Realistic Difficulty/Terrain Ratings

[+briansnat]

A 1/1 cache is supposed to mean its a paved and handicap accessable path, where the cache location is obvious, or its in plain sight. I've been on many 1/1 hunts where this wasn't the case. Conversely, I was recently looking for a cache that had a 3.5 star terrain rating. To me this means I'm in for a pretty tough trek, but instead it was an easy 5 minute stroll to a moderate hillside.

 

There is a system for rating caches here (commonly known as the Clayjar system) with a link to it on this website's Hide a Cache page. I was wondering how many people use it for rating their caches.

So here is the poll...do you use the Clayjar rating system?

 

[This message was edited by BrianSnat on October 22, 2002 at 05:50 AM.]

[+Acc-Risk and Snarflax]

Here apparently, no one uses this system. For grins, I entered several 3/3.5 rating caches and they came out as 2's...

 

I'm starting to lean towards the 3.5/4 for now. I have more fun spending 5 hours finding a 4 than nailing a dozen 1's... Of course, to clean up my frontpage I'll hit the easy ones...

 

Contents Under Pressure...

[+wcgreen]

quote:

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Originally posted by BrianSnat:

A 1/1 cache is supposed to mean its a paved and handicap accessable path, where the cache is in plain sight.

---

 

Minor quibble: only caches embossed with the phrase "Steal me!" should be in plain sight. Even 1/1 caches require some hiding.

 

--

wcgreen

Wendy Chatley Green

[+briansnat]

There, I fixed it butI have found caches that were in plain sight.

 

"Men don't stop playing because they get old, they get old because they stop playing" Oliver Wendell Holmes

[umc]

I didn't know about that system but haven't placed a cache yet either. I have a cache all planned out for placement and am waiting on a few key elements before I go ahead and plant it. Anyway with what I have planned I went through the 'system' and it rated it as a 2/3. I am one for lighter ratings because I have been to 2/3, 3/3 caches and so on and the only difference between them have been the distance of a hike. On that note I agree that people place their ratings all over the map but I'm not so sure I would agree with the way the 'ClayJar' system rated my soon to be cache. To try and make myself clearer what I mean is I would have rated it less than a 2/3. Who knows I guess its not that far off. Good topic.

 

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Coming Around, New Owner Of a Garmin GPS V Received on 10-03-02

[+Jamie Z]

The flaw with the poll is that many of us here on the forums probably use the rating system because we're familiar with it. We are in the minority. Most geocachers, I suspect, don't ever come into the forums, don't know who ClayJar is, and might not give a hoot about the rating system. They just want to go out and find the box.

 

As for caches hidden out in the open, here are just two I've found. The pics are as I found the container.

 

Alvin's Phone Line

Fred and Barney Special

 

Jamie

[umc]

Did it take you long to find those Jamie?

 

______________________________________________________________________________________

Coming Around, New Owner Of a Garmin GPS V Received on 10-03-02

[+Acc-Risk and Snarflax]

quote:

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Originally posted by Jamie Z:

As for caches hidden out in the open, here are just two I've found. The pics are as I found the container.

 

http://img.Groundspeak.com/track/log/21586_200.jpg

http://img.Groundspeak.com/track/log/21583_200.jpg

 

Jamie

---

 

Kinda like dropping a 5 gallon bucket in the middle of Central Park...

 

Contents Under Pressure...

[+infosponge]

I find there's a bit of regional variation. Here in Florida, if there's a bump in the trail or it's out of sight of the parking lot, people tend to give it 2 or 3 stars. Add an extra 1/2 star for every 6 foot or longer gator you saw while hiding the cache.

When I visited my old home area in Pennsylvania I was in for some culture shock when I found out that two stars meant hiking boots and major elevation changes.

Not that I minded...the terrain makes it a lot more fun/challenging.

[+cachew nut]

Actually the cache does not have to be in plain sight to rate a "one". It can be hidden. The actual wording in the rating system goes:

quote:

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Easy. In plain sight or can be found in a few minutes of searching.

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My opinion is that in some cases a cache that is in plain sight can have a slightly higher difficulty rating as well, if it blends well into it's environment and would take more than a few minutes of searching. I've found some interesting caches in hollowed out rocks, and hollow logs with a trap door that were in plain sight but took more than a few minutes of searching. Imagine a hollow rock in a rockpile or a hollow log in a logpile, but still in plain sight.

 

The terrain rating, on the other hand, should not be as flexible. While handicap accessible caches should be rated a "one", I don't see anything wrong with a handicapped person being able to search for a cache with a higher difficulty level, even a 5/1.

[Dinoprophet]

My first find ever is listed as 4.5/4.5. I just ran it through ClayJar and it came up as 3/3, and even that seems high (more like 2.5/2.5, which is why I voted for "Yes. I use the Clayjar system, but only as a guide.").

 

I think I prefer caches where the *total* stars is between 5 or 6. I want to be challenged by either the terrain or a clever hide, but in most cases I don't want to hike four miles and not be able to find it.

 

[+Rusty & Libby]

I use Clayjar's system as a guide but I usually drop the terrain down half a star. I also pay close attention to the logs and adjust my ratings accordingly. Two of my caches will vary in difficulty depending on time of year and I change the rating on them.

 

Rusty...

 

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Friends don't let friends cache locationless!

 

Rusty & Libby's Geocache Page

Michigan Geocaching Organization

[+Rusty & Libby]

Those avatars are giving me nightmares

 

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Friends don't let friends cache locationless!

 

Rusty & Libby's Geocache Page

Michigan Geocaching Organization

[+Markwell]

Don't forget that the ClayJar system isn't just his. He is the only that implemented an online form to fill out based on the vast discussions over widely varied ratings. The discussion started here, was picked up here and continued here. These were not some arbitrary ratings that one cacher came up with. A lot of debate came into what was the final result.

 

The final results didn't make everyone happy, but it at least gave us some standardization where we had none.

 

I always check the ClayJar form first, and temper it based on my own experience. However, I have never deviated from the results by more than ½ a star.

 

Markwell

Chicago Geocaching

[+Markwell]

Oh, one more thread where a committee help me in wordsmithing some of difficulty standards can be found here.

 

Markwell

Chicago Geocaching

[+briansnat]

I do agree that the Clayjar system seems to rank things a little high. I usually wind up using it as a general guide and most of the time, I adjust it down by half a star.

 

"Men don't stop playing because they get old, they get old because they stop playing" Oliver Wendell Holmes

[+Jamie Z]

quote:

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Originally posted by umc:

Did it take you long to find those Jamie?

---

Surprisingly, the one in the white bucket I walked right past more than once. I looked behind a couple of trees, and started looking at the deerstand you can see in the background of the photo. The bucket was sitting there... and I thought... 'that can't be the cache,' but it was. Incidently, someone had left some live ammo in the cache. I made a note on the cache page, but I didn't take the ammo. Figuring it was right next to a deer stand, I thought this might be the one time when the rules could bend a little bit.

 

"...the Clayjar system seems to rank things a little high..." -Briansnat

"I usually drop the terrain down half a star..." -Rusty

"...I'm not so sure I would agree with the way the 'ClayJar' system rated my soon to be cache..." -umc

 

My question is why? To what standard are you basing your rankings that the ClayJar system seems to miss? As Markfield pointed out, "These were not some arbitrary ratings that one cacher came up with. A lot of debate came into what was the final result." The ClayJar system is the de facto standard, and even suggested by geocaching dot com on the submit-a-cache page. If folks don't follow the standard, then we're in the same situation as having no standard at all.

 

Jamie

[Dinoprophet]

quote:

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Originally posted by Jamie Z:

"...the Clayjar system seems to rank things a little high..." -Briansnat

"I usually drop the terrain down half a star..." -Rusty

"...I'm not so sure I would agree with the way the 'ClayJar' system rated my soon to be cache..." -umc

 

My question is why? To what standard are you basing your rankings that the ClayJar system seems to miss? As Markfield pointed out, "These were not some arbitrary ratings that one cacher came up with. A lot of debate came into what was the final result."

---

 

Markwell also said:

quote:

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I always check the ClayJar form first, and temper it based on my own experience. However, I have never deviated from the results by more than ½ a star.

---

 

Just as an example, say you have a multi-virtual of historical markers all on one city block. Because it is multi-leg, the system calls that a difficulty 3: "Challenging. An experienced cache hunter will find this challenging, and it could take up a good portion of an afternoon." Normally, I wouldn't adjust by more than 1/2 a star, but in this extreme case, I would.

 

[BassoonPilot]

I generally use "the system" as a basic guide when submitting a cache, adjusting the ratings to fit my impression of how the average geocacher would consider the adventure. After a few people have visited the cache, I adjust the ratings to reflect any feedback or trends I've noticed.

 

In general, I notice that novice hikers/geocachers especially overrate the terrain difficulty of their caches, while experienced hikers have a tendency to underrate the terrain difficulty. (As would be experienced by a novice hiker/geocacher.)

 

I prefer to see terrain difficulties overrated rather than underrated, on the slight chance that somebody actually looks at the rating before starting on a cache hunt. A higher number of terrain stars might just keep someone out of a predicament.

 

As for the "difficulty in finding the cache" stars, I think most caches are overrated ... in some cases, I know challenging hides have been made easy by the succession of cachers failing to rehide the cache to match its rating.

 

Of my 673 finds to date, I think only 2 should have actually carried a 5 star difficulty rating and maybe a couple of others 4 stars; perhaps another dozen as many as 3 - 3.5 stars. All of my other finds, regardless of rating, hadn't required any more time/effort than the definition for 2 stars. With that in mind, I have often noticed from reading the logs that most cachers don't want to spend more than 1/2 hour looking for a cache; they either find it in that period of time or give up.

 

[This message was edited by BassoonPilot on October 22, 2002 at 01:19 PM.]

[+Web-ling]

I always use the ClayJar system, but many of my caches have little twists to them that can't be easily accounted for using the system. There's usually a certain amount of subjectivity. For instance, the difficulty of a letterbox or "puzzle" cache will depend entirely on the detail of the clues. Terrain ratings can vary greatly depending on direction and time of year. The difficulty of a multi-cache depends on the number of legs, the distance between the legs, the number of possible route choices between legs, and the placement and size of individual sub-caches. I've got 3 "O-Caches" - caches that require the use of either a map or aerial photo to find the cache. There's nothing in the ClayJar system to account for these things. So, I use the ClayJar system, but then tweak the ratings based on experience and comparison to other caches I've done.

 

[+jonboy]

I used the rating system on my first few caches, but now I just rate them by comparing my caches to others. I resist being plugged into someone else's formula. I don't like to have words put in my mouth. When one of the categories is hills you would descend on your backside, it would be the sign of a novice to use that technique, with the exception of glissading on snow. Most of the cachers in the NY/NJ metro area don't seem to be serious hikers and I find many of their difficulty ratings to be from the point of view of a non-hiker.

[+georgeandmary]

I know of the clayjar system but I don't go by it. For example. I just hid a cache that, once you get to the area, would be realativly easy to find. But there is no obvious route to the cache. It's very near a channel of water and depending side you guess it on it'll detour you 10 miles or more. No where is that accounted for on the scale. If you guess right, easy cache, if you guess wrong, you'll be driving a long way to a dead end. Is that worth 1/2 a star, 1 star. It's not in the system.

 

How about an urban cache with lot's of people traffic. If the spot is deserted you can get in and out in 5 minutes. But if there are people there (as there is 90% of the time) it's almost impossible to get to the cache. What is that worth?

 

The clayjar scale is fine as a guide but after a while I can judge the cache on my own. If the feedback I get tells me different then I change the rating. Otherwise I think I've outgrown the scale. But it's great when you're starting out.

 

george

 

Pedal until your legs cramp up and then pedal some more.