This topic contains 11 replies, has 8 voices, and was last updated by 
Crow-T-Robot 7 years, 6 months ago.
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Did anyone else have a problem when starting to hide caches with having a lot of ideas, but not knowing how best to execute them?
I was saying all winter long that, once spring hit, I would start hiding my my own caches come spring. Meeting other cachers not only fueled the fire, but talking to them helped me form an idea of what kind of hider I want to be. Yet, here I sit with exactly zero hides to my name. One idea I discarded because while in theory the area would have been good, not even a CITO event woild make it a place I’d want to attract cachers to. One I’m still working out the logistics of, one I still need to visit the site, and yet another I have everything planned out, but have reasons for not making it my first hide. In the meantime, I’ve come up with an idea for an ammo box sized hide, and a series, and my brain is about to burst with holding it all in.
How do I get past the mental blocks and just start hiding, already?
Just gotta get out and make that placement and stop thinking about it 🙂 . People will still come and find it, people will still like it, people will still log just a “TFTC”, some people will still say it was too long of a hike, some will say it was too short. If its ready to place just go out and place it.
I’ve got a large number of ideas and plenty I’m wanting to do as well. For me now its a mix of life changes and not having the same amount of time to caching as I used too. Some of it is I’ve now got so many out there is having to keep up with maintenance. Some of it is just not getting out and just placing the hide. Thats what happened for half of my Windmill Geo-art. I had half the caches placed one summer but just never pushed to get the rest out. Had to finally do that the next year to just get out and place them so I can get the series posted.
It’s a lot of fun hiding, at least I enjoy it. Some of my hides are creative, some of them not so much. Some are placed for one reason, some are placed for another. I’ve wanted to and have tried to get a variety of hides placed in my name so there can be a little bit of a variety. Plus I like finding all types as well.
Now I just need to get past some mental blocks in solving how I want to make some of this new caches I want to make but have no idea what I want to make for one of my next series. If you know what I mean haha.
Climbing To New Adventures
**The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.**
The nice thing about hiding a cache is that: you hide it, you do the cache page, but wait to submit it until your absolutely ready! Hire a “guinea pig” to make a dry run on it; an experienced cacher that isn’t desperate for an FTF! We were all newbies once. When I hid my first cache 10 1/2 years ago, I waited at GZ for 2 hours after I submitted it, ya know, in case the Reviewer showed up to ask questions (yes, I really did that!). Don’t hang around GZ. They don’t show up!
I hid a new cache 3 weeks ago and it will publish soon. After careful thought, I have decided it’s ready to go. Ready, set…
Good luck with your hides!
Just gotta get out and make that placement and stop thinking about it 🙂 . People will still come and find it, people will still like it, people will still log just a “TFTC”, some people will still say it was too long of a hike, some will say it was too short. If its ready to place just go out and place it. I’ve got a large number of ideas and plenty I’m wanting to do as well. For me now its a mix of life changes and not having the same amount of time to caching as I used too. Some of it is I’ve now got so many out there is having to keep up with maintenance. Some of it is just not getting out and just placing the hide. Thats what happened for half of my Windmill Geo-art. I had half the caches placed one summer but just never pushed to get the rest out. Had to finally do that the next year to just get out and place them so I can get the series posted. It’s a lot of fun hiding, at least I enjoy it. Some of my hides are creative, some of them not so much. Some are placed for one reason, some are placed for another. I’ve wanted to and have tried to get a variety of hides placed in my name so there can be a little bit of a variety. Plus I like finding all types as well. Now I just need to get past some mental blocks in solving how I want to make some of this new caches I want to make but have no idea what I want to make for one of my next series. If you know what I mean haha.
Glad to know I’m not alone!
I know I just need to get out & start placing them. I think part of my mental block, though, comes from living in SE WI, where an open space on the geo-map begs the question of “Why hasn’t someone put one there yet?” I keep thinking that, if I lived in a less densely cache-populated area, I’d have placed a few by now.
Like you, I also like different kinds of hides. Until recently, all my ideas were micros & nanos, and I’ve made the mistake of reading message boards here and on the mother site from anti-micro snobs who won’t look for anything that small. But, I cut my geocaching teeth on a small series of micros that was done well, and in fact, the one non-micro I found when I got started was unimpressive.
It’s not easy being one of the good newer geocachers. It’s a different perspective from those who have been around for over a decade, and there’s a lot more pressure to place good hides.
an experienced cacher that isn’t desperate for an FTF!
Those exist? 🙂
I had a few grand ideas when I started ten years ago, none of which I have done yet. Then I figured out what was realistic for me to hide, and went with that. However, I do have one idea for a puzzle that’s just looking for an appropriate spot.
The buck stops here. . .and gets entered into Where's George.
Where's George? Stimulating the economy one EMS'ed dollar at a time.
It’s an interesting issue, what type of cache hider does one want to be. For Kim and I, we try to place caches that bring people to worthy, scenic locations. Usually. 😉 Caches that people might list as a favorite, although we never ask for favorite votes. For us that’s tacky. On Groundspeak’s website, somewhere in their tutorial on how to place caches, I seem to recall that they suggest placing caches in locations that are worth visiting, and suggest that if the only reason for placing a cache at a particular location is because there isn’t one there yet, you should keep looking for a better place.
Just brainstorming, here’s some of the possible “cache hider” types:
a. The park & grab cache hider – Whether lamp posts, guardrails, or something similar, placing caches that are very short walks and quick to find, usually micros, nanos, or smalls. Easy to place, easy to replace, easy to find. Plus for some geocachers, this is their favorite or only type of cache to find because they’re more accessible and you can “quickly” build up your find numbers.
b. On the opposite end of the scale, the “scenic location in natural areas” hider, which usually means a longer walk. Usually regular or large size caches. It’s our favorite type of cache, and how geocaching first started out. Taking nice walks in nature is cheaper than therapy! 🙂
c. The cache series hider – hide a bunch of caches with the same theme, often with a mystery cache for the final. People often love to find a whole set of caches and can have a greater sense of accomplishment if they can find all six in a series (or 10, or 20, or 50, or more…). Examples from our neck of the woods: The hundred acre wood series (30 caches), the Meet the WGA series (7 caches), Classic Toys series (49 caches), Capture the Flag series (13 caches), the Old Silo series (over 100), or the Monopoly series (8 caches).
d. The power trail hider – Similar to the above park & grab and series hiders, but usually 50 or more caches, all P&G’s, typically all along the road in a straight line every 550 feet or so. Finders could find over 100 caches in as little as an afternoon. To some it may sound lame, but if you have the right combination of crazy cachers all in the same car, it can be a fun experience to share.
e. The mystery cache hider – The cache locations as well as the containers themselves may or may not be exciting, but the focus is on creating puzzle caches for people to solve.
f. The quality cache hider – There are some people whose caches just never seem to disappoint. All or almost all of their caches you just know are going to be good, because of either well-chosen locations, well-crafted puzzles, or nicely-built custom containers or containers with props attached. When their caches are published they make it to the front of our list. I was going to name names but…
g. The educational cache hider – Caches that highlight historical, geological, & educational information. The caches commonly could be earthcaches or multicaches, but could also be traditionals that take one to an area of interest, perhaps to a historical location.
I’ve noticed that many new cache hiders start out with simple micros, and after a number of years get more choosy and gravitate toward something different. I’ve never been a fan of micros in the woods, but that’s just me (but I’ll still go find them). In urban areas that’s often the only logical choice in a given location. Lately we’ve mainly been placing caches small & regular sized, usually with props that support the theme of the cache.
So best wishes Cami on deciding what type of hider you want to be now and in the future!
Oh one last consideration – the responsibilities as a cache owner just start with placing the cache. Lately I’ve noticed a trend where many are just not taking care of their cache containers, even when finders post “need maintenance” logs. It would be nice if C.O.’s would visit their caches as needed and keep them going for future cachers. That includes checking them out occasionally even if there isn’t a needs maintenance log, to see if the log sheet is dry or full.
Kim and I look forward to the day when we can find a Bennycams’ cache!
This is one of the best posts I’ve read here in a long time!
The best sig is no sig.
I doubt I’ll want to fit into one particular type of hider. There’s a hider that seems to be how I always saw myself as a hider. The handful of hides I’ve found by this hider have included a skirt-lifter, a couple of micros interestingly hidden, a small in an area I could see how it was worthy of a hide, and a well constructed multi.
While I’ve been happy to help out hiders with maintenance if I can, I’m too much of a first-born Saggitarian to want more hides than I feel I can maintain myself.
I also kind of have a goal of hiding caches that get Regular members interested in keeping with this long enough to make a Premium membership worth having. I think I got lucky with my first finds, even though they were micros. They were more than just pill bottles in dead end barriers or under light skirts with almost no story to make up for it. Not that there’s anything wrong with those, but if that’s all there is to find for brand new cachers, it’s not surprising they don’t stick with it long enough to find the really good caches.
b. On the opposite end of the scale, the “scenic location in natural areas” hider, which usually means a longer walk. Usually regular or large size caches. It’s our favorite type of cache, and how geocaching first started out. Taking nice walks in nature is cheaper than therapy! 🙂
g. The educational cache hider – Caches that highlight historical, geological, & educational information. The caches commonly could be earthcaches or multicaches, but could also be traditionals that take one to an area of interest, perhaps to a historical location.
The scenic walks are some of my favorites, that’s what I like about having the Northwoods in our state. It’s too bad those ones don’t get found more often.
As for the “Educational Cache Hider”, I can name Bartrod with his O.C.H. series up in Oconto County. I’m pretty sure I’ve given a favorite point to every one of those I’ve found in that series. I also have two history related caches here in Green Bay, with my sights set on at least two more as soon as I find reasonable hiding locations.
The buck stops here. . .and gets entered into Where's George.
Where's George? Stimulating the economy one EMS'ed dollar at a time.
I am sure your caches are going to be great Bennycams!
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
-Henry David Thoreau
Hide the kind of cache you’d enjoy finding, but for any first time cache owner, I’d always recommend starting with something simple. That way, you can get a better feel of what it means (and takes) to be a cache owner. Some new cachers get really hyped about placing caches and publish a bunch right away (or do something really elaborate and thus harder to maintain) and then realize it’s more work than they expected or wanted. We are blessed in Wisconsin to have all four seasons but that also means our caches are exposed to those different elements constantly, so a CO has to be prepared to fix up a cache any time Mother Nature requires it.
Every cache owner is different. I am in my comfort zone having about 10-12 active hides. Other CO’s can handle and maintain hundreds of caches. You have to find your own sweet spot as far as that goes. The fact that you came here to ask questions says quite a lot about how you view cache ownership and it’s a very encouraging sign. Don’t agonize too much about making a “perfect” cache. Geocachers are a very accepting and passive group. We love finding caches and as long as you take care of your caches, we’ll appreciate the effort you gave in placing them.
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