Proximity

[+Moorephun]

I'd like to build a Wherigo but cannot find if there are proximity issued between zones of a Wherigo and physical caches. Do zones of a Wherigo need to be more than .10 miles from a physical cache?

 

Second question related to proximity (I think):

 

I'd like to build a Wherigo in a national park and have the physical container outside the park. Is there a distance requirement for this? Can the final be 20 miles from the zones of the Wherigo?

[+Beach_hut]

I'd like to build a Wherigo but cannot find if there are proximity issued between zones of a Wherigo and physical caches. Do zones of a Wherigo need to be more than .10 miles from a physical cache?

 

Second question related to proximity (I think):

 

I'd like to build a Wherigo in a national park and have the physical container outside the park. Is there a distance requirement for this? Can the final be 20 miles from the zones of the Wherigo?

 

As long as you've not placed anything in your zones, and they are just virtual, (as per every Wherigo I've ever done or placed), then you don't need to worry about proximity to any other caches.

 

In terms of the second question, I've seen it asked elsewhere and the answer came back that it was fine, although could a reviewer confirm this?

 

SIDE NOTE: If I came to find it, I'd appreciate knowing on the cache page the final was 20 miles away, so I'd have an idea of the distance I'd need to travel.

[+Moorephun]

Thanks so much. I'll have to dig further for the second answer and I wonder if the posted coords will need to be close to the physical container than the coords for the Wherigo.

[Ranger Fox]

I tried to make a wiki article to explain a lot about proximity guidelines. Check it out and if you learn anything else, feel free to add to it.

 

I'm going to try to answer your question both officially and as a player. My two answers differ.

 

Official

Anything placed physically for a cartridge goes under the geocaching proximity guidelines and the waypoint coordinates need to be listed on your geocaching.com listing for the reviewer. In effect, your cartridge is reviewed as if it were a multi or puzzle geocache. This also means the reviewers would really prefer it if your final geocache was within two miles of your posted coordinates. That said, you can always ask your reviewer if you have a good reason for doing so. Generally, though, there seems to be more of a push to keeping things within two miles. What's acceptable in one region might not be in another.

 

As A Player

There's a national battleground park close to where I live. I tried to place a cartridge there once. The final was a hundred feet from a well-marked boundary. The reviewer told me I needed permission from a park ranger to have the Wherigo cartridge on park property. So I asked the ranger if I could have some people out to answer a question and answer game similar to one they already have for the Boy Scouts. No, no one will depart from the sidewalk. No, nothing is hidden. No, it's not commercial. I only expect a few people a month to do it. The questions went on because, in effect, I was just asking for permission to have a couple people on park property (it's a popular park for everyone in the city to run and bike in). It felt really awkward. Next, the reviewer told me he would not publish the listing because the posted coordinates were on park property. Yes, they were the parking area for the park. So I changed them to a popular overflow pull-off right outside the park's boundaries. The reviewer never replied, so the listing just sat there for a few years. I did post a "Hello, are you still there" log, but that was ignored. The good news is that cartridge turned into my demo cartridge for Wherigo\\kit. You can see it if you look for the cartridge titled "Groundspeak Demo". This is one of those examples of having a listing on Wherigo.com without having a paired geocache listing. The final seemed fine where I placed it, though there may have been concerns. Several years later, someone placed a traditional geocache much closer to the boundary than the one I placed for that cartridge, and the geocache was published.

 

Also, as a player, I second the request to know if I'll be driving/hiking a good distance between stages or even the final. If I've traveled to an area, I have a set amount of time I can be there. I need to be able to plan my trip. Just remember: the more involved you make your cartridge, the more people are going to want to bypass it. While many believe hacking is the most popular way, I propose it's easier just asking someone who has found the final for the coordinates.

Edited July 21, 2015 by Ranger Fox
591222

[+bflentje]

Also, as a player, I second the request to know if I'll be driving/hiking a good distance between stages or even the final. If I've traveled to an area, I have a set amount of time I can be there. I need to be able to plan my trip. Just remember: the more involved you make your cartridge, the more people are going to want to bypass it. While many believe hacking is the most popular way, I propose it's easier just asking someone who has found the final for the coordinates.

 

LOL. Slightly OT. I am a .NET developer by trade never having had any interest in building Wherigos. Only when I started trying to hack the solutions out of cartridges did I develop my own interest in building them. Now I've had about 75 cartridges published. Many simple. Some more involved. Nothing truly complicated yet though.

 

I too would want to know the distance. In MN, our reviewers would NOT allow me to cross the two mile mark.

[Ranger Fox]

Part of this is reviewer-specific. I've seen and done one cartridge in Phoenix, Arizona that had you going to a few other geocaches throughout the city, then fifteen miles or so outside and in the desert for the final. It's a shame the cartridge was supposed to be so difficult, though, because the final cache, with its series of boxes to open, was something quite special. With the two mile guideline, I have no idea how that was brokered with the reviewer.

 

In my area, I get the impression that a multi's intermediate stages might be able to go outside the two mile distance range--or it could be just for when it's sensible to do so. For example, there's a place I like to hike where two trailheads are perhaps six miles point-to-point away from each other (the trail, of course, is not a straight line, so it's around nine miles of hiking). I hid a multi throughout the expanse of that area. Once I stitched the stages together, I found it would take around forty-two or so miles of hiking to finish the cache. The reviewer allowed this sort of challenging hike without issue.

 

According to the guidelines in II.2.3, it only specifies the posted coordinates must be within two miles of the final stage. It does not state in II.2.3 or II.2.2 anything about intermediate stages. Wherigo, by the way, is quite the odd thing because it falls under the multi, mystery, and its own rules, all combined. I'd suggest you come up with an idea that justifies its stages being that far apart and yet the final being within two miles of the posted coordinates, then pitch the idea to your reviewer. Be tactful, of course, without seeming as if you are.

 

Continuing off topic, I am also a .Net developer. The technologies I work with on a daily basis are ASP.Net, C#, LESS CSS, and JavaScript. All this is self-taught because I've never known anyone else in the field before I started working. I make no secret I enjoy trying to hack cartridges. You have to know how to do it if you want to come up with ways to thwart it. Really, I'd just prefer to make a cartridge that plays games with the would-be hacker. There's nothing like making the person think he or she hacked the cartridge and having him or her go out into the field only to find a container at some bogus coordinates with a note inside that says, "This isn't the cache. But while you're here, why not play the cartridge normally?" Now, that's some fun playing with people! And those who play normally are completely unaware of what's going on, too.