Welcome back to another edition of Ask Signal. This month Signal received a variety of questions ranging from the topics of trackables, to difficulty and terrain, to what to do with full logbooks. Read on to learn what answers and advice Signal shared in response to these questions.

What does it mean to choose to “lock” your trackable?

Locking a trackable essentially takes the trackable out of the game. After a trackable is locked, other players cannot log the trackable in any way.

A player might want to use this action on a trackable they own if the trackable has received some bogus logs and they want to prevent those types of logs from accumulating.

What if my cache is in a tree that is too thin to climb, and a TOTT (tool of the trade) is needed to get it? Should that increase the terrain, or the difficulty?

Great question! The difficulty rating for a geocache typically represents the effort needed to solve and find the cache and logbook at the coordinates. The terrain rating represents the physical effort needed to arrive at coordinates. If a cacher’s feet are on the ground and a TOTT is needed to reach a cache in a tree, then HQ suggests that the effort needed to find the cache and logbook (difficulty) is increased.

What if there isn’t any space in the logbook for me to sign?

If a logbook is full, make the cache owner aware of the situation by posting an “Owner attention requested” log. This alerts the owner to the issue so they know to check on the cache and replace the logbook.

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