[k12linux]

We’re just starting (first find on 1/7) so I can tell you what a newbie impression/expectation is of the meaning of the “Available in winter” attribute. We assumed it meant that you won’t need to go on a snow shoveling treasure hunt barring extreme circumstances (somebody plowed a snowbank over it, cache fell to the ground, major drifting, unusually high snowfall, etc.)

The one we found last night shortly before FP on this thread seemed like a reasonable one to flag as available (and it did have the attribute.) I had to move a couple of inches of snow to expose it and it may have been under the snow level in a typical WI winter. But there were only a few “obvious” places to hide. So even if you had to dig with your hands during a normal winter you should still be able to find it pretty quickly.

In other words, if it is marked as available, I assumed that meant that normal winter snows won’t bump the difficulty up by more than say 1/2 a star. So if the cache normally takes 5-10 minutes for someone to find, maybe it’ll take 15-20. If it normally would take them around half an hour, maybe it’ll take an hour or more.

What I wouldn’t expect would be for cache that has a difficulty of 2 to end up taking an experienced cacher 6-8 hours to find or need to chisel out with an ice chipper.

But those are all just assumptions and we all know what they say about when you assume something. 😀

[k12linux]

@Fireman wrote:

I am just waiting for one I can follow the foot prints too 🙂

Good luck. Last time we ended up making an easy to follow set of tracks, we sent our 8 yo running around in the snow to every possible hiding spot. Even had him run circles around a tree where it wasn’t. 😈

(Wish I had that kind of energy!)

[k12linux]

It might help to keep track of dates of bigger snowfalls during the year then look for logs from finds dated since the snow was up. That’s what I have been trying to do lately.

Fortunately there are still a lot of “available in winter” caches around to find near here… hopefully most of their owners used some common sense when setting attributes.

[k12linux]

I agree that trackable owners probably shouldn’t release their items into the wild without some kind of note. At least not if they want them to possibly stay in circulation for a while. But in my limited experience so far, 3/4 of the trackables I’ve seen don’t have a label/note.

My only real concern is that the current version of the stashnote says: “If you wish to take something, please trade something for others to find and exchange.” If I hadn’t taken the time to educate myself a bit on geocaching before starting, I would have taken that as, “You can have anything in this box as long as you leave something in return.”

Most of the people that I know who spend a lot of time out in the wild are pretty honest folk. Most of them also would either leave the box alone, or would read the stashnote to try to figure out what it was doing out there in the first place.

If I were the one to stumble on a cache without knowing anything about the sport, I would like to know that some of those things in the box (perhaps the most interesting looking ones) are not actually supposed to be taken home and kept for as a souvenir.

BTW, it seems like geocoins are not covered very well in the GC.com intro materials. It took a fair amount of time reading up on geocaching before I learned that it is possible the tracking code might be the only thing identifying some items like geocoins as special. I personally think that is bad design, but it is what it is.

[k12linux]

@RSplash40 wrote:

Hey. I might know you 😉 need help you know how to reach me

Sure thing. If we start running low I’ll be in touch. I’m sure you know of some in the area that don’t have attributes set but really are findable without digging through the snow.

Who knows though… by Saturday there might not be any snow left to hide caches.

[k12linux]

Thanks everybody for the welcome.

I have been working on making a list for this weekend. There are quite a few caches marked as available in the winter, that have been found since the last good snowfall, or that look like they would probably be good.

There are certainly enough to keep us busy.

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