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Wow! You've Placed That Many Caches.


rooboy

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First let me say that this topic is not meant to portray anyone in a bad light or anything else--it is a simple statement of fact.

 

Today I visited a virtual and when I went to the persons GC.com profile t email them, I noticed that they have a grant total of 320 Traditional Caches that they have placed in the wild. Wow! My hats off to this person.

 

How many people do you know that have placed this many, or more, caches?

 

Ciao

RooBoy

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I've placed 60 and have 47 still active. 50 is about my limit for owning caches and still being able to take care of them. Lately I've been archiving older, or less interesting caches whenever I place a new one.

 

I know that maintaining my existing caches takes a lot time away from cach hunting. I could probably have added another hundred finds by now, but for maint trips, so I don't see how a person could maintain 300 caches, unless that is all they do.

Edited by briansnat
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Do you enjoy hides that much to have that many, or did you just hide them bit by bit as you've gone along? We had a cacher here who had only a small number of finds but a lot of hides... that was kind of "his thing". Just curious about your thoughts.

 

I enjoy hiding as much as I do finding. I've been placing them since I started (I had 1 find before I placed my 1st cache), so compared to how many other cachers are hiding, it's not a real lot considering that its spread out over 2+ years. As I said earlier though, the maintenance of all those caches does cut into my cache hunting time. The majority of them are at least a mile RT walk and a lot are more.

 

I try to place them fairly close to my house, or in places that I frequent for one reason, or another to make maintenance easier.

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The key is to only place the number of caches that you can realistically maintain. By that I mean making periodic visits, and more important, being able to respond to reported problems in a reasonable amount of time.

 

To sprinkle around hundreds of caches and expect others to take care of them for you is just plain thoughtless and rude.

 

I've seen way too many caches that have 6 months, to a years worth of logs saying something like "cache was soaked, needs new container". If the owner can't get there within a month or so (never mind 6 months) then it never should have been placed.

 

Many of us will do an owner a favor and fix up a cache with a reported problem, but we really shouldn't have to and the owner definitely shouldn't expect it.

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I noticed the count after finding the same vitual as rooboy. I mentioned this on a tread concerning "how many caches do you have" back in October.

Here is a response by mtm-man.

 

(BTW, bad caches tend to have a fairly short shelf life, his seem to be doing just fine, What does that tell you?)

 

Quote:

If you look at the profile for King B you will see that his forum title is "King of cache density". A long time ago I wrote to him with concerns about the quantity and density of his caches. In the email I told him I was concerned that he was becoming the King of cache density. His attention to his caches quickly swayed me to his side. I also notice that cachers like his caches and there were no problems discussed in the MN forums. I have found several of his caches as well so I know his style of hiding. Many of those caches are archived so he can move them and allow an area to not be damaged very much. His caches are usually easy to approve because he knows the guidelines for his area and for the GC.com site and adheres to them both rigidly.

 

mtn-man... admin brick mason

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I have all I can do to maintain the Caches I have,  But how the hell do you maintain that many.  Let alone the cost, on the average my caches cost me about ten clams to plant.  I could buy myself a lot of beer for $320

Wouldn't it be $3200? (10 clams X 320 caches)

Ahh you do have the ability to look into things, which would make you a good Virtual Cache Hunter :lol:

 

Actually the cost savings (3200 - 320) is made up with McD Toys :D

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Wow -- I was getting worried about 20 being too many !

Not if you can maintain them properly! :D

Therein lies the rub. I have barely enough time to maintain the two that are hidden right now. One's temporarily archived for other reasons as I've been trying to get to it for the past two months.

 

I've archived one of my caches, because we moved, but the other two take more than enough of my time. I am thinking about placing another, only because it will be close to my house and have easier access.

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Like brainsnat, I can only keep about 50 or 60 alive at one time, and I too, enjoy hiding caches as much as finding them. Maybe more!  :D

Just curious. Are most of your caches simple traditional caches, or do they have themes or multi-stages?

 

I want to make a new cache, but want to make it something different. That's probably part of my reluctance to hide more caches. I could do it, but I don't really want them to be another "run of the mill" type of caches.

 

Edit - Grammar

Edited by Webfoot
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Brian & Insp, Is there anything in particular you do to keep the maintenance to a minimum? I'm at 25 hides. I can only see haveing about 40 or so active at a time without losing my mind.

Good quality containers, think twice about the positioning, then think again. But, most importantly, keep a close eye on what the finders have to say and if a log seems ambiguous, e-mail the person concerned for more information.

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I've seen way too many caches that have 6 months, to a years worth of logs saying something like "cache was soaked, needs new container". If the owner can't get there within a month or so (never mind 6 months) then it never should have been placed.

 

Many of us will do an owner a favor and fix up a cache with a reported problem, but we really shouldn't have to and the owner definitely shouldn't expect it.

Thank you so much for being such an inspiration to the geocaching community, Brian, and for being so much more responsible than most others who place caches. We are truly grateful to have a cacher like you that can not only be a role model for others, but can graciously point out to them how they fall short. Keep up the good work!

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Brian & Insp, Is there anything in particular you do to keep the maintenance to a minimum? I'm at 25 hides. I can only see haveing about 40 or so active at a time without losing my mind.

 

Ammo boxes help. You're less likely to have to head out to replace a cracked container, or wet log book. I also try to stock them pretty well, so it takes a while before I have to re-seed the cache.

 

If I have a multi that involves a long hike, I sometimes place the actual cache near a road or parking lot, so I can easily service it, and use the middle stages to bring the cache hunter to the nice areas along the route I've chosen.

 

Most important, at least to me, is that many of my caches are either near my home, or in places that I go to often. A lot are along favorite hiking routes of mine, or along trails that I maintain.

Edited by briansnat
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Brian & Insp, Is there anything in particular you do to keep the maintenance to a minimum? I'm at 25 hides. I can only see haveing about 40 or so active at a time without losing my mind.

I travel a lot with my job, as much as 7000km per month, so for me to have lots of caches is not a problem. Also, there are not many poeple caching up this way yet, so as long as the cache is not destroyed by an animal or Muggle, then it's not a problem.

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I have all I can do to maintain the Caches I have,  But how the hell do you maintain that many.  Let alone the cost, on the average my caches cost me about ten clams to plant.  I could buy myself a lot of beer for $320

$320 would be if they cost $1 each. If they cost $10 each, that'd be $3200. (now THAT's a lot of beer.)

 

Would be interesting to see a scatter plot an a measure of how far away the furthest caches would have to be and still be .10 miles apart.

 

I have four and they are very little work once placed. I don't think I could maintain 10 or more very well though. I visit all mine periodically whether the logs say I need to or not. With 320, if you checked one a day it would take most of a year to just check up on them.

Edited by trippy1976
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I agree with all of BrianSnat's tips for making cache maintenance easier. I've NEVER needed to do maintenance on any of my caches that use ammo boxes. My high-maintenance caches are ones that use plastic containers with snap-on lids, caches that are easy finds so the logbooks fill up, micros because the log sheets can't handle lots of visits, and multicaches where intermediate stage micro containers tend to go missing.

 

On that last point, consider using virtual clues for intermediate waypoints of a multicache whenever possible. It can be just as fun to find a number on a utility pole, bench, etc. as it is to find a film canister that's likely to go missing. Yet either method serves my purpose in making it a multicache: to take the finder on the route I'd like to show them.

 

On the issue of placing more caches than one can reasonably maintain, I believe that this number varies from one person to the next. It all depends on how much time they are willing to dedicate to geocaching. A person who only goes out to find geocaches once per month is not likely to schedule maintenance trips as necessary for, say, 25 hidden caches. For someone who is out finding caches two or three times each week, it shouldn't be a problem to stop by one or two of their 75 hidden caches where there's been a problem reported recently.

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Up here in B.C. we have a Team with 265+ caches in an area covering several hundred miles, often including remote islands and areas only seasonably accessable. Every cache has/had at least a $20 Ftf prize plus other exciting prizes. Many have much, much more. They are clearly very dedicated to the sport for having accepted responsibility for maintenance of so many caches. Local cachers just love their caches, many are found only minutes after posting!

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Ammo boxes help. You're less likely to have to head out to replace a cracked container, or wet log book. I also try to stock them pretty well, so it takes a while before I have to re-seed the cache.

 

If I have a multi that involves a long hike, I sometimes place the actual cache near a road or parking lot, so I can easily service it, and use the middle stages to bring the cache hunter to the nice areas along the route I've chosen.

 

Most important, at least to me, is that many of my caches are either near my home, or in places that I go to often. A lot are along favorite hiking routes of mine, or along trails that I maintain.

Thanks. So far I've taken most of those precautions. Just was wondering if I was missing anything. The first several caches I hid where in tupperware type containers. A couple were the really cheap kind. I'm slowly working in changing them all over to ammo boxes at least the locations that will accomodate one. I can say I definately like hiding as much as finding. It's all geocaching to me. It's really amazing how much my caches have changes from the first couple 'til now. I try and do each cache a little different and a little better. I don't think anyone can say "that's a typicall JMB hiding spot".

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Would be interesting to see a scatter plot an a measure of how far away the furthest caches would have to be and still be .10 miles apart.

Okay, assuming perfect placement of each cache, then you can have a hexagonally-packed (aka honeycomb) grid where each cache is exactly 0.1 miles from any of the 6 surrounding it (in other words packing discs/coins into a hexagon where their radius is 0.05 miles, so the distance from any circle's center to the next circle's center would be 0.1 miles). This can go out to 10 concentric hexagons of caches for a total of 331 caches (very close to the 320 placed, so I'll stick to 331).

 

These caches would at the maximum distance from tip to tip of the outer hexagon at only 2.1 miles from each other and they would include a regular hexagon just under 2.6 square miles big.

 

Imagine 331 caches in 2.6 square miles....wow. And you still wouldn't break the 0.1 mile rule.

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Waiting for ju66l3r's 331-stage multicache to show up in the cache review queue....

 

Cool math, thanks!

Actually, I've been contemplating using a nearby forest for a large multi around Easter time where a couple dozen plastic eggs are hidden a few hundred feet from each other and depending on which one you find first will give you a series of clues about where the one hidden with the necessary keyword to log the cache is found.

 

Still hammering some of the logistics, especially since I'm going to school here right now and may move out in a year or two. Of course, a year or two is still a decent cache length.

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