AL death spiral?

[+barefootjeff]

ALs have been in steady decline here since their heyday in the second half of 2020, with the last new one appearing in this region in mid 2022 and little player activity now on the existing ones. I've just recently archived two of mine, 5 Lands Walk after the local council removed most of the related signage that the AL was based on, and today Broken Bay Sands when I discovered the bonus cache had been muggled and all the signage at one of the AL's locations had been removed following the permanent closure of the boat ramp there.

 

My remaining two are probably also on borrowed time. Wreck of the Maitland has, as its main attraction, the remains of a steamship that ran aground over a century ago. Not much is left now and each time I walk around there, more has been broken up or swallowed by the sea. So far the rusty piece my location's question is based on has survived but its days are clearly numbered. My other more recent one, A Dangar-ous Adventure on Dangar Island in the Hawkesbury River, has already needed one of its location questions changed as the sign I'd based it on had become unreadable. It got 5 reviews last year and 2 so far this year, so there's still a trickle of activity on it, but not enough to keep my finger off the Archive button if any of its location questions become unanswerable again.

 

In spite of all the claims that ALs, being virtual, would never need any maintenance, that has proved to be anything but true with my ones, with them needing a lot more close watching and attention than most of my physical caches. ALs aren't really suited to natural areas, for numerous reasons including unreliable phone coverage, the app's map not showing most walking trails and the lack of anything to ask unambiguous questions about that don't require local knowledge at scenic locations, and in urban areas, the built environment is constantly changing, with signs being replaced or removed and buildings being knocked down and new ones put up, often with footpath closures that drag on for ages.

 

After my experience with them over the past five years, I have no real desire to create any more, and I guess most of the COs around here feel the same way. Going forward, I'd prefer putting my efforts into good quality physical caches with themed containers at awesome locations and leave ALs for the big city folk.

[+CynicalHipster]

Value-neutrally, just speaking in terms of statistics, in my part of the world (Midwest US/US more generally), ALs seem to have no discernable change in popularity. Most folks who are reasonably active hiders anyway seem to put them out with regular frequency when they receive a new credit, and there are new AL trails/series/geoarts that get published at about the same frequency as those of standard geocache types.

Again, not saying whether this is good or bad, but it seems like the people who liked ALs at the beginning still like them, those who don't don't, and those who are indifferent are still indifferent. But there are still plenty of folks around here who like ALs and will seek them out specifically, or primarily enjoy ALs over standard caches.

[Moun10Bike]

I'd be careful to avoid drawing too large of a conclusion from a small data set. There were spikes of Adventure creations in 2020 and 2022 because that's when large batches of credits were awarded, but now with more routine and self-serve awarding, the spikes have disappeared, and the numbers are on an upward trend. Here's a look at lab creations in just New South Wales:

 

Meanwhile, here's a look at finds on those Adventures:



We are only in April and already it looks like 2025 will eclipse previous years, certainly for finds and possibly even for hides. The worldwide trends show similar patterns.

Edited Saturday at 09:58 PM by Moun10Bike

[+baer2006]

1 hour ago, Moun10Bike said:

and the numbers are on an upward trend.

Would be interesting to know how much this upward trend is owed to these "AL powertrails" (for lack of a better word) which seem to pop up everywhere. Creation and enlargement of those has become much easier since every participating creator has a guaranteed new AL every few months.

[+barefootjeff]

3 hours ago, Moun10Bike said:

I'd be careful to avoid drawing too large of a conclusion from a small data set. There were spikes of Adventure creations in 2020 and 2022 because that's when large batches of credits were awarded, but now with more routine and self-serve awarding, the spikes have disappeared, and the numbers are on an upward trend. Here's a look at lab creations in just New South Wales:

 

 

Interesting, I wonder where the bulk of those new ALs in NSW are? Panning around a bit in the app, there are some pockets of high density around the Sydney CBD, in some of Sydney's southern suburbs and around Wollongong further south. But in the area where I do most of my caching, from about Sydney harbour north to Newcastle, there's not many and nearly all were created about four to five years ago.

 

 

The AL map doesn't have a scale on it, but that strip of coastline is about 100km, with about 30 ALs all up in that screenshot. By contrast, these are the geocaches created in that same region in just the last twelve months (there are close to 400 of them):

 

 

I don't know how many of the ALs in my screenshot were created in the last twelve months, but notifications of new ones are few and far between. There were two around Manly (on the northern side of Sydney harbour) this month, created by someone from Austria who decided to make them while visiting here, and I vaguely recall getting another one mid last year, also around the Manly area, and one just over a year ago at the Barrenjoey lighthouse on the southern side of Broken Bay, but that's about it. As I said earlier, there have been no new ones in the Central Coast region (from Brooklyn up to around Doyalson on the map) since mid 2022.

 

So I don't know, maybe this is just an isolated pocket of AL inactivity here and everywhere else they're flourishing.

[+barefootjeff]

On 4/10/2025 at 2:17 PM, barefootjeff said:

Wreck of the Maitland has, as its main attraction, the remains of a steamship that ran aground over a century ago. Not much is left now and each time I walk around there, more has been broken up or swallowed by the sea. So far the rusty piece my location's question is based on has survived but its days are clearly numbered.

 

Having mentioned this AL, I decided to take advantage of the sunny day, slight seas and 1:30pm low tide to do a check on all its waypoints. The good news is the shipwreck relic my question is based on is still there and sufficiently intact to still answer the question, although it's deteriorated considerably from when I created the AL in September 2020. The bad news, though, is that National Parks have recently replaced all the signage and this sign, on which I based the question at the starting point, has completely gone.

 

 

My question related to the "No Unclad Bathing" part, but the new sign makes no mention of that:

 

 

I don't know whether that means unclad bathing is now allowed, but probably not. At any rate I didn't see any unclad bathers in the bay. There's another information board close by that also looks quite new, so I'll pick something off that for a new question at that location so the AL can live on a little longer. The last find on its bonus cache was nearly a year ago, which is probably why no-one has reported a problem at the starting location, so time will tell whether it gets any more finders before the last relic of the shipwreck disappears and I archive it.

 

 

[+lee737]

On 4/11/2025 at 3:26 PM, barefootjeff said:

 

I don't know whether that means unclad bathing is now allowed, but probably not.

They probably removed that as they figure most punters now probably wouldn't understand the term 'unclad'!

[+lee737]

ALs though....

We've decided that they really aren't part of geocaching for us now, and generally just do not do them. We'll consider ones that have an interesting bonus cache, but then do the AL on an alternate account (my younger sons!) rather than our main accounts. 

We got right into them a couple of years ago at a mega, over-gorged, and got an AL-belly ache, and have hardly touched them since. At one time walking up the main street of a capital city, we were logging an AL location every 50m it seemed. Things like the phone number for the ice-cream shop and other interesting stuff! That did it.....

[+Goldenwattle]

I rarely do ALs. Only when there is a bonus I want, no other caches to find or sitting in an airport (again no other caches to find.) VERY low on my to do list, and I have not published any ALs, because I don't want to add to them.

[+Hügh]

I used to be very into ALs (look at my profile). Now, not at all. The last time I did one was October for the souvenir. I should probably go back and finish off the other four stages so the AL is complete but otherwise I don't really plan on doing ALs until a souvenir or treasure promotion requires it.

[+GeoElmo6000]

On 4/12/2025 at 7:27 AM, Goldenwattle said:

I rarely do ALs. Only when there is a bonus I want, no other caches to find or sitting in an airport (again no other caches to find.) VERY low on my to do list, and I have not published any ALs, because I don't want to add to them.

 

For this I created a second account, so as not to tarnish my geocaching account with Adventure Labs.  One account for one game, one account for the other.  The bonus caches are found with the geocaching account, since those are geocaches, while lab caches are not and are found on my Adventure Lab account.