Opinions on difficulty ratings, please…

[Trekkin and Birdin]

We hid the final of a three part series yesterday. The hide itself is not difficult, but to find it, cachers will need to find two other caches. The caches are all in coulee country, but one’s across the river in a Minnesota state forest, one’s in LaCrosse on the hiking trails in the bluffs, and this one’s almost into Trempealeau county.

So how do I rate this one for difficulty of hide? I’d appreciate the opinions of others on this. We see these multi-mystery caches rated all over the board, dependent on the hider, I suppose.

[Team Deejay]

Because of the multi nature of the hide, you probably should give it a 2. Otherwise, the difficulty of the hide is just that. The terrain doesn’t matter. This is why MOST 5/5s which are not puzzles are not really 5/5. They are usually 1/5s, and occasionally 5/2s.

[K0rpl]

I agree with the difficulty and terrain being based on this hide itself. In the cache description, you can list that you need to find the other two caches.

Justin

[labrat_wr]

I thank you Trekkin’ and Birdin’ as the responses from K0rpl and Deejay made me rethink the ratings on one of my caches that requires the cacher to find 6 other caches to get clues to the location of this placement. I had it at a 3.5/3 but edited to a 2/2 as the difficulty/terrain truly do not support the higher rating. I had kind of factored in the time involved and the difficulty/terrain of the other 6 caches if one was to try the entire series in one trip, but I re-rated it on its own merits.

I think however, if it was the final of a single multicache with such distant waypoints, I would try to average each cache/waypoint to come up with a final rating for the cache. I have done a cache puzzle that had me cover many miles to collect the information for the final and was rated a 4/3 though, as I glance at the back of my WGA name-tag a 4 difficulty= Special Skills/knowledge/prep required so I can see where the difficulty on some multis and puzzles can be 4s or 5s. It seems that the ratings can be very subjective.

Disclaimer : Always answering to a higher power.

[zuma]

@labrat_wr wrote:

I thank you Trekkin’ and Birdin’ as the responses from K0rpl and Deejay made me rethink the ratings on one of my caches that requires the cacher to find 6 other caches to get clues to the location of this placement. I had it at a 3.5/3 but edited to a 2/2 as the difficulty/terrain truly do not support the higher rating. I had kind of factored in the time involved and the difficulty/terrain of the other 6 caches if one was to try the entire series in one trip, but I re-rated it on its own merits.

I think however, if it was the final of a single multicache with such distant waypoints, I would try to average each cache/waypoint to come up with a final rating for the cache. I have done a cache puzzle that had me cover many miles to collect the information for the final and was rated a 4/3 though, as I glance at the back of my WGA name-tag a 4 difficulty= Special Skills/knowledge/prep required so I can see where the difficulty on some multis and puzzles can be 4s or 5s. It seems that the ratings can be very subjective.

Yes, ratings can be very subjective, and while I hunt em all, I do like to see them listed reasonably accurately. I sometimes figure that if someone cant figure out that their micro in the woods on top of a hill is not really a 1/1, how can I trust their coords? If I see ratings that are clearly wrong, I am often less likely to spend a lot of time hunting it, since I figure that there may be other things amiss with their cache description as well.

And I do factor in what you have to do to get a cache into the difficulty rating, though I agree this can be quite subjective. For example, I listed the Badger State Challenge as a 4/2, because it is reasonably difficult to get a cache in all 72 counties. The terrain is actually a 2 though, so that does not take into account the terrain of caches one might have to do to get all 72 counties. The actual find of the cache (if it was a stand alone cache) is like most ammo cans in the woods, that is a 1 1/2 or so.

Anyway, I agree that it is subjective, but if you review the guidelines, and try to be as accurate as possible, in the long run it is helpful to all, and healthy for the sport.

zuma

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