Start ’em easy? Start ’em hard? Or what?

[OuttaHand]

Here’s the scenario: You have some friends who love the outdoors, hiking, etc. They own a GPSr. They seem like the kind who would enjoy our sport/hobby/obsession so you mention it to them and give them the basics. They are very interested and would like to join you on a cache hunt.

Now here’s the question: Do you take them on an easy hunt? Take them on a tough one? Or somewhere in between?

My thinking is that if you take them on one that’s too easy, they may think it’s a pretty boring thing to do. Take them on one that’s real tough and they may not think it’s worth the time and effort.

What do you all think?

[kbraband]

quote:

---

Originally posted by OuttaHand:

My thinking is that if you take them on one that’s too easy, they may think it’s a pretty boring thing to do. Take them on one that’s real tough and they may not think it’s worth the time and effort.

---

If they’re into hiking, start ’em hard and continue hard. And by “hard” it sounds like you mean the hike, not necessarily the find, correct? Too hard a find may lead to frustration. But too hard a hike will not discourage most hikers. At least they won’t admit it.

[Buy_The_Tie]

Take them on a cache that isn’t a P.I.T.A. No puzzle caches and no long multi-caches.

Be sure and select a cache that has a tremendous view, or something very interesting to see.

A park-and-grab is also probably not a good idea.

[EnergySaver]

Depends a bit on the person and the weather.
If the person likes long hikes and the bugs/rain are not in the way, go harder. If the opposites are true, go easier. If you have a limited period of time, take them to ones you know you can find (ones you’ve visited already or your own); to guarantee a successful outing … even you have half a day and many caches, that’s not as much of a concern. From past experience … avoid multi’s that you’ve not done yourself … we had what we thought would be a simple 2 step multi, end up being a 5 step multi that took 3 hours, including about 3 miles of driving.

[OuttaHand]

They do love to hike in the Kettle Moraine anyway. So my first thought was to take them to the Nordic Trails. There are 3 caches in there. The one closest to parking is mine so I knew I could start them off with a find.
But yesterday was rainy and lousy. So we didn’t think it’d be a lot of fun going back in there on what would end up being about a 3 mile hike round trip to do all three.
In the end, I chose to take them to a new one with a fairly easy rating but a “small” cache size (called “Girls Stuff”). Well that one ended up being TOO easy — it was laying on the ground and visible from 20′ away. We then hit another one that was brand new and ran into cachers there at the site so it was real easy, too!
I did warn them that caching is not always this easy. And they are very excited about getting out to do some more real soon.
I had just wondered how other introduced friends/family to this craziness. Thanks for all the responses.

[Ray]

There’s lost of good stuff above. I won’t repeat any of that. My point is to get the GPSr into their hands as soon as possible and then stand back, watch & cheer.

[OuttaHand]

That I did do. They have their own GPSr — a Garmin Foretrex. I helped them get the cache coords loaded into it and showed them how to “Go To”. I followed along behind with my GPSr in my hands. Once they got moving and following the arrow, they walked right to it. So they did have the fun of “following the arrow” to the cache site, at least.

[EnergySaver]

We’ve gone as far as to purchase a “guest GPSr” a few months back. Just a cheap unit (no road maps). When we are out there alone, we let the kids take turns steering the way with it.

[This message has been edited by EnergySaver (edited 02-15-2005).]

[Author]

Posts