B - GB 2 - Why is the Road Less Traveled? Traditional Cache
Hidden : 8/29/2013
Difficulty:
1 out of 5
Terrain:
1.5 out of 5

Size: Size: micro (micro)

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Geocache Description:


GeoBasics 2


Why is the Road Less Traveled?


There are all sorts of caches and some are harder than others. A cache may be hard to physically trek to, or it may be difficult to figure out where the final container is after a quick and easy walk from your car. It may even be hard to figure out where you're actually supposed to be going in the first place.

With such a wide variety of creative ways to hide a container, there needs to be a way to tell other cachers how much difficulty they should expect to encounter on a particular trip. This is the purpose of the difficulty and terrain ratings that gets assigned to each cache.

If you look at the top of any cache page right below the title, you'll see the star ratings. There are 9 available ratings for each (1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3, 3.5, 4, 4.5, and 5).

The terrain rating reflects how hard the trip will be. It may be something as simple as parking right next to the cache. It might require some light hiking or maybe you have to climb up a steep ridge on your hands and knees. Whatever the reason, a higher terrain rating means you're probably going to have to break a sweat.

The difficulty rating reflects the various aspects in how hard the cache is to actually find. It might be based on how hard it is to actually figure out where you need to be going (puzzles, multiple steps, etc.) It may be based on how hard it will be to find the hiding place once you finish your journey to ground zero. There are countless reasons that could cause a cache's difficulty rating to go up.

Both of these ratings are pretty subjective and are selected by the cache owner. While a rating will follow generally recognized guidelines, they're often weighted against unspoken standards that develop among all the players in a given area. As you gain more experience you'll get a better idea of what the ratings mean to people around you.

With 9 options in each of the two categories, there are 81 total combinations. This variety in cache ratings is easily visualized with a grid. When graphed, they result in what is referred to as the D/T Grid - the Difficulty / Terrain Grid.

The grid displayed at the bottom of each of the caches in this series is a color coded heat map of the difficulty grid. The numbers show where each cache in this series will fall within the D\T grid. If you complete all 81 caches in this series, you will have worked your way through sampling one of each combination. This series is in no way a comprehensive collection of the caches that you'll encounter, but it should be a good sampling.

Completing one of each D/T combination is a big accomplishment that many cachers spend years to complete. If you'd like to track your own progress, you can click on your user name in the upper right corner which will take you to your main profile page. If you then select "Statistics" from the list at the top of the page, you will see your account's basic stats. Toward the bottom of this page you will see your own personal grid.



The primary purpose of The GeoBasics Series is to introduce common concepts of Geocaching to new players leading to full game immersion as the players are guided through a selection of progressively more difficult caches.

The secondary purpose of this series is to satisfy the requirements for several standard Geocaching challenges.

The series is broken up into 4 subsections based on the skill level required to attempt the caches within each. The numerical order assigned to the caches is intended to allow a player to easily track their progression through each subsection before moving on to the next one. However, this is not a requirement since the series is not placed entirely in a geographically linear order. (For someone completely new to the game, following the numerical order for the duration of the introduction is advised.)

The GeoBasics Difficulty Chart
Section 1 Introduction 1-9
Section 2 Basics 10-25
Section 3 Intermediate 26-49
Section 4 Advanced 50-81

Terrain
Difficulty 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
1 1 [[ 2 ]] 5 10 17 26 37 50 65
1.5 3 4 7 12 19 28 39 52 67
2 6 8 9 14 21 30 41 54 69
2.5 11 13 15 16 23 32 43 56 71
3 18 20 22 24 25 34 45 58 73
3.5 27 29 31 33 35 36 47 60 75
4 38 40 42 44 46 48 49 62 77
4.5 51 53 55 57 59 61 63 64 79
5 66 68 70 72 74 76 78 80 81

Additional Hints (No hints available.)



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