Ontario Geocaching Association

There always seemed to be something geocaching related going on in the month of October.

The first weekend of October started with a 30km hike event along the Blue Mountains section of the Bruce Trail (GCZZZG). The event saw 17 people come out and we are now 49.6% done of hiking the entire Brice Trail. Only 6 more years to go and we’ll be all done. Look for the next hike to be towards the end of April starting with the Beaver Valley section which we will hike in it’s entirety next year over 4 hikes.
The weekend of Oct 15/16 was Conservation Halton’s 3rd annual Fall Into Nature event where once again I was asked to help out to do geocaching demonstrations at Hilton Falls. Hilton Falls is always a nice place to visit with it’s beautiful waterfall and little known glacial pothole.

Then there was the monthly Golden Horseshoe Monthly Geocaching Club (GHMGC) group caching outing which saw 34 people attend and find over 35 caches as a group. It’s always nice to get together with fellow cachers, those that we have known for a long time and the ones we are meeting for the first time. The day was organized by nickjonh and was the start of our 3rd year of monthly group caching.

Finally the month ended with the 6th annual BFL Boot Camp (GC2YVBH) which saw 12 nighttime geocaches placed for the event. The theme was retro video games and the cache I placed was based on one of my favourite Apple IIe games, Wizardry. Once again many of the geocaches were taken to the next level and far beyond, bringing the geocacher many unique nighttime caching experiences. This year there were more than 200 cachers running around the woods of North Halton and surrounding areas with their flashlights, uv lights and lasers, many until the sun came up the next day. If you took part in this event, I would like to hear which your favourite cache of the night was.

Now November is hear and the month seems to be wide open for more geocaching adventures with family and friends.

BFL VI – …in a galaxy far, far away  (GC35FHF) – Owned by The Cacheketeerz
This cache was placed for the 6th annual BFL Boot Camp event and is based on the 1983 Atari Star Wars game. Hop into Luc Skywalker’s X-Wing Fighter taking on 3 missions to finally destroy the Death Star. Use your guidance system to lead the way. When your warning system activates, acquire your target and fire your laser at it to destroy it. Beware of Darth Vader as he is lurking about. This cache took a lot of work to set up and the total cost was about $300 for everything. Make sure you have a good flashlight, a laser pointer and a uv light.

About a month ago I received a message from a geocacher confessing they had lost one of our favourite geocoins. They knew we had emailed them several times over the past year but didn’t respond in hopes they would locate the coin and avoid the awkward confession. Sadly they didn’t find it and did the right thing by letting me know. This got me thinking a lot about habits, collections and the sad reality that trackables go missing. At the end of September I called out to members of the OGA to help out by answering a short survey about their personal trackables collections. 30 people took the time to answer my questions and here are some things I learned.

Trackables are big business! The average collection contains 63 trackables at an average price of $10.40 per item. I was surprised to find my collection of 45 coins was well below the average, looks like I need to go shopping! 80% of the reported trackables are geocoins, 16% are travel bugs and the remaining 4% are other items such as vehicle tags, tattoos, T-shirts etc. 41% of all trackables reported had not yet been activated. So with so many coins and bugs in our collections I was interested to find out about their travelling habits. I asked each respondent the question “How many total geocoins have you released to travel”. The answer was 20%, I asked the same question about travel bugs and the answer revealed a much higher 69%. So why are we releasing more bugs than coins? The answer is quite simple, many view coins as art or having a high sentimental value while bugs are cheaper, tend to travel farther and are 49% less likely to be stolen. This brought me to the section of the survey that asked how many are still travelling and why they go missing. 73% percent of you that have had coins and bugs go missing reported you would still release new ones because you enjoy watching them travel. 38% of coins released are still on the move and 80% of travel bugs released are still travelling. The biggest reasons you think trackables go missing are lazy logging practices, they get stolen and new cachers pick them up, are unsure what to do with them so simply end up keeping them.

So what can you do to help your trackables and those belonging to other cachers stay on the move? Pick caches that appear safe for trackables, in a low muggle area and frequently visited. Insert a card with a geocoin or a tag with a travel bug that indicates who the coin belongs to, its mission and to track it at www.geocaching.com. Educate new cachers, help them understand what to do and let them know they are valuable. Take great care in the trackables you move, log them in/out promptly and avoid losing them in the bottom of your cache bag. Keep tabs on your trackables, politely email someone that’s been hanging on to one for to long and ask them to move it along, don’t get too antsy and remember to always be polite. I’m hoping one day the cacher that has my coin will pack up house and find it down the back off the couch. It would bring me great joy to see it on the move again.

Golden Horseshoe Monthly Geocaching Club Outing

In the past geocaching events specifically excluded group caching activities.  In the past you couldn’t organize a group event with the sole purpose of going geocaching.  You had to have a social component.   Last Friday one of the Ontario reviewers posted a note in the Geocaching.com forums that could change that.

Recently the reviewers of Ontario approached Groundspeak with a request. We asked if Ontario could be used for a two month period to test the idea of allowing an Event to be listed for the sole purpose of group caching (organized cache hunt). We are pleased to announce that they agreed. For the months of November and December it will be possible to create an Event Cache to simply go geocaching. We are very interested to see what the community creates during this period and how these events are received. This test is exclusive to Ontario and will end on the 31st of December. We may have to limit the number of group hunt events that are listed in any given area. With the exception of allowing group hunts, all other guidelines still apply to the review process, like the 14 days advance notice. It should go without saying that each of these events, the logs posted on them and any forum feedback will be tracked for discussion with Groundspeak at the end of the test. This should be viewed as a one-time opportunity to explore a new way to be social with fellow geocachers on the trail and not an indicator or future developments. We look forward to this study and your feedback.

If you have questions about this you can reply within this forum thread or email me directly at cachedrone@gmail.com

This is only a test and will not affect all events. Some groups such as GHMGC or Ottawa’s Geomob could benefit from this type of listing, only time will tell. This is a limited time experiment. This test is only in effect until December 31, 2011. At that time Groundspeak will discuss it with the reviewers and decide on a future course of action. All other event rules will apply.

Northernpenguin over on Toronto Geocaching makes some interesting comments about how such a change could affect the community.  The actual affects of this test may not be felt until this test goes in to production if that ever happens.