Urban Caches

For all your general chit chat, caching or not.
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ziggiau
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Urban Caches

Post by ziggiau » 24 October 14 11:13 pm

Being a city girl and a very new cacher most of my finds so far have been located in urban areas where there don't seem to be opportunities to hide larger (even genuine small) caches. The larger caches that I've found have been tucked into hidden bushland areas where disguise is easier and muggle movements far less.

So is it just me or is it tough to hide decent sized caches in urban areas where everything is samey samey, with straight lines, nothing out of place, and hard surfaces everywhere? I get the feeling (from reading the forums and being involved in FB groups) that urban caching and it's prevalence of mint tins is not the favoured form of the hobby, certainly for those that have been at it for a while. Or does the urban setting simply pose a set of challenges that need overcoming and an even greater degree of creativity?

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Zalgariath
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Re: Urban Caches

Post by Zalgariath » 25 October 14 10:29 am

As a general rule bigger caches are harder to hide well and more expensive to make / replace. Couple this with the population density and therefore increased risk of mugglings and yes, hiding anything larger than a small is often tricky in an urban environment. Things like ammo cans are often unsuitable in suburbia as they could cause worry if found by a muggle and are attractive items to steal if stumbled upon.

That is not to say there are not any decent sized urban caches, but these days you really have to do your research to hunt them down. Often to protect the container they are puzzles or multis to stop 'casual cachers' finding them. I just ran a query and there are 549 regular or large caches within 30km of my home in the middle of Sydney. If that is what you prefer you can target them!

Large/Creative caches often = time/money. So it can be devastating when they get muggled and you really have to do your research before placing them. However, if you take the effort you are often rewarded with large numbers of find and favourite points as the fame of your awesome cache spreads!

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Zalgariath
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Re: Urban Caches

Post by Zalgariath » 25 October 14 10:43 am

Here are some good Sydney Regular / Large caches you could try...

http://coord.info/GC2KZR6 - Webcam Resurrection... my nasty cache, Ammo Can, good luck! :twisted:
http://geocaching.com.au/cache/ga0003 - Stringy - Very old GCA cache
http://geocaching.com.au/cache/ga6840 - Waverton Dragon - (Actually any of Roger's "Dragon" caches are usually most excellent!)
http://geocaching.com.au/cache/ga0005 - Does not Compute - Another top GCA cache
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_de ... 66a4ea9f5f - Postcards to NZ, will need a friend!
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_de ... 2cee948296 - The Matrix
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_de ... 30d52ee6e0 - Mount Drummoyne
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_de ... 56cb961506 - Safe City
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_de ... c13c9d1e66 - ZFPT
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_de ... 97a87f0c0f - Where Wolf
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_de ... 5fbd0047de - Sky Sharks
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_de ... 25c27c0a2b - Star Gazers Delight

That is just a sample! Running queries is your friend :D http://geocaching.com.au/my/query/

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ziggiau
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Re: Urban Caches

Post by ziggiau » 25 October 14 12:46 pm

Thanks for explaining the rationale Zal, it's as I thought. If you put the care and effort (and expense) into the creation of an awesome cache you certainly wouldn't want it muggled. Again, being an urban cacher up to this point, my exposure has been mostly to smalls and below. When reading about some of the more complicated hides I can't imagine where these things would be placed if not deep in bush.

Thanks for the links. I have the ZFPT on my to-do list in the next few weeks. And the query tip is nearly overwhelming with the possibilities! I can see where I'll be spending my afternoon researching.

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noikmeister
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Re: Urban Caches

Post by noikmeister » 25 October 14 3:20 pm

My take on it is that many urban caches are places by inexperienced hiders who do not yet appreciate the amount of work that maintaining a cache can be. They tend to get all excited about caching and want to go and hide something. If they have only been caching in an urban environment then they go and place caches similar to the ones they have found and it is a self-reinforcing cycle.

Urban caches are very susceptible to muggles and so go missing a lot. Newbie cachers may not then maintain their cache after the first flush of excitement is gone and they have had to replace the cache already or received their first 50 "TFTC" logs. So experienced caches get frustrated with poor quality/poorly maintained caches.

This is not to say that this is the case that all urban caches fall into this category, but many do and you don't find many poorly maintained caches that are out of the way or took a bit of effort to hide. More than sticking a poorly fitting notebook or scrap of paper into a mint tin, say.

I LIKE: Urban caches in interesting places that don't take an extensive search to find. I don't mind running the gauntlet of muggles when retrieving and replacing caches. This can be very exhilarating.

I HATE: Urban mint tins with scraps of paper hidden for the sake of it. High difficulty urban caches that take a lot of conspicuous searching to find.

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ziggiau
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Re: Urban Caches

Post by ziggiau » 28 October 14 10:27 pm

Well said noikmeister, you've echoed my newbie thoughts. Glad I'm on the right track then. :)

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Yurt
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Re: Urban Caches

Post by Yurt » 29 October 14 11:15 am

The eternal mystery for me (slightly OT) is why newbies find a few caches then rush out and hide one. It gets muggled or damaged by weather and they never respond to any NM or NA logs on it. It's like they just disappear. How can the ignore all the nagging emails? I'm guessing they just use some spam email address to get going so they can ignore them.

I asked on the Groundspeak forum about getting newbies to verify their email addresses more than the one time that is required. That is, verify it again a few weeks later to ensure this sort of thing doesn't happen. Of course they fobbed me off.

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ziggiau
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Re: Urban Caches

Post by ziggiau » 30 October 14 8:37 am

Eternal problem Yurt, people who dabble and don't fully commit to anything. Which is fine if dabbling was always your intent to see if it's something you could continue to do in the future, but as you say, it mucks things up for everyone else if they don't stick with it.

But how do you convert the dabbler into the addicted? Could more 1/1 urban caches whet their appetite and give them enough success to want to try some and the next level, a little further afield? Or does the focus on nanos completely take away from the joy of the well thought out multi?

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