Hope and a Prayer: Hi All,
After 10 years of geocaching and hiding caches, I have learned some things. It is interesting that after placing a new cache, there is a flurry of visitors to claim the cache. In our area there are about 60 active geocachers. When they have all made the find and logged, the number of new visitors drop substantially. I have come to believe that caches should be archived to let other geocachers place new caches in the vicinity. Let’s say a cache is hidden in a popular park. By archiving an old cache when visitations drop and then letting another geocacher place a new one, local geocachers will revisit the park to find and claim the new cache. With repeated archiving and then hiding new, the park will be revisited more often. I think Groundspeak should look at creating a policy for owners to renew their hides once a year or the cache will be automatic disabled in 30 days and archived in 60 Days. This would also weed out the non-maintained caches. The owner in the renewal request would be asked some simple questions to have the cache renewed. It would require just clicking a couple of check boxes to renew. This way the cache owner would have to consider whether to archive the cache for low visitation. The owner could request exemption if the cache was well written up for local history, botany, geology or had high favorite points. Long story short, I’m archiving many of my caches to let others have the opportunity to create a new cache in the same area, and for geocachers to revisit the area.
Best,
Hope and a Prayer