Top Ten Ways To Protect Your Geocache
No one likes to lose a geocache. You spend your time planning and strategizing. As you get ready to place it, you consider how to protect your geocache. What is a geocacher to do in a world of muggles? Here are some suggestions that may help you in a thoughtful placement of your geocache.
1) Avoid stealth required areas.
While the thrill is there to place the cache, once it’s out of your care it is open game. Think twice before you place it in an area that finders will have a hard time concealing their searching. Remember, families often geocache together. Kids may not be as stealthy as Mom and Dad.
2) If in a high traffic are,a consider a micro.
The best caches are ammo cans, right? Even a muggle is bound to be intriqued. A boring film canister is just that–boring– and easier to conceal.
3) Chose a location that will not leave an obvious trail.
You look for them–the obvious trail to the cache. Don’t lead a muggle to ground zero too. Hide your cache someplace such as across a creek that will not reveal its probable location.
4) Don’t leave an obvious beacon.
As geocachers, we learn to look for what doesn’t belong. Eliminate the obvious and don’t place it where a muggle is apt to gravitate to and search.
5) Go off the beaten path.
Don’t place your cache where the local teenagers come to drink and smoke. Look for the unused, untrampled areas.
6) Sorry, geocachers, but consider the unfortunate hides.
Consider places a “normal person” wouldn’t seek out– in the poison ivy, in the prickly ash, etc. A geocacher will consider it a challenge. A muggle will give it a pass.
7) Camouflage your container well.
At least make it something that blends in well with its surroundings and not drawing attention to itself.
Consider a low traffic area.
Make it easier for the finder. Don’t place your cache where the finder is easily exposed seeking it and thus revealing the cache’s location for muggles.
9) Location, location, location.
View your possible sites from a number of perspectives to be sure it is truly out of sight of casual visitors. If geocachers are easily observed trampling down a ravine no one in their right mind would attempt, you’re going to attract some attention. Instead, place it where cachers could go on the hunt unobserved.
10) Check your cache often.
As an owner of a cache, it is your responsibility to protect your cache. Check it often. Make sure it has been placed back properly and securely. As owner and recipient of others’ travel bugs and geocoins, you owe it to the sport.
