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Personally, I disagree quite strongly with that view, TC, and had a bit of a moan on that very subject with some others on the gc.com forums last week;
http://forums.groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?s=9b8ec65afba293a1f4062c401c5c89af&showtopic=296204
Density seems to be quite a marmite subject – what are others’ opinions?
Yes, agree in theory…
But what holds me and I’m sure others back is not knowing if the owner wants you to take scraps/logs/calling cards/crap toys and junk away – leaving nothing but a single log behind. If they ever do verify paper logs against website logs someone might have their smiley deleted. Is it ever “bad form” to take anything from a cache, unless it’s a swap?
Dave has a nice aspiration there, and yes, for your own caches I think it would be a nice thing to do, provided no stigma was directed to the less blinged boxes.
Also remember what it’s about as a cacher – why do people go caching, especially on Dartmoor? A nice walk, good views, interesting history, a bit of a challenge getting to GZ. I’m not sure an untidy cache is going to register much provided it’s dry and still there.
Ah, my mistake – I didn’t realise it was a specific app, I thought it was done via qr codes only. Sorry!
I’ve not found any yet, and to be honest it’s not a hobby I’m looking to get into – but even if you don’t have a smart phone you can take a photo and scan that at a later date. I can’t find one at the moment, but there may even be a site you can upload a photo to and have it scanned by the site.
QR Codes are fascinating, invented by Toyota for tracking stock – there’s an excellent wikipedia articles about them;
Satan’s pit is the hardest Dartmoor one I’ve done. The puzzle took me three days, the walk 10 minutes, the cache another 10 minutes. But I got very very wet and cold!
As argued elsewhere, I think 2 for everything under 30 minutes is absurd but no point repeating the same ground.
Incidentally, I’m in Cornwall at the moment. I refused to try two caches because they were right on a steeply sloping grass bank above a 400′ cliff. Ok, I’m a bit of a wuss where heights are concerned, and I know others have found them, but these are only 2/4 and 5/3.5 respectively. (The latter requires three DNF’s before you can log, a copy of Hobo and Miss’s). I think they’re rated well, just not for me…
Adrenaline? You can keep it…
I’m also concerned with Point 2. If equests go to DNPA will they be ignored? Their staff cuts this year are drastic, losing many people who’ve served for decades. How will they find the time for what is, to them, probably not a big priority?
And now, despite having been a letterboxer for a very long time, I’m resenting that letterboxes (physically identical) can be placed without these restrictions. This requirement does not change the likelyhood of a bad cache being placed at all, other than perhaps the request being ignored so it can’t be published.
Perhaps GAGB can be called upon to negotiate or collate blanket agreements in their landowner database as well as here?
(WW – Agree about walls – Grr! But letterboxing has as many badly placed boxes as geocaching; consider the “kiddy boxes” around certain honeybag tors. I’ve sat down on a rock at Saddle Tor and seen as many as five takeaway containers all clearly visible)
Thanks for the post, I was puzzled at the disablement and re-enablement of nine maidens.
I can only imagine it’s an oversight and I hope you can get hold of someone to persuade them to amend.
Although, with sadness I see the cuts have meant many of the Parke staff are leaving, including Tony Halse (who I did my first day’s work with on the YTS!) and Rupert Lane (who ran the tree division I worked on for 18 months). Good people and a fear for the future of Dartmoor’s management with these cuts. Dark days.
And I know many have spent far less and moved on – each to their own, which is the point I keep making!
Of course I can disagree with you, it just means I have to disagree with Groundspeak as well…
Those guidelines are nonsense. Even allowing for luck and experience, there’s no such thing as an “average cache hunter”. 30 minutes is far longer than most people would try – and that’s only a 2? By all means keep the 5 for those that require it, but spread out the curve a little.
I’ve found a 4/4 and I’ve never spent 30 minutes searching for a single cache. And GC2N47N – you’ve mentioned that one yourself. That’s 2.5 and took me less than a minute when at GZ.
I very often don’t read DT’s before setting out – pretty sure I play the game differently to you, and even if it mattered, I don’t care who’s right or wrong, as long as I’m still enjoying it. 🙂
As for the thread origin, GP #8 was in place and coords are accurate (rechecked today), although it had been entirely covered in pine needles and difficult to find without sweeping the whole area. Rehid and amended clue a little.
Great, isn’t it? I’m actually grateful to GC for breaking everything, ignoring complaints and generally being crap – because it’s spawned something better than it was before.
Oh, and the Bing aerial maps are way more up to date than the google sat ones – they show some rides I cut in my field at home last autumn. Googles’ are back in 2002!
TC
“I see you both take offense to someone logging a DNF on your caches (or at least attempt to ridicule them on a forum). ”
I think you misinterpreted what I said too – I most certainly did not take offence at your DNF, nor even at you complaining about the mud! Read what I wrote please. I even explained why abandoning a series and saying why was ok. I’m secure enough that from all the good logs on that series that most people have enjoyed it and that’s enough for me, and I certainly don’t blame you for abandoning. The ONLY thing I’m miffed about is the scrote who keeps stealing #8. Replacing it for a second time today, and if it goes again I’ll have to archive.
I also disagree with DD about difficulty. 30 minutes for a D2? So a D5 would take at least 2.5 hours of searching on the spot? Do I need to take a tent and rations? 😮 I take perhaps10 minutes before a DNF, far less if it’s an area with people in or I feel uncomfrotable searching. As explained before, it’s mostly about the walk, the place or the story for me, not about the physical act of looking under stones.
That said, mentioning searching time is a bit redundant. I could take 30 minutes searching for something and not find it, and the next person walk up and spot it from 30′ away, or vice-versa. I feel after 10 minutes I’m either going to spot it or not. Sometimes going away and trying again has helped, but if not – well, there’s plenty other green boxes on my maps to try.
Heh, timely log for one of mine just now – raised a smile, seems you weren’t the only one visited by metal-bijou 🙂
What I’ve noticed, and it’s only from a few, is that any problem with GPS accuracy is the cache-owner’s fault. Even when I’ve used waypoint averaging to get the most accurate coordinates possible, someone comes along with a smartphone under the trees and if it’s not where *their* equipment says it should be, it’s my fault!
Vast majority are people who, even if they think it’s not their fault, are neutral or even accept responsibility (“It’s probably me”). Although I got 3 yesterday from someone sounding very grumpy about mud (description mentions it clearly), poor coords (very high find ratio from others) and old data on their GPS (although they did say that wasn’t my fault) and they abandoned the series. But! I can understand that, having aborted a series myself because I wasn’t “feeling the fun”, and the route caused a couple of significant double-backs, but that’s fine.
Stopping when you realise it’s not fun right now is a good thing, no?
Whole lotta people upset about this, and no surprise. While I’ve been using OSM and OCM a lot already (they’re what’s on my garmin), the loss of satellite and aerial is really difficult to work around for me. Am really quite angry this has been done, and in such a way that has broke many aspects. The mapping options they give are really weak for the UK with two or three just giving white screens.
Fortunately, if you use firefox or chrome, the excellent greasemonkey script is being worked on and the author hopes to have google, OS maps (1:25k), and aerial maps back in play soon.
The script is over here. Broken at the moment since the change, but worth keeping an eye on; http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/109145
I think you guys should get a challenge award for setting this challenge… Been a lot of work, but it’s clear it’s inspired a lot of people so worth it.
I’ll probably not complete it for some months or even years, but I’ll be trying, a little at a time. 🙂
I didn’t say that’s what *I* was looking for, Dave, even as a CO 🙂 The point I was trying to make was that people who DNF when they thought they should be able to find it tend to be more upset and sometimes irate than those who found it too easily.
I’m not sure I’d agree there is ever a need not to put a hint, nor that the hint should be anything other than helpful. You might invite cachers to try and find your cache for various reasons; my usual reason is to bring them to a location *I* find interesting and hope they may too. The hint is an option somebody can use to prevent going away disappointed. If they choose to read it before they NEED to (as I sometimes do), up to them!
If your intention as CO is to outfox the cacher or to make it more of a challenge, great – but many people *do* want an easy find and the challenge and enjoyment for them is getting to the location and in some cases, bringing all their orienteering and planning skills to bear to put them at the GZ with most of their bits intact, and to them, spending half an hour feeling under stones or poking piles of leaves isn’t the fun, especially in a spot where they feel uncomfortable – such as the side of a road, or overlooked. A few DNFs in a row and despondency can set in.
Of your birds eye view – I DNF’d that myself a couple of weeks ago so have no idea how great it is until I do find it! I’ve loved all the of the Joys I’ve found and been inspired by them, but the Elephants do sometimes have the grace to include a hint for the likes of me 🙂
Thanks Celtic – yes, I do know how to put pics on the Oregon, but the interface is quite clumsy and it’s hard to determine which is which even if you rename the files, and the screen is small. I tried it for the Zoom puzzles a couple of weeks ago.
Did you see the latest Garmin update? They have improved the geocaching side so that spoiler pics (and en route pics) can be added to the cache itself, but so far ONLY for opencaching.org. It’ll be nice if those can be added automatically to PQ’s if gc.com decide to support it, but still – I don’t think spoiler pics should be relied upon only!
Absolutely muddypuddles. There is one that springs to mind – Ide Tunnel. Disabled for a very very long time after it went missing, then finally archived and disappeared. Within a week a new cache had appeared to honour the original and a great location.
It took me a little while, having been used to letterboxes, to understand the sometimes ephemeral nature and short lifespans of geocaches, but it definitely is a good thing in my mind. The system creates a shared responsibility that is often missing in many letterboxes (I’m thinking of the “kids boxes” that do tend to litter some tors which are left out and seemingly abandoned, not so much the registered boxes). Even with the maintained ones, unless found by a friend the owner won’t know of any problem until they go and check themselves.
(That said, I did get a FTF from a Geocacher on my only letterbox who recognised my nick, which had been out for some four months without a single find!)
There’s one cacher in this region that logs as a find but says can’t remember when they found it. As it happens I once replaced the log of one they had claimed and after I’d dried the old one out I couldn’t see their name anywhere. Nothing to say they hadn’t done it, perhaps in a far-previous logsheet (at least a year in that case!), but seems a strange way to play the game. No skin off my nose though, if they want to do it that way!
The best clues to me are:
1. Helpful.
2. Very slightly cryptic in the way that they make little sense until you’re at GZ. As in “42” for something bearing a number or “I wear a china hat” (For a flowerpot).
3. Don’t spoil the discovery. The best hides are those that are pleasantly surprising when found, aren’t noticed by muggles but can still be found by almost everyone who /is/ looking.I don’t like clues that:
1. Don’t exist. I know there are many who believe that field should be entry, and cite “back to basics”, but it’s there for a reason. People can read it if they want or not, but give them the choice!
2. Rely on photos or websites. As an extra, fine, but not instead of.
3. Need trivia knowledge not everyone will have, unless that’s a part of a field puzzle. I love latin tree names but understand that those who don’t know them you might as well be talking japanese.As a cache owner, I know that the only way not to get people leaving irritated DNFs is to spell out exactly where it is. If you try to be funny, clever or inventive, somebody will get uppity with you… One day I might even get it right!
Sorry Hobo – read all of that and it comes across as plain mean spirited, pedantic and arrogant. I’ve nothing against you or your caches, but what you’ve written here sticks in my throat.
reb10 – don’t be worried about the number of extra caches on the moor. There are tens of thousands of letterboxes out there, a few dozen (or even hundreds) more geocaches that are maintained and tracked won’t make much difference.
I love dartmoor, live on it (just!), and am very happy to encourage others to enjoy it like I do – so I totally support this and will help where possible – I just need to buy another map and start drawing lines on it! Hopefully it won’t be long before the easier challenge is listed.
I guess another option is to drop the 2012 restriction – is that worth considering? Or have a “Gold award” for those who manage >2012 caches only.
Seem to have lost the ability to edit my own posts, but forgot to mention I’m up for placing and maintaining additional caches, especially the eastern side.
I most definitely am in favour of this challenge. I can think of no reasons at all not to allow it and am shocked somebody thought so strongly enough to complain to the reviewer. It’s possibly there is a legit reason that is against the spirit of geocaching that I’ve overlooked so I too wait for the complainant to give their reasons, before I start to question their parentage!
Thanks, Dave. Good idea about dogs.
For Lamsamble – very dog friendly. No stiles, but stock around (mostly cattle) so close control needed as always.
Ta muddy for the explanation, I’d have done the same.
Not something that should be done routinely just because not finding something does not mean it’s not there – and then you end up with two or more pots per cache, people signing one and not the other, other people calling them to task if they don’t spot their signature – Anarchy ensues!
The listing on opencaching.org.uk explains the delay, but relisting at gc.com without checking it was still present seems rash. I would be thoroughly miffed if I’d DNF’d something that the CO knew wasn’t there when I tried!
That whole thing is very odd. I’m not so bothered about replacing a container and logging it as a find if done with the CO’s cooperation, but the CO’s actions are strangest to me.
Placed a year ago and never found? Wasn’t even listed until this month as you say. And listed knowing it wasn’t there any more and had to wait for MP to take a container out? Thus the first people to DNF were deliberately misled?
Very interested to read Muddypuddles’ comments when they get a chance!
It’ll only accept 200 .gpx files which can be a problem if you add them individually, but as Pocket Queries combine your searches into one file of up to a thousand, there’s a way around that, or you could use something like GSAK to combine I imagine.
Ho No1Mugster
I have a 450 and love it.
I’m afraid the cache limit is not one of filesize, but of memory and is fixed, depending on the model.
“The Oregon 300 and 400 support up to a maximum of 2000 geocaches (in addition to the 1000 waypoint limit). The Oregon 450 and 550 support up to 5000 geocaches.”
The micro sd card is there to allow Garmin to sell the oregon with additional maps. Eg, if you buy the exhorbitantly overpriced landranger OS map for the garmin, it arrives on an sd card and you just slot in.
People play differently I guess. I do use hints a lot, often on approach if it’s an area where gps accuracy is going to be dodgy, or chance of disturbance is high.
The one thing that is guaranteed to get a stroppy log report from me is a hint that says “See spoiler photo”. I’m paperless with an Oregon and no internet. I can’t check spoiler pics on the hoof…
Of course, doing it in the dark might mean you just didn’t notice the 200′ drop either side….
But yeah, that cache was easy. No more than a 2. Just a few big rocks. I did it as an extra while my missis sat in the car and dried her socks after doing the charity walk nearby. Less than ten minutes away from the car. I must admit I don’t look at the ratings at all most of the time.
BY the way, hello Harry. I was following your signature around West Dart on saturday!
Agree with quality over quantity, but not to the extent of thinking others are wrong. I have caches that are roadside so CnD, but always at an interesting place and I explain the history. From the comments I know some people like that, I and I like the idea that they’ll pause and think for a moment – but for those after the numbers, a CnD is fine too! Apart from the access issues above, not everyone has the time spare for a good walk, or even the inclination. (Crazy, I know – but apparently some people don’t like walking on dartmoor in the winter rain, wind snow and sleet!)
I don’t have any on the moor itself yet, but I am planning two. What has put me off is the letterbox clearances and muggling that goes on in spades (to the extent that about half of the letterboxes from the guide that have 8 or 10 digit coords I’ve tried have been stolen, and entire areas cleared including caches).
I have a micro or two out as well, but definitely not toss in the hedge. They have their place as can be hidden better or in more creative ways, but need more maintenance.
