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0:00:13.3 Chris Ronan: Hello, everybody. Welcome to inside Geocaching HQ. I am Chris Ronan, AKA Rock Chalk. One of the HQ lackeys in Seattle. Thank you for having to listen to our podcast. It has been a minute since the last episode. We return by tackling an endlessly debated topic within the geocaching community, Difficulty and Terrain ratings. This is the Year of the Hide and we are discussing various cache ownership issues throughout the year on the geocaching blog and elsewhere and DT ratings are definitely something that you must consider when submitting a cache listing for review. So we thought it would be an interesting conversation to have. So we rounded up several lackeys with a wide range of perspectives on this topic and set them loose. So here I am with Cathy and Adam from HQ’s community engagement team, Sven from the product team and Jon from the data team talking DT.

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0:01:24.6 CR: Well, we have a long and distinguished list of panelists here for this discussion about difficulty and terrain. So we’ve got Sven. Sven is on the product team here at HQ previously on the community volunteer support team. We have Adam and Cathy from the CE team at HQ. We have mountain bike from the data team. So a group of folks who have geocached quite a lot who have hidden caches, who have been through the DT, I wanna use the word quagmire, that just came to my head.

0:02:00.5 Cathy: Evolution.

0:02:01.2 CR: Evolution’s another word. It’s a topic that is discussed endlessly at events and on hikes and I’ve just heard about this topic a lot. There are no, well, there are maybe some right answers, but this is a very subjective topic. So we’ll say that off the top before we get into anything. I don’t know. I’m curious to see where this will go. So this is the year of the hide. And as you’re hiding caches, difficulty and terrain is one of those things that you have to address. It’s part of the cache submission process. So for a cache owner, that person, when they hide their cache and they submit it on the website, they decide what those ratings are going to be. So maybe we’ll just start by going around and each of you can talk about as a cache owner, because you’ve all hidden caches. What is top of mind for you as you are deciding what difficulty and what terrain rating to assign to the caches that you own, and Cathy, how about we start with you?

0:03:05.0 Cathy: Well, I try to be as accurate as possible ’cause I want people to know what to expect. I think the one thing that’s good to say is that if I am on the fence about where to rate something, should I go up to this or down to that, I usually will go up the half star because people would much rather find out something is easier than they thought than harder than they thought and something they can’t manage.

0:03:30.4 CR: Yeah. That makes sense. How about you, Jon?

0:03:33.0 Jon: I agree with that. Although I think I have been accused in the past of underrating caches. I recall one that I did down in, at my parents’ timeshare in Mexico, where it was a scramble at the end up some rocks from the beach and I did it in flip flops. And so I figured, “Oh, that’s a three.” And I just got reamed by people who were like, “We almost died.” So it’s good to get a variety of opinions on it, I guess. And not always think that you know exactly what it will take everybody to do that. So, kind of along the same lines of what Cathy is saying, I would say, think of it in the way that other people looking for it would… I’m really rambling, sorry.

0:04:25.7 Jon: I think it’s really easy for us to, as hiders to think of it as the hider only, and not put ourselves in the shoes of the other person. Not only do you have to get to some place, but you then have to find it. It’s easy for a hider who knows where the cache is to maybe go up that steep incline, go right to it and say, “Oh, that’s just a two and a half or something,” but someone who has to navigate up and down and left and right on that incline covered with rocks without knowing where the cache is, it might not be that straightforward. And so, yeah. They’re on the side of caution and bump it up.

0:05:06.1 CR: Jon one of my… Something that always comes to mind for me, when I think about the subjectivity of DT ratings is actually involves one of your old caches. I don’t think, I think you’ve archived it. It was over in Eastern Washington and it was one of the state park geo… It was the one that you owned on the state park geo tour?

0:05:25.6 Jon: Oh yeah.

0:05:26.5 CR: And it was interesting because that was up there on that Butte and you owned that cache and there was someone else that owned another cache also up on that Butte and each of you had rated them very differently on the terrain. And I just thought this is a perfect illustration of how one person might see something totally differently than another person.

0:05:47.9 Jon: Oh yeah. I know which one you’re talking about that was on Steamboat rock in Central Washington. It was fairly straightforward. A little bit of an uphill hike, but then there was a scramble of maybe 50 yard or something up a draw to get onto the top. And that’s where most people had the problems, but then once you’re on the top, it’s perfectly flat and it’s yeah. That’s maybe one. I do recall some complaints on that one.

0:06:19.2 CR: Sven, you have a number of puzzle caches that I still haven’t figured out. And a letter box cache that has been taunting me now for months. Because I haven’t figured that out either. So first of all, maybe you can explain how to solve all of your puzzles right here, and then you can tell us about how you go about coming up with the difficulty… Maybe difficulty specifically, but also you can talk about terrain, but you’re somebody who has a lot of experience with puzzles like that. So how do you decide what you’re gonna rate one of those, that I can’t figure out right now?

0:07:00.3 Sven: So my puzzles usually are based on a lot of my personal interests which I dare say is true for most people that hide puzzle caches in one way or the other. So being a linguist by trade, I have a couple puzzles that are based on subject matter like that. And then there’s one that’s based on movies in the wider stands, and one that’s based on time keeping, time pieces in the widest sense. So movies between those three is probably the subject matter that most people could identify with. And so that by default, for me personally, a subject matter that may not be as close to other people’s heart or as familiar for other people, already increases the difficulty of the puzzle and hence the difficulty rating. Trying to put myself in other people’s shoes and like, this is probably something that they’ve never heard of.

0:08:04.7 Sven: So it already starts at three plus. And then the other thing that’s been really helpful of course, working at HQ that’s very easy, is getting some fellow cachers, some co-workers to beta test some of those puzzles and give me feedback on what they think an appropriate difficulty rating for that might be. And then basically just kind of taking a median between the various feedbacks that I’ve received or either adding a hint, whether that previously wasn’t one and keeping the score or removing a hint and bumping it up. I found getting feedback from other people on the… On both the at home experiences or the field experiences has been very useful. And ’cause you mentioned terrain, I do have various caches that are out in the mountain wilderness outside of HQ. And so those will by default have higher terrain ratings of course, because of the remote nature.

0:09:10.3 Sven: But in that case, your experience may differ significantly. If you have a 4X4 high clearance vehicle and can kind of drive further up into the back country. Or if you need to park your passenger car further down on the mountain at one of the Trailheads and then hike your way up. So in that case, I’ve usually… Cathy was saying earlier, she gives the extra half star. In those cases I usually give the rating for whatever the harder experience would be also. And so if you take the car, it might be, I know, a terrain one and a half, but if you need to hike the whole way, it might very well be a three and a half. And so for me you get the three and a half for that.

0:09:57.6 CR: Okay, Adam this whole thing was your idea. So…

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0:10:03.0 CR: Let’s see what you think about this. You’ve hidden quite a few caches yourself. Have your ideas on DT evolved over time, or are they pretty set the way that they were when you first started?

0:10:16.2 Adam: No, they’re always a work in progress. I think for me as a player, when I discovered the DT as a very, very new cacher, I was so thrilled. It was a way to categorize caches and also explain into muggles relatively easily. When I meet a muggle out in the wild, I do have to run into those people every once in a while. I see that there’s a lot of confusion around geocaching and how you categorize them. And so I think for new players and for non geocachers entirely, the idea of categorizing caches, both on two metrics is really unique. So when I was a new player, I was so excited to use that system. When I think placing caches and using it is actually harder than it appears. Because thinking about puzzles, I recently hid a puzzle very close to where I live and that was tough for me, because it was my first puzzle cache in a long, long time to hide.

0:11:11.9 Adam: And I thought, “Wait for difficulty, this is about… Like Sven mentioned, an area of interest to me. In this case, it’s about flags. And so I love flags, everyone who knows me, knows I love flags. And so they know me. I know it like the back of my hand, it’s very easy, but my question was, as a hider, do I sum the difficulty rating? I thought it was a pretty challenging puzzle. I later on learned that my initial rating of a 4.0 was actually pretty high and that I underestimated the power of Google. And so when I realized people could use their computer, of course, then I realized that would reduce the rating. But my question in the back of my head still lingered. When you place a mystery cache, it’s different from a traditional cache because a traditional is, as I say, kind of point and shoot, go to the place you find the cache bim bam boom. But what about a puzzle where you have to solve the puzzle? And then, you have to go to the place and then find the cache. Do you sum the challenges of both or do you just have one general rating? Almost an average of sorts.

0:12:18.8 Adam: And so for me, that was kind of a challenging question on terrain too, I think it’s also funky ’cause we have a coworker named Kelly goes by the name K Taylor 211, who is a ultra runner, runs extremely long races and is very fit. And so I believe a T4 for her versus someone who is more sedentary, not someone who goes out and runs or exercises quite a bit will be pretty tough. And so I think to your point, Chris, the subjectivity of caching and the subjectivity of difficulty and terrain is what makes this such a controversial topic because, everyone has found a cache or very likely has found a cache and thought, “Wait a minute, this is not how I would rate it. How did the person who hid this get there?”

0:13:06.5 Adam: I found a cache that was… I was very gracious to find it. It was a 1, 4 and it truly was very similar to an LPC. And I thought, “Hmm, this is very generous of them. I’m not going to argue with them about this rating but it feels a little cheap.” And it was my first 1, 4. And so I gotta free my 1, 4 on my rating is a pretty easy one. So it’s always a point for me that kind of sticks in my head. And that’s the reason why I thought that conversation would be worthy of our time.

0:13:40.7 CR: Yeah, I started wondering, do you guys ever change the ratings, either difficulty or terrain after you’ve got a cache out and you find out maybe the puzzle is easier to solve than you thought it would be, or people aren’t having as much trouble with the terrain or they’re having more trouble than you thought they would, or are you pretty set? When you put it out?

0:14:00.6 Cathy: I’ll change it. In the very beginning, if I think I’ve got it wrong. I don’t like to do it after that, because people use the terrain and difficulty ratings for challenges, and I can really mess up a lot of people’s challenge stats if I do that. But if I’m wrong and it’s pretty clear right away, I will fix it.

0:14:21.3 CR: Yeah, that’s the worst. If you look at your DT grid one day and all of a sudden it’s… There’s some square that you worked really hard for and you’re like, wait a second, that… Didn’t I use to have…

0:14:33.4 Jon: I see that in the forums a lot. There’s always someone saying like “Oh, I lost my physigrid because of this, or the like. And yeah, it turns out that owner has edited their ratings and then the person thinks that we should track the ratings for every person for all of time, so that that doesn’t happen, and they don’t realize the amount of data that could end up being. But yeah personally, I try to tweak things based on feedback constantly.

0:15:12.3 CR: Well, yeah, and the other thing is sometimes I have to take a step back and remember the purpose of the system is to enable people to be better prepared for the caching experience. That now there’s been the gamification of the DT system, and I’m very much a participant in that gamification, but the reason for it is to help people have an accurate idea of what they’re getting into. You would hate to have a… Well, it’s not often that you’re gonna have a 1, 1 that turns into a 5, 5, but on the…

0:15:49.1 Jon: Although, I have seen that.

0:15:50.2 CR: You’ve seen a 1, 1 that was actually a 5, 5 experience?

0:15:55.1 Jon: Oh no, I’ve seen it go the other way.

0:15:56.5 CR: Okay, yeah, that’s what I was saying that does not happen.

0:15:58.7 Jon: Generally after publication for some reason.

0:16:00.7 CR: Yeah, but the 5, 5, yeah, sometimes you’ll be like, Wait, why is this a 5, 5? This seems awfully… But yeah, there’s a… Okay so.

0:16:09.7 Cathy: It depends. Sorry.

0:16:13.1 CR: No, go ahead Cathy.

0:16:13.2 Cathy: It depends. I’ve done some caches where the write-up, it was a low rating for terrain, the owner said, “This is easy. Your grandma can do it.” So I get there and I have to crawl on my hands and knees in tunnels, in bushes to get to where the cache is, and I’m like, “I would love to see that guy’s Grandma.” It can go either way.

0:16:37.3 Sven: I remember that as far as difficulty was concerned on some of my puzzles I received some feedback like after the first few when I was still like a newer hider, and so I probably bumped it or lowered by a half point or something. But yeah, to Cathy’s and Jon’s point and also, Chris, I don’t wanna mess with people long-term, and I know how upset people get or how passionate people are about their statistics. What I will say is, when you mentioned that, one example came to mind that I found in Germany when I was at an event there once. And it was the cache that was hidden out on a boardwalk, that was a ways into the water. And depending on the season, they took down the boardwalk and only left the frame. So some months of the year, the CO then bumped the terrain rating to a three or a four and then in the summer it was like a terrain two or something. And so I remember us kind of crawling out onto that removed boardwalk just on the frames on all fours to find that cache. And only to learn a couple of months later, like my physic square being gone, and I was like, “I worked so hard for that.” Yeah, that’s why I’d say don’t get too attached to whatever square you might have.

0:18:09.7 CR: Or get some extras.

0:18:11.3 Cathy: I think it doesn’t make as big a difference if it’s in the middle of the road range where there’s lots of caches with that difficulty in terrain. I have some that I do change because of the way the terrain changes, but they’re in that middle group where there’s tons of caches to choose from. So nobody is relying on my one cache to fill one of their DT squares.

0:18:40.0 CR: Yeah, if you’re going from one and a half one and a half to one and a half two.

0:18:44.0 Cathy: Yeah it doesn’t matter.

0:18:44.5 CR: That’s not a big deal, But yeah, if you’re going from like 1, 1 to 1, 5, that’s gonna wrangle some people. Okay, so back to the… Again, you’re at the hide cache emission process, Cathy, you’re a community volunteer reviewer, in addition to being a lackey. So when you review caches, something comes in, do you ever say anything about the DT rating that the cache owner has applied to the listing?

0:19:10.9 Cathy: Usually not, unless I can see that they’re very definitely faking it to give people some free high terrain or high difficulty rating. But because it’s subjective, I don’t make them change it, I gently suggest that you might wanna do that, but if they insist on it being bad or so incorrect, I just pinch my nose and publish.

0:19:36.2 CR: Sven, you mentioned Germany a second ago, so I do wanna bring up the difference in regions because whether it’s the difference between states or the difference between countries, things can really vary quite a bit, and that’s part of the reason to Cathy’s point that reviewers aren’t able to necessarily say, “Okay, here’s right, here’s wrong,” because unless you’re there and you can see it personally, which reviewers pretty much can’t, they have to take the CO’s there and… But I’m curious specifically about… I feel like what I’ve cached in Germany, and I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this, the DTs are maybe… I don’t know if more realistic is the right term. I don’t wanna say that, but I feel like a one and a half, one and a half there is different than a one and a half, one and a half sometimes here in the States. What do you think?

0:20:29.8 Sven: I would generally agree with that, I think part of that comes from the on average greater degree of passion, not to say obsession with statistics in the very active German geocaching community. And so people are very cognizant of difficulty in terrain ratings and the implications that their hide may have for other people. And at the same time, people on average tend to be more outspoken about if they believe something is not accurate or doesn’t feel right, whatever right means. And so what I’ve found though is that other than your traditional, like I know guardrail or your traditional tree stumps somewhere in the woods, like the very basic hides that I feel like once you move beyond that, the average cache in Germany is a lot more difficult than a lot of the stuff that I’ve found in the US over the years.

0:21:38.9 Sven: And by difficult, I don’t necessarily mean having to jump through a ton of hoops to get to the container, but just either something being very well camouflaged or there’s a lot more gadget caches on average, where you then do have to complete field puzzle elements to get to the container eventually, or, well, the container is obvious, but to get to the log book eventually. But I think the accuracy, mostly in my opinion, applies to the terrain. So with that being a lot more tree climbing involved in Germany, T5 Caches will always require some kind of tree climbing or some kind of boating. I feel like there’s a lot less technical tree climbing around in the US for example. People are very particular about what they consider like a tree climb that is worthy of a T5 and there’s a whole Codex within the German community about what constitutes real T5 caching. So I think while we, as HQ can provide sort of a general framework and can encourage people to be as accurate and as specific as possible, once that kind of stuff goes out into the community, the community nationally is gonna make their own deductions from it, gonna take their own own learnings from it and take it to whatever that next step is.

0:23:16.3 Adam: Your point earlier, Chris, one thing that came to mind when you said that the point of difficulty in terrain is to give the player a frame of mind. To know when going to a cache, this will be easy, this will be hard, this will be somewhere in between. For people in a wheelchair who already have mobility impairments. Having that T1 is actually almost like a green light go. That’s a cache, that’s easy for them or will be available to them. And so it’s almost a way for players to know, not only will it be easy or hard, but also is this one that I can do without assistance, which I think is a real magic, more magical element of the game that we often don’t think about. Can you find the cache? Will it be easy or hard for people in a wheelchair though, at a much bigger conversation?

0:24:01.9 CR: Yeah, that’s an excellent point, Adam. And along those lines, there is an article on the geocaching blog titled “Geocaching for all. Is your geocache accessible?” And that has some things to consider as you’re deciding whether your cache merits a one star terrain rating, which would mean that it is wheelchair accessible. Jon and Cathy, from a historical standpoint, you’ve been playing the game longer than the rest of us. And I’m curious how you think difficulty in terrain has evolved over time. Sometimes I feel like when I’m finding caches that were placed in 2000, 2001, ’03 those early years sometimes it’ll be like a two terrain or something and I’m like having to plan a whole day to hike out to this thing. It’s like a several hour hike and I’m like, “how in the world is this a two terrain and the same cache? It seems if it’s placed today, it would be significantly higher.” Am I dreaming that?

0:25:02.3 Cathy: No.

0:25:02.9 CR: Or Do you feel like things have gotten…

0:25:06.3 Jon: Not at all.

0:25:06.4 CR: A little easier over time?

0:25:06.5 Cathy: I don’t think they had perspective back then, ’cause there weren’t so many geocaches, so they just guessed what they thought it might be and it tended to be rated easier back then. We have much better guidance for how to rate things now and so I think that’s why it’s changed.

0:25:24.5 Jon: Well, That’s pulling it in one one direction for sure. The other thing is like you mentioned, the gamification of things has pulled it in other directions as well. Overall I think there has been inflation of ratings fairly significantly. It took me forever to finish my fizzy, largely because for the first many, many, many years that I played there just weren’t caches that in… Within 200 miles of me that met certain criteria and now there are challenge trails around the country where you can go and loop multiple times in a day. And that’s just a different experience from the way it had been. But then like Cathy is saying, I seem to recall thinking back in the old days, “Oh, that hike up Mt. Roothaan,” Cathy knows that mountain.

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0:26:20.4 Jon: That’s probably, that’s probably a two cause it’s…

0:26:22.3 Cathy: No freaking way.

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0:26:23.3 Jon: That third… Let’s see Mount Everest would be, a five, so maybe Denali then is a four.

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0:26:32.3 Jon: And then, so you do that kind of logic. Well, it’s more of a… There’s a learning…

0:26:39.4 Cathy: That was a long time ago too. You didn’t have that perspective then either.

0:26:43.1 Sven: The other part may be too though that the area has just changed a lot, right. I remember trying to find a traditional that was in the middle of what used to be a field of some kind here, not too long ago. And then I made it like probably two tenths of a mile in, and it was definitely the kind of bushwhack that I wasn’t prepared for. Six or seven years since the thing was placed. And even in just those six or seven years, nature had reclaimed and regrown in the worst of ways, so.

0:27:19.3 Jon: This is why I would love to have some kind… His words are best for it. Some kind user generated crowdsourced ratings on caches. So that you could see how things have changed since the cache owner placed and rated the cache, and you could see like, “Oh, it’s getting harder over time.” Or these people really disagree with how difficult this is, that kind of thing.

0:27:48.6 CR: Yeah. It’d be like, how on Rotten Tomatoes, they have the critics rating and then the audience rating.

[laughter]

0:27:53.1 Jon: Yes, exactly. That’s what we need, get to work on that. Hey, Sven you’re on the product team, get to work on that.

0:28:00.8 Sven: Maybe we should call it rotten caches, but maybe that gives people the wrong idea.

0:28:04.6 CR: But yeah. Again, like we started with, and we’ve talked about it many time, we’ve mentioned it, it’s all subjective and do the best you can, rate it the best you can. And it’s fun to talk about, but like Sven said, it’s a game and let’s have fun with the game, right?

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0:28:23.4 CR: If you would like to read more about DT ratings, we do have a page in the geocaching help center at geocaching.com/help, just search for difficulty or terrain, and the topic will pop right up in the results. And if there is something that you would like for us to cover on the podcast, send us an email to podcast@geocaching.com. We always love to hear from you. Thanks again for listening, from me and Cathy, Adam, Jon, Sven, and all the lackeys at geocaching HQ. Happy caching.