Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Remember locationless caches? They're still no longer allowed.

Here's email I received today, followed by my response. (Name withheld)

Is there any way that you would publish a mystery/puzzle cache without there being an actual container? The whole point would be to get pictures of Cachers from around the world without them having to travel to the actual cache. The one that I want to put out would be to get people to take a picture with there favorite rock or rock formation, and post it in there log, and then it would count as a find.  So it would be sort of like a virtual or locationless earth cache, but it would be posted as a mystery cache.
Hope to hear from you soon.

Thanks for your email. Sorry to say that this type of cache cannot be published on geocaching.com. There has to be a physical cache for people to find and a log for them to sign, as per the guidelines. I'm not sure how
long you have been geocaching, but a few years ago there was a category of geocaches called "locationless", which the cache you describe would fit into. The cache owner would stipulate what the requirement was to log a find: see a yellow Jeep, find a Kent Feed sign, etc., and then post the coordinates where you saw it. Those cache types are no longer allowed to be listed on geocaching.com.

3 comments:

Chad said...

I kind of thought they were fun. I would look through the list of them, and then keep my eyes open.
Schnider

IowaAdmin said...

I agree. They were fun. I logged a number of them myself. But I understand why Groundspeak decided to drop them as a geocache category. Locationless caches represented a drift too far from the original intent of geocaching, which was to hide a container and have others find it using handheld GPS devices. Groundspeak's Waymarking.com site now serves the purpose of listing and seeking locationless geocaches.

Tape worm said...

You might direct them to waymarking.com or setting up an Earth cache. Kind of sounds like that might be what they are looking to do.