocaches-an-hour-and-aliens/

 

Hmmm..... maybe I merged both those stories into one. Thank you.

[+wimseyguy]

On 1/6/2025 at 6:36 PM, niraD said:

I don't know of any high number cachers who vlog. But there is this video of a team doing a few caches on a numbers trail, which gives a good idea of what numbers trails are like:

 

 

I was happy to be there. It was the first of several power trail adventures I have been on with that crowd and we found over 750 that day. The following year we returned to the deserts outside of Las Vegas to do the ET Trail. Our top day on that trip was 1002. Do I want to cache like that all the time? Nope. But 1-2x/year it is a fun way to spend a day or three. As you can tell from the commentary it is more about having a lot of fun and laughs together, not about challenging finds.

 

What I find really amusing about the OP's misinformed opinions and claims is that some people have been making the same ones since the beginning of geocaching. AFAIK BruceS was the first to find 100/day. He provided a very detailed explanation in these same forums when someone questioned 28 finds in one day.  Here is that thread from 2002 before most people knew about geocaching.

Maybe in 10 more years, people will question finding 5000/day? 

 

Bruce quit caching and devoted his time and energy to Waymarking when he it 5000 finds. While searching for that old thread I learned he passed away back in 2019. I met him at a few events. He was a genuinely nice person.

 

[+thebruce0]

When people calculate an 'unrealistic' average, they don't take into consideration that quite a few are found much faster, and when you can zip by 100 in under a minute, that adds a lot of buffer time for short breaks throughout the day that's otherwise a constant marathon. With the strategy most people employ on the ET of having a runner to swap a signed container with the one in the very visible pile of roadside rocks (you can see the next 2 or 3 along the road already) and signing the next between each stop, you may only spend a fraction of the 'average' per cache on a long stretch. We easily hit 900 on the nose on our best day of the 2400 in the series at the time, only limited by gas and bad planning

[+baer2006]

4 hours ago, thebruce0 said:

With the strategy most people employ on the ET of having a runner to swap a signed container with the one in the very visible pile of roadside rocks (you can see the next 2 or 3 along the road already) and signing the next between each stop, you may only spend a fraction of the 'average' per cache on a long stretch.

I know, that this is a common tactic for these road-side power trails, but in my opinion (and I realize, that this is a minority opinion) this is cheating. The core rule for all geocaches is: "Find the container, sign the logbook, and replace everything as found". It does not say "Bring a pre-signed container, swap it with the one you find, and continue".

[+Goldenwattle]

5 hours ago, thebruce0 said:

With the strategy most people employ on the ET of having a runner to swap a signed container with the one in the very visible pile of roadside rocks (you can see the next 2 or 3 along the road already) and signing the next between each stop, you may only spend a fraction of the 'average' per cache on a long stretch.

Fortunately that has never happened to my cache that had a power trail appear along the same road. Would be very annoyed if it my small with trinkets was swapped out for a micro. I haven't noticed that happening in Australia. The caches I have found on power trails have never been all  identical. The bison tube hanging in a tree would be hard to swap out with a sistema for instance. I have three caches in a community power trail, and even my three caches aren't the same. A small sized vitamin body, a small sistema and a micro bison tube.

Edited January 8 by Goldenwattle

[+thebruce0]

I completely agree that it's not 100% in the spirit of classic geocaching, but it's not "cheating", especially as the cache owners absolutely condone the strategy. Personally, it's only a strategy that I would employ in that specific context - the ET highway series or other series where that is the 'norm'. Literally, the enforceable "rule", as we all know, is your name must be in the logbook to log the cache online as found, and container placed as found. In these cases, the owners know that all the containers (generally speaking) are identical so whether it's at coordinates A or B don't matter, as long as "a" container is findable where you just found it, and the only other technicality is where the logsheet was signed - here the one at location B was signed at location A, and so on. So, as I'm sure you're aware, this container-swap tactic has been debated ad nauseum for yeeeeears in various places on the internet, and opinions by now are not likely to change.

 

I would not condone the practice for general geocaching etiquette, especially where cache owners differ from cache to cache, of course. In this case, every cache is found, every log is signed; that is the goal.  I would not condone, in this context (or any really), divide-and-conquer; and leapfrogging only insofar as every geocache is visited/seen by every geocacher (as often done in small groups on trails, roads, etc). If anyone does find/sign/replace every cache as found for their high count, that would be a fantastic accomplishment.

 

As per the OP, almost certainly any extreme high-count day will employ some form of strategy to various degrees that many people would not condone. But any strategy other than a 100% purist "I only log caches here I physically sign my own name on every single log sheet I touch" has some form of "tactic" that someone will disagree with.

 

So, IMO, as long as the logsheet is signed with your name or name you were caching under (whether you signed it or someone else you're with), and your replacement of the cache is "okay" by the CO (almost universally that means the same container replaced as found), so that your Find Log existence properly implicaties that the cache is findable as of its date for the next visitor, then whatever strategy you employ to get those finds, I honestly don't care about any more. I used to care about how people got finds, but not any more -- as long as your actions don't affect others' experiences or choices.

[+thebruce0]

2 minutes ago, Goldenwattle said:

Fortunately that has never happened to my cache that had a power trail appear along the same road. Would be very annoyed if it my small with trinkets was swapped out for a micro.

Yep, I've seen plenty of upset people who had a lone cache suddenly surrounded by a powertrail and the cache gets copy/paste logs and/or misplaced containers because people zooming through thought it was part of the trail.  Arguably that's one reason that Powertrail attribute was added, to help distinguish what is/isn't part of such a trail series...  =/

[+Goldenwattle]

1 minute ago, thebruce0 said:

Yep, I've seen plenty of upset people who had a lone cache suddenly surrounded by a powertrail and the cache gets copy/paste logs and/or misplaced containers because people zooming through thought it was part of the trail.  Arguably that's one reason that Powertrail attribute was added, to help distinguish what is/isn't part of such a trail series...  =/

If I knew who did that I would be deleting logs.

[Stebin92]

Some players think being smart and log a huge number of random caches with a past date. It may happens that they log a cache that didn't exist at that time. 

It's easy to get 12k finds that way.

[+USCTrojan001]

One "trick" is the creation of GeoArt Adventure Labs. I completed one in Seal Beach, California where 40 Adventure Labs were placed close to each other on the beach, each with five Q&As. I was able to simply sit on the beach on a beautiful sunny day and answer all the questions, many being multiple-choice. So, I "found" 200 caches.

 

This GeoArt was created through a collaboration of Geocachers, many of whom do a CITO at that same beach once a month, the next one being 01/18/2025 (GCB1NPP). So, it brought people together for a common activity for fun and friendship. How cool is that?!? 

 

I agree with another responder. Let's just concern ourselves with our own progress, as this isn't a race. It's a fun hobby to get us out the door away from our TVs and laptops, making new friends along the way!

 

Fight on!!!

[+GeoElmo6000]

4 hours ago, USCTrojan001 said:

One "trick" is the creation of GeoArt Adventure Labs. I completed one in Seal Beach, California where 40 Adventure Labs were placed close to each other on the beach, each with five Q&As. I was able to simply sit on the beach on a beautiful sunny day and answer all the questions, many being multiple-choice. So, I "found" 200 caches.

 

You didn't find 200 geocaches, you found 200 lab caches, but the total finds are bundled together making people think they're the same.  

[+barefootjeff]

20 minutes ago, GeoElmo6000 said:

You didn't find 200 geocaches, you found 200 lab caches

 

Actually they didn't find anything, they sat on the beach on a beautiful sunny day and answered (or guessed) 200 multi-choice questions on their phone. How did geocaching devolve into this?

[SergiusDurden]

That is one of the things that surprise me a lot too. I see huge numbers and I wonder if geocaching is the only thing they do in life, hahaha.

 

Well, I don't know. I love geocaching and I don't care much about how others do numbers. I like to enjoy the process of finding and breakind my braing to figure out how to find them, not the amount I'm able to find. In fact, I don't like power trails that much, and I live near two of them, but I take them slowly when having casual walks. I'm more into 'nature' caches and urban ones which are not the typical little magnetic envelopes. My favourite are in the mountains. Those I can find when hiking or doing trail running.

 

To me, doing 5 caches one day is way enough, for example.

[+Goldenwattle]

I think the complaints against ALs would stop, if the numbers were not included with cache finds, but kept separate.

[+CAVinoGal]

59 minutes ago, Goldenwattle said:

I think the complaints against ALs would stop, if the numbers were not included with cache finds, but kept separate.

 

A bit off topic from the original discussion, but Benchmarks used to be a separate count - you logged them, but the number, although listed in your stats, was NOT included in your geocache finds.  Why couldn't this happen with Lab Caches too?

[+barefootjeff]

1 hour ago, CAVinoGal said:

 

A bit off topic from the original discussion, but Benchmarks used to be a separate count - you logged them, but the number, although listed in your stats, was NOT included in your geocache finds.  Why couldn't this happen with Lab Caches too?

 

In hindsignt, and perhaps even with some foresight, that would have been a good idea, I think, but that horse has long bolted. I can imagine the outcry if everyone's smiley count dropped overnight when AL stages were removed from it. People I know have celebrated major milestones based on their find count including ALs and I doubt they'd appreciate being unmilestoned, or having some nondescript guard rail mint tin with a soggy log turn into their milestone find.

Edited Saturday at 02:12 AM by barefootjeff

[+Mudfrog]

On 1/8/2025 at 10:26 AM, thebruce0 said:

When people calculate an 'unrealistic' average, they don't take into consideration that quite a few are found much faster, and when you can zip by 100 in under a minute, that adds a lot of buffer time for short breaks throughout the day that's otherwise a constant marathon. With the strategy most people employ on the ET of having a runner to swap a signed container with the one in the very visible pile of roadside rocks (you can see the next 2 or 3 along the road already) and signing the next between each stop, you may only spend a fraction of the 'average' per cache on a long stretch. We easily hit 900 on the nose on our best day of the 2400 in the series at the time, only limited by gas and bad planning

 

It's probably my old brain but I'm having trouble understanding what the bolded means? 

[+niraD]

3 hours ago, Mudfrog said:

On 1/8/2025 at 11:26 AM, thebruce0 said:

When people calculate an 'unrealistic' average, they don't take into consideration that quite a few are found much faster, and when you can zip by 100 in under a minute, that adds a lot of buffer time for short breaks throughout the day that's otherwise a constant marathon.

 

It's probably my old brain but I'm having trouble understanding what the bolded means? 

 

My guess is that he meant to say, "when you can zip by 100 in under an hour, that adds a lot of buffer time for short breaks throughout the day that's otherwise a constant marathon."

 

In other words, if you're trying to average 50 per hour, and you complete 100 in less than an hour, then you can do nothing for another hour and still have completed 100 in 2 hours, or an average of 50 per hour for those 2 hours.

Edited Saturday at 11:52 PM by niraD

[+JL_HSTRE]

On 1/8/2025 at 10:54 AM, wimseyguy said:

What I find really amusing about the OP's misinformed opinions and claims is that some people have been making the same ones since the beginning of geocaching. AFAIK BruceS was the first to find 100/day. He provided a very detailed explanation in these same forums when someone questioned 28 finds in one day.  Here is that thread from 2002 before most people knew about geocaching.

Maybe in 10 more years, people will question finding 5000/day? 

 

Without using dishonest practices, there is limit to most caches in a day. If we haven't already hit it we're really close. Caches are 528 feet apart. Once electric cars can go 24 hours without recharging or refueling that might make a difference. 

 

The fastest power trail I can imagine is one where every cache is a roadside mailbox. You "sign the log" by dropping a pre-signed card in a slot. Now we just need an arrow-straight road 500 miles long with no stop signs. 

[+JL_HSTRE]

On 1/10/2025 at 1:32 PM, USCTrojan001 said:

One "trick" is the creation of GeoArt Adventure Labs. I completed one in Seal Beach, California where 40 Adventure Labs were placed close to each other on the beach, each with five Q&As. I was able to simply sit on the beach on a beautiful sunny day and answer all the questions, many being multiple-choice. So, I "found" 200 caches.

 

This GeoArt was created through a collaboration of Geocachers, many of whom do a CITO at that same beach once a month, the next one being 01/18/2025 (GCB1NPP). So, it brought people together for a common activity for fun and friendship. How cool is that?!? 

 

It's not cool because it's flagrant cheating. Fun is irrelevant. An Adventure Lab's coordinates are supposed to provide the answer to the question. If nothing at the location has the answer (your phone or other computer doesn't count) the AL violates Guidelines and should not exist. Period.

 

What's especially appalling is how widely this flagrantly inappropriate behavior has been accepted by the geocaching community. Far beyond any similar past behavior in the past.

 

And it's incredibly unnecessary. It's quite possible to create a mundane "for the numbers" AL that actually follow the Guidelines.

 

[+Viajero Perdido]

1 hour ago, JL_HSTRE said:

accepted by the geocaching community

 

Just because we haven't taken up torches and pitchforks doesn't mean we approve.  Tolerate maybe.  There are bigger battles...  

[+ecanderson]

On 1/10/2025 at 3:56 PM, barefootjeff said:

 

Actually they didn't find anything, they sat on the beach on a beautiful sunny day and answered (or guessed) 200 multi-choice questions on their phone. How did geocaching devolve into this?

Because rather than improving, stabilizing and streamlining the existing system, GC.com chose to spend its energy branching out into new territory that no one asked for and that has zip to do with geocaching. 

 

[+MNTA]

38 minutes ago, ecanderson said:

Because rather than improving, stabilizing and streamlining the existing system, GC.com chose to spend its energy branching out into new territory that no one asked for and that has zip to do with geocaching. 

 

My muggle friend who sometimes joins me on searches says the same thing about virtual and earth caches and he dislikes them completely.  Throw event caches into the mix. The only thing any virtual cache or lab cache does is you need to navigate to the posted coordinates and do something there. Send a message or answer online questions. 

 

Like it or not they are also promoting a numbers game as it pays the bills. So according to their numbers around 88.6 million caches were found not sure if lab caches are included in that number or not but 6 million lab stages were logged. I think it is safe to say that it is here to stay. Like all cachers you can choose which ones to go for and which to skip and ignore. 

 

You can not find them all.

 

 

Edited Sunday at 07:12 AM by MNTA

[+MartyBartfast]

11 hours ago, JL_HSTRE said:

An Adventure Lab's coordinates are supposed to provide the answer to the question. If nothing at the location has the answer (your phone or other computer doesn't count) the AL violates Guidelines and should not exist.

Where is that written? I don't see it in any of the guidelines that I've read.

[+barefootjeff]

49 minutes ago, MartyBartfast said:

Where is that written? I don't see it in any of the guidelines that I've read.

 

The Builder Guide says this on page 5:

 

 

Does that count as a guideline?

[+JL_HSTRE]

18 hours ago, Viajero Perdido said:

 

Just because we haven't taken up torches and pitchforks doesn't mean we approve.  Tolerate maybe.  There are bigger battles...  

 

As noted by a poster above, the Long Beach armchair ALs were created by the local community who organize CITOs there.

 

In my area, the vast majority of active community members (regularly hide caches and attend events) participated in the play-anywhere AL geoart until Groundspeak shut it down.

 

11 hours ago, ecanderson said:

Because rather than improving, stabilizing and streamlining the existing system, GC.com chose to spend its energy branching out into new territory that no one asked for and that has zip to do with geocaching. 

 

To me, geocaching is about where it takes me and what I find there - or along the way. "The language of location" which to me means sharing interesting locations with others. I see a creative container as merely a nice bonus.

 

Adventure Labs as psuedo-Virtuals achieves that goal.

 

I get that Virtual and Earthcaches aren't interesting to everyone, but they achieve the above goal as well.

[+baer2006]

8 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

 

The Builder Guide says this on page 5:

 

 

Does that count as a guideline?

There are also AL Guidelines in the Help Center, which say:

 

Quote

Make sure all Locations

• Require players to physically visit Adventure Locations.
• ...

 

So, armchair ALs are not allowed.

 

When I placed and an AL+Bonus a few months ago, and explained in the listing of the bonus, that the AL contains puzzles/riddles, the reviewer of the bonus cache explicitly asked, if these "puzzles/riddles" require on-location information to be solved (they do). Of course, when no reviewer is involved, which is the case for all these Tons-of-smileys-in-a-parking-lot AL "power-trails" (for lack of a better word), the "no armchair" guideline can effectively be ignored.

[+Goldenwattle]

3 hours ago, baer2006 said:

So, armchair ALs are not allowed.

Those airport ones done from the lounge, or the armchair in the airport hotel .

[+wimseyguy]

On 1/11/2025 at 5:06 PM, JL_HSTRE said:

Now we just need an arrow-straight road 500 miles long with no stop signs

 

There are plenty of those in the deserts around Las Vegas and other places out west. Some are even paved so a regular car can do them. But the better ones are off-pavement.