When is a hint not a hint? (Mini rant)

[TyeDyeSkyGuy]

@Team Deejay wrote:

@tyedyeskyguy wrote:

The good news here folks is that it all grows back. All but erosion that is.

The bad news is that the vast majority of caches are hidden on public land, managed by public employees. And when these public employees find an area destroyed by one of our geocaches, the result is more regulation and more problems for everyone. They won’t care about the other 99 geocaches on their properties that are creating no problems. They won’t care that the grass grows back a year later. They won’t care that you put “Don’t tear up the area” in the cache description. The result is banning, permission forms, placement fees, licensing, and more rules.

Now nobody is saying that we can’t place difficult hides. The problem is difficult hides in sensitive areas. There is no problem with difficult hides in shelters, rockpiles, marshes and swamps, bike trails, ball fields, thorn thickets, beaches, parking lots, city parks, and many other places. But most forests (especially forests near ponds and other bodies of water) and all prairies can be severely damaged by extended seaching. Its in all our best interest to preserve the places where we play our game.

Well put. Which is why I started placng the “Boyd” series of caches this year.

[seldom|seen]

I’d echo many of the sentiments posted in this thread, and I wish there were a better way to bring about a greater awareness of both the hiders and the finders responsibility to maintain the natural areas they search in than posting threads in these forums. Maybe a Large event on the topic is in order.

I have numerous urban caches that I simply don’t worry that much about. But I even notice damage done to shrubs and bushes in my urban hides that seem wholly unnecessary, if cachers takes the time to retrieve the cache in a respectful manner. It’s a catch 22 for these. An ammo can needs to be hid well enough in an urban environment so it is not prone to muggling. But in doing so, the container has to be tucked well under it’s concealing shrubery – and in winter, with snowcover, this has led to broken branches. I agree that it is my responsibility to monitor and potentially archive a cache that is creating too much damage to the surrounding area and I do monitor mine.

Duck, Duck… Goose was a cache that I placed in an area that I thought could handle the traffic. It couldn’t. I got a call one morning from a cacher who can’t walk away from a cache without finding it telling me it had been muggled. I met the cacher at ground zero to discover that the stone wall upon which the first waypoint rested, had been completely dismantled with rocks strewn about the area. I COULDN’T BELIEVE MY EYES! The cache itself was an easy grab and sat right on top of the wall. Yet, because it was missing, someone decided to tear the wall apart to find it.

And then this cacher had the audacity to ask if they could log the cache anyway, even though they hadn’t found either waypoint and looked irritated as I dismissed them momentarily to re-build the rock wall. Needless to say, I archived the cache shortly after.

Back to hints: I like the 1 star rule. I put in a lot of time, thought, and energy into many of my caches and I want the find to be challenging. So, I’m not going to provide a clue that just gives it away. However, I’m not going to make it impossible either and most people know that they can contact me for more hints if they just can’t stand the idea of logging a DNF and coming back another day.

Tricky puzzles I like, fun puzzles I like, difficult search and destroy cache hides I despise and when someone tells me it took them more than 10 minutes to find a final of mine, I re-evaluate to make sure it is not that difficult to come up with.

We do need to be EXTREMELY sensetive to the traffic our hides generate and monitor closely. If it’s getting to be too much, simply disable the cache periodically or archive it. As more and more people get into the sport, more and more incidents will occur and more regulation will come down. This in inevitable. It’s merely a queastion of how long it can be delayed with good caching practices by the majority.

[seldom|seen]

@seldom|seen wrote:

And then this cacher had the audacity to ask if they could log the cache anyway, even though they hadn’t found either waypoint and looked irritated as I dismissed them momentarily to re-build the rock wall. Needless to say, I archived the cache shortly after.

I need to post a personal apology to the cachers referenced here. This portion of my post was off-topic and personal concerning my particular feelings about the inconsiderate geocachers who visited the area before the above referenced folks called me in to check the cache status. They made every attempt to help me locate the missing waypoints and indeed did locate a portion of what was once the first waypoint. My frustration is not directed at them, but at cachers in general who do not take the time to evaluate a cache hide, carefully extract and sign it, and then replace it as it was found. I was taken off-guard that day and in my state of shock, felt the request to log a non-existent cache a little over-zealous.

I have been a recent victim of numerous inconsiderate cache re-sets resulting in unnecessary muggling and what seem to be, in my estimation, outright incidents of sabotage. But that’s another topic and well worth discussing elsewhere.

Again, I harbor no ill will toward the cachers I referenced above. I do think that as geocachers we need to check ourselves when the hunt intensifies to the point where branch lifting becomes branch breaking to get the elusive cache.

[Team Bear Bear]

[zuma]

We ran into an interesting hint recently:

“Use your GPS, then use your eyes.”

Had to chuckle on that one, since without that hint, it would never have occurred to me to use either. LOL.

Zuma

[Team Honeybunnies]

@zuma wrote:

We ran into an interesting hint recently:

“Use your GPS, then use your eyes.”

Had to chuckle on that one, since without that hint, it would never have occurred to me to use either. LOL.

Zuma

That was a favorite. Nice cache though.

[kbraband]

As one of the volunteer reviewers (for Iowa), I always look at the hints written by cache owners when they submit a new cache. For the most part, geocachers seem to understand the purpose of the hint. However, I do see an occassional less-than-useful hint. For example:
“This is one of my favorite parks.”
“Be sure to bring along a piece of metal tied to a string at least 2 feet long.”
“Your best approach is from the north.”

If I see that a hint doesn’t fulfill the intended purpose — giving geocachers a last resort clue that they can decrypt at ground zero — before I publish the cache, I think it’s due primarily to inexperience. I send them a note with my recommendation for changing their hint and why. In most cases, they seem happy to oblige. They simply haven’t thought things through and put themselves in the shoes of people who will be hunting for their cache.

Hey, I think I just wrote today’s http://iowaadmin.blogspot.com/ blog post.

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