[jenhen1]

I should add if you still have questions regarding placement at your spot after reading the materials I would contact local law enforcement first. If in the city of Rice Lake, the RL police dept., if outside of the city limits, the Barron County sherrif’s dept. The officers and deputys are on the front lines and are more apt to see geocachers and cache placements and would be most qualified to assist on what may or may not be a good idea in a cache placement.

[jenhen1]

Hello and welcome! First thing I’d do is go to geocaching.com and read everything you can on cache placement in general:

http://www.geocaching.com/about/guidelines.aspx

Then, the WGA site here has a great resource in their ‘information center’ regarding some specific Wisconsin centric guidelines for cache placement:

http://wi-geocaching.com/modules.php?name=Content

By the sounds of it you have a spot picked out on public property and the Rice Lake parks dept is clueless. You’re probably good to go as I doubt there is a local ordinance prohibiting the placement of caches. I have a few caches placed in Barron County and they are very lenient, in fact the Rice Lake area Chamber of Commerce helped me with some information while placing caches in the Blue Hills. Good luck and have fun!

[jenhen1]

A permanence guideline of 3 months seems awfully temporary to me, wish it were more like a year or so.

I agree with everything you said kc9gbo. Thank you for your thoughts on churning. I would tend to disagree with the notion that churning keeps the game fresh. There are bazillions of fresh caches all over the state/country/world that I could go out and find. Personally, if I’ve been to a spot 2 or 3 times I won’t bother going back unless it’s a really awesome spot.

[jenhen1]

Article II: Purposes
The purposes of the WGA are to:

–Work as closely as possible with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR), and other property management officials to protect the rights of individuals to geocache in the state of Wisconsin.
–Provide an opportunity for geocachers in the State of Wisconsin to gather and socialize with one another.
–Promote the “Cache In Trash Out” and “Leave No Trace” programs to help in the maintenance of parks and trail systems.
–Educate Wisconsin geocachers about the responsible use of natural resources and educate non-geocachers about the sport of geocaching

I would personally add another purpose:
–To work closely with law enforcement and local lawmakers to ensure a safe, civil and sustainable hobby.

First and foremost I would propose the WGA organize a panel of law enforcement officials and lawmakers and come up with a revised set of Wisconsin cache placement guidelines. These new guidelines need not be about quality, but about public safety, property respect and the avoidance of public nuisances. The quality issues would undoubtedly take care of themselves. With the cooperation of the WGA and law enforcement I firmly believe Groundspeak would support this proactive approach. Reviewers are allowed to approve caches based on local ordinances and I believe a set of Wisconsin guidelines that were drawn up with the cooperation of law enforcement would be respected.

Do I believe that we in Wisconsin know better than Groundspeak about responsible cache placing in our own backyard? Yes I do. And I agree that if City Hall saw an overlay of where caches are placed in their city, most would be shocked and not very happy.

[jenhen1]

I’m tellin’ ya, if Groundspeak doesn’t adjust their cache hiding guidelines and their review process, law enforcement and local legislation will. There is absolutely no way a cache placed on the easement in front of a homeowner’s property should EVER be approved unless that specific homeowner is the cache placer. (and even that is sketchy)

Question: Is there a way our state association could set up our own set of placement guidelines and review caches based on Wisconsin’s own set of guidelines? Basically telling Groundspeak that what’s considered appropriate placement by you guys up in Seattle might not be in the best interest of us cachers here in Wisconsin. We could even have input from local law enforcement to come up with a mutually agreeable set. That way when Groundspeak objects we can at least say that law enforcement prefers it this way in Wisconsin.

[jenhen1]

As far as a homemade gizmo, I used to have a homemade conversion strip that I used to plot coords onto the gazetteer before GC.com mapping got as advanced as it is, but I don’t use it anymore.

In the winter I carry a garden trowel which is very useful for unearthing those caches buried by lots of snow and ice.

[jenhen1]

Thank you T&B for bringing this up. It’s actually a topic that has been weighing on my mind for some time now. I believe the future of geocaching could potentially be in danger if we, as a geocaching community, fail to step up and address some of concerns that outsiders have with our game.

A couple steps we, as individuals, could do to help keep the game great would be to maintain our caches from start to finish, tactfully raise legitimate concerns about cache placement (not quality. Quality is purely subjective) with cache owners either via log, or PM, and set a good example as cache placers by being conscientious and responsible in our placement.

However…I truly believe the greatest amount of responsibility for keeping the game great and viable for the future lies with the managers of the game’s largest website, Groundspeak. They write the guidelines and can ultimately decide the appropriateness of certain types of hides and practices. I have personally spoken with officers, land managers and have had a friend speak with a local mayor and school district officials about cache placements. While all have been generally supportive of geocaching in general, their concerns have sat with me for some time.

Two officers that I have spoken to basically thought that geocaching was a nuisance as both had questioned geocachers in the past, one at an electrical box and one was at a cache located just outside of a building. A friend who asked about a potential cache placement in a small local park in Augusta was advised to place the cache at a larger park outside of town to avoid raising suspicions in the smaller park. Not even a questionable hide, just a too much in the open, so law enforcement suggested a safer place. A DNR guy told me he denied a request because there were “too many” caches there already. The examples go on and on.

I don’t believe geocaching will die from within, people leaving the game for whatever reason since there is such a wide variety of caches that appeal to all sorts, but instead could potentially be killed from outside influences as the game grows and grows and more and more people start playing. I could see the DNR pulling the plug on all hides on DNR managed property due to density problems, placement issues, complaints from hunters etc… I could see villages, cities, counties getting tired of bomb scares, officers questioning geocachers at questionable locations, etc…and making it illegal to place caches on municipal property. The game as we know it could potentially be permanently compromised if the geocaching community fails to be proactive. If Groundspeak and local associations were to work closely with law enforcement and local governments, I just have a feeling that things would end up changing.

Personally, as a start, I would support a change that would eliminate caches being placed on municipally owned structures (signs, bridges, buildings, etc…), caches not allowed to be placed less that 50 feet from a roadway, and caches prohibited from being placed on private property unless proof can be given that the property is owned by the placer. (tough for the reviewers I know but…) Anyway, this is just one man’s opinion. 🙂

[jenhen1]

@GetMeOutdoors wrote:

Zuma, you come around to an excellent point which started this thread and which is a concern about what is a threat to the game.

But the situation you pointed out, Zuma, is a real threat to the sport. We already have enough trouble with caches being mistaken for malicious containers / bombs, we don’t need caches / cachers that are clearly making unwise choices in their placement. Calling them out on it is vital to the health of the sport. If bad (if not illegal) placement happens often enough, pretty soon things will either become very difficult for the geocaching community, or downright impossible.

In summation, my position is that cache density becomes a threat to the game when people start making poor choices and when the general community becomes too aware of what’s going on around them causing them either to have a negative opinion of the game or to vandalize caches.

GMO, you are right on the money. This is EXACTLY what will kill the sport/game. Until Groundspeak takes a stand and regulates power trails, rewrites it’s guidelines on cache placements and allows reviewers to use more of a personal bias in rejecting crap caches, geocaching will continue to degrade.

DNR has already starting rejecting caches due to cache density in some areas and I’m sure it won’t be long until some other land managers or city/county officials start to have a serious problem with the amount of caches placed in dangerous or unwise locations such as guardrails or sign posts that could lead to a traffic accident which would in turn lead to a ban on geocaching in certain cities. It will only take one serious accident.

I really hope Groundspeak becomes more proactive instead of reactive on this issue.

[jenhen1]

Congrats to the Pride of the Chippewa Valley. The Kache King keeps on keepin’ on. 15K, holy wah, big number!

[jenhen1]

Golfballs, yes! Collect them and trade for them whenever we see them. Have a whole bucket full. Also collect bottle caps and poker chips. We love the trading aspect of the game and are sad to see it somewhat trivialized nowadays.

Get most of our “cache stash” items from Wal-Mart or Dollar Tree.

[jenhen1]

Check out GC12XH9 east of Rice Lake. I’m kind of a geology nut and this one takes you to a very geologically significant area. One of my all time favorites!

Also, if you find yourself on the Minnesota north shore and like the Silver Island Treasure cache (easily in my top 5 of all time), then also go after GC154EY. It’s another prime CAG cache and is quite the adventure.

There’s also a nice series on a loop of the IAT placed by Yuppers last year starting with GCK59E and GC22306.

[jenhen1]

Good question, T&B. When is it too much? I always thought from way back when that Groundspeak frowned on power trails. Apparently that must have changed.

Personally, if you’re actually biking a bike trail, I feel it’s a real hassle to stop peddling every tenth of a mile or even quarter mile, so we’ll normally hit a few going one direction and a few going back. Plus, can the quality of the cache/hide really be there every tenth of a mile? If you would like to see a bike trail done right, come up and check out the Chippewa River Trail series. They’re spread out reasonably and most of the hides are unique and worthwhile.

Where I have a problem is when the power trail spills over to a National Senic Trail. There is a one mile stretch of the Ice Age Trail in Taylor County that has a cache placed every tenth of a mile. I believe if that trend continues, the trail associations may start to have a real problem with geocaching on those trails. The Appalachian Trail in some states already has prohibited caches from being placed on it. The AT falls under the same designation as the North Country Trail and the Ice Age Trail in Wisconsin, being National Scenic Trails, and if geocaching were not allowed on these great trails it would be a real travesty. There is some Federal governance to these trails, and I say tread lightly.

I think it would be very unfortunate if one day geocaching along let’s say the Ice Age Trail evolved into one huge power trail.

[jenhen1]

I’m in for 2.5%. Too good of a deal to pass up if Zuma wins the bid!

[jenhen1]

Nice job Karl! Saw you were gettin’ close and now see ya got it. Congrats on the milestone! See ya on the trail.

[jenhen1]

Another thing… If the log book in a cache has enough room, do you write a lengthy log there? We usually do. We also like to read what others have said, and when we do cache maintenance on our caches, we like to see what the finders have said in those log books, too.

Now THAT’S a lost art! Gone are the days when someone actually takes the time write something interesting in the physical log. Sadly so. I like to read the physical log too.

On a power trail I understand it’s difficult to write something unique about every cache, but how about writing about different experiences along the trail? It doesn’t have to be just about finding the cache and the experience at the cache. Saw a deer near here, wildflowers were really popping, heard an owl as the sun was going down, my wife pushed me down and kicked me in the head near here, etc…Use a different experience for every cache you find and soon you have plenty of unique experiences that the cache owner will undoubtedly know is not cut and pasted.

A great cache should be acknowledged. As a cache owner I really enjoy reading others’ comments and assume other cache owners do too.

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