As we were out west, many of the geocaches that we were searching for were older Earth Caches and much older Virtual Caches. Now, I like to play “by the book” but I had to make some judgement calls as I went to log some of these caches.
Several of the virtual caches were owned by players who have not logged in for many years. It is always nice to get an older cache to add to the statistics, especially on the grandfathered cache types such as Virtual. I went ahead with the “found it” log since I did actually find it, took photos to prove it in each case, and sent the answers to the CO even though I knew that in some cases, there would very likely be no response.
Most of the owners responded with a “thank you, your answers are correct”. There was one Earth Cache owner I was upset with, but it was actually his lack of involvement with his cache that bothered me so much. I can see from his profile that he is a very active cacher. He had adopted this Earth Cache several years ago, but it was obvious that he was not monitoring it. We could not get close enough to GZ to gather the required logging information, so I had to log a DNF. There were ten “found it” logs and one “post note” since our DNF. Many of those logs flat out stated that they were unable to get close to GZ, but they claimed the find anyway! Other logs did not mention the trail closure, so I suspect that they figured “close is good enough”, and no one had photographic evidence that they had met the requirements (if they had posted that photographic evidence, it would be evidence of trespassing since the area was closed!).
I appreciate that it takes a lot of effort to research and get an Earth Cache published. I understand that it requires a lot of time to monitor the logs and verify the answers, especially on an Earth Cache that is located in a busy place like a National Park. In this case, the original Earth Cache placer adopted the cache out because he was no longer able to give it the necessary attention, but he wanted to see it continue. The current cache owner seems to be all about the numbers – both finds and hides. He was too busy even to respond to my message about the status of the cache (I had asked if there was some alternate logging requirements that had allowed the other users to claim “found it”, hoping that everyone was not cheating!).
So, I guess what I would like to say is, if you own a cache of any type that you are not able to monitor, consider allowing someone to adopt it (if it is an older cache or a grandfathered cache type) or archiving it. I have placed four traditional caches over the years, and have had to archive three of them, mostly because I have not been able to continue to commit to the maintenance that they required. If you have hundreds of cache hides and tens of thousands of cache finds, it seems like you are going to have a hard time keeping up with all of the log monitoring that is required to do any of those caches justice.