Ever since January 2022 I've been on a bit of an obsession: knocking off peaks from the Sierra Club's list of ninety prominent peaks of the Bay Area: the Nifty Ninety. You can blame tiptop3 since it was he who introduced the list to me. To see how many I had already "bagged", I did a GC search of the nearest cache to each peak. From there I found I had already summited 35 of the peaks just from general GC wanderings! To assist others, I made that a public list of those caches. And now that I had a list of caches to go on... the rest was history. As of this placement I have found 67 of the 90 peaks, and placed or found 58 caches from that public list.
Now that I've caught the virus, I'm attempting to pass it on to others. 
With modern GC challenge cache rules, I can't make a suitable challenge around these caches, so instead I've placed this Encouragement Cache!
You are encouraged but not required to have found 25 of the associated Nifty 90 caches on that list before logging this one. Or you can log it anyway, I can only encourage you to qualify. 
D is 3.5 stars if you've been suitably encouraged, and for the puzzle. 2.5 stars for the puzzle and the find alone. I've marked the terrain as 4.0 to encompass the amount of terrain you'll need to pick up 25 of the Nifties (the lowest elevation ones are pretty easy), though the real T rating is 3.0.
To increase the encouragement, I have posted a table of all eventual true loggers (found, signed, and qualified: Gold Star ⭐!), plus the top 20 that have qualified (greyed out if not yet signed). To create the list I did a search for the "usual suspects"; if I've forgotten you or someone else, please let me know and I'll add them to the list. Here's that table, including ourselves for encouragement.
| cacher |
found |
owned |
total |
cacher |
found |
owned |
total |
| ⭐ Cats4us ⭐ |
89 |
1 |
90 |
⭐ jellis |
67 |
3 |
70 |
| ⭐ In The Vault ⭐ |
90 |
0 |
90 |
⭐ aliasmom |
69 |
1 |
70 |
| ⭐ 7Nails ⭐ |
90 |
0 |
90 |
⭐ ecrane |
62 |
1 |
63 |
| ⭐ nozy nabor ⭐ |
90 |
0 |
90 |
⭐ Team Libra |
61 |
0 |
61 |
| ⭐ atc ⭐ |
90 |
0 |
90 |
⭐ Blackavar1 |
55 |
5 |
60 |
| ⭐ bluewarble |
89 |
0 |
89 |
⭐ MapperX |
47 |
0 |
47 |
| ⭐ tiptop3 |
89 |
0 |
89 |
⭐ Turtle.X |
42 |
0 |
42 |
| ⭐ Dr. Flonase |
85 |
1 |
86 |
⭐ KM6AQT |
33 |
0 |
33 |
| ⭐ KendraH |
82 |
0 |
82 |
⭐ Ullii |
32 |
0 |
32 |
| ⭐ dantreeman |
81 |
0 |
81 |
㏇ penguinphloppers ⭐ |
80 |
10 |
90 |
| ⭐ 1️⃣ not2b |
78 |
1 |
79 |
DavidT21 & Fisherwoman |
84 |
1 |
85 |
| ⭐ camper248 |
78 |
0 |
78 |
chrisfawcett |
81 |
0 |
81 |
Updated 09/27/2026
OK, now the puzzle and find. I've learned from a previous Encouragement Cache that either folks don't read 
or they just log anyway, which is fine. But to add a slight bit more of a hurdle to those that might otherwise stumble upon a traditional, I've included a simple in theme puzzle to solve before the coordinates are provided. To solve the puzzle, enter the MD5 hash of peak #25 (according to peakbagger's list; 10 ASCII characters including one space, both words first-letter capitalized) from the Nifty 90 list into the provided Certitude. If successful, the coordinates and a hide hint will be provided. There are many MD5 generators available; ask the Google, or ping me if this doesn't make sense.
You can validate your puzzle solution with certitude.
Good luck and go get 'em!
PS: perhaps, being a savvy hiker and at least moderate puzzler, you can tell from the cache title that our work is not yet done.
Update 8/13/2022: Congratulations to not2b for the 1️⃣ FTF!
Update 11/11/2022: The Tier 2 cache has been published!
Update 11/30/2022: New caches have been placed to replace Pilot's Knob and Mott's Peak. In order to not have contestants go negative, I will keep the old and the new caches on the accepted list going forward.
Update 12/13/2022: Two new multis were published to cover Wolf Ridge and Brushy Peak (and Point Reyes Hill was added two weeks ago), woohoo! Thanks Blackavar1 for adding Wolf.
Update 04/07/2023: The Tier 3 cache has been published!
Update 04/11/2023: two new caches closer to peaks have been swapped into the master list. GCA73HB replaces GC45X39 on San Pedro Mountain; GC9TPFR replaces GC2V1Y8 on St. Joseph's Hill. Previous finders of the original cache will not lose credit for that find on this table.
Update 05/17/2023: I've gone through and made an official list of accepted archived caches near peaks and updated the table to reflect finds for those caches. Numbers may have changed accordingly.
Update 11/24/2023: The Tier 4 cache has been published!
Update 11/02/2024: Congratulations to Cats4us and In The Vault for being the first two to complete the full Nifty 90 cache collection set!!! ⭐ Double Gold Star!!! ⭐
Update 01/27/2025: Congratulations to (ahem) penguinphloppers for being the third to complete the full Nifty 90 cache collection set! ⭐ Gold Star! ⭐
Update 06/19/2025: Congratulations to 7Nails for being the fourth to complete the full Nifty 90 cache collection set! ⭐ Gold Star! ⭐
Update 05/03/2026: Congratulations to nozy nabor for being the fifth to complete the full Nifty 90 cache collection set! ⭐ Gold Star! ⭐
Update 07/11/2026: Congratulations to atc for being the sixth to complete the full Nifty 90 cache collection set! ⭐ Gold Star! ⭐