Begrudgingly Being a Good Geoaching Citizen

A rookie mistake for geocachers is failing to submit “Did Not Find” logs. Many new to the sport consider it a failure or a shortcoming. But the fact of the matter is that Did Not Find or DNF logs are incredibly informative to the cache owner and other geocachers. That said, I don’t hold back on submitting a DNF. There are two things that a DNF signifies: 1) the cache is difficult to find or 2) there may be something wrong with the cache, including that it may be missing. On a rainy, humid, muggy, and miserable Saturday we tried to knock out some caches along the I-79 corridor, but 6 of the 12 we sought ended up in DNF logs. 

The first three caches we sought are part of the WV Civil War Trail. These caches have been out for about a year and the enthusiasm for maintaining these caches seems to be waning. But there are still many free trackable coins available for those who complete all of the caches, so we’re trying to get them done. Of the three we sought, only Attack on Fairmont was present. Since I logged DNFs on the others, others have logged finds on the cache at Jackson’s Mill because they found the outer container and someone placed a “throwdown” cache at Battle for the Bridge.

Geocaching.com indicates that a cache is found when the log is signed (except for Earthcaches and virtual caches). Finding remains of the container is not a find. Throwing down a pill bottle with a slip of paper where you think a cache may have been is also not finding a cache. Signing a log is finding a cache. The reason for this is that the experience is no longer what the cache owner intended. The best tools to use when a cache has been compromised are the “Needs Maintenance” or “Needs Archived” logs. The latter can be particularly useful as it alerts a reviewer, but shouldn’t be used before a Needs Maintenance log.

But while at the West Virginia State 4-H Camp, an amazing place, we figured it would be a great opportunity to find two other caches and take in the awesome atmosphere. Summer is absolutely the high season out here. Not only are camps of children and teens going on, but there are lots of events hosted by the state there or the nearby State Fire Academy. It is most certainly the flagship of the extension service in this state.

From here we headed out toward Burnsville Lake. We had spotted a cache in Ireland, West Virginia that had never been found. Because being the first to find a geocache is kind of a big deal to some cachers, we were hoping to be the first on the log. However, we came up empty-handed. The reason for our failure was that the coordinates posted for the geocache were not accurate. It is important to take multiple readings of GPS coordinates when you place a cache and then average them. Handheld GPS units also tend to be more reliable than the GPS in a smartphone, handhelds also often have functionality to do things like take multiple readings and average them with very little effort on your part. In this case, the coordinates were 274 feet off (based on the updated coordinates on the cache page).

But we were about to get on a winning streak, finding three caches in a row in the Burnsville Lake area. Though, to be fair, one of them was an Earthcache and, so long as you read the descriptions for these special caches very carefully, it is very difficult to log them as a DNF.

Some counties in West Virginia have very few caches. Close friend bitmapped took one for the collective team by placing a cache in Clay County. It had gone missing, so we went out to help him replace Wee Britain. This is one of those caches that gets little traffic, despite the fact it is at a scenic fishing and boat launch area on the Elk River, and only a few miles off of I-79. Numerous cache challenges require finding caches in all of the counties in a state or on each of the pages in the DeLorme road atlas for a state, so having a relatively easy cache in Clay County is good for the overall sport.

We’d been hitting and missing terrible rain all day so far. We figured we would begin to turn toward home, but we had identified two caches that had not been found in over a year each. Almost exactly as anticipated, neither turned up a log to sign, though at one of the sites we did find what appeared to be part of the former container. But sometimes checking these things out are just part of giving back a little bit to the hobby.