The Most Elusive Icon In Geocaching
If you look at the stats for any geocacher, you’ll notice that for each geocache type, there is an icon. Traditionals, multi’s, puzzles, etc.
As you start to scroll down the list of geocache types that a person might find, you’ll begin to notice some icons that are rarely seen on your geocaching map, or even on a persons profile. For our article of the week, I thought it would be interesting to showcase some of the lesser known icons for geocache types that are still available for finding, depending on where you are, and how ambitious you might be.
Geocaching HQ Geocache
This icon is unique to the actual headquarters of geocaching.com. Located in Seattle, WA, one can obtain this icon if they go into the offices of Groundspeak. Usually this is done on Fridays and people can make appointments to go in, see a portion of the office, check out a huge trunk filled with TBs, and see the live geocaching logging map.
GPS Adventures Maze Exhibit
This icon represents an actual moving “exhibit” that showcases all things GPS related, including geocaching. This particular type of geocache retired in the United States after 7 years. It is now only available in Canada and certain parts of Europe. It is currently available in Edmonton at GC58J1B
Giga-Event Cache
Now the most recent elusive icon (as of this writing), the Giga-Event icon represents an event cache that is intended to have more than 5,000 attendees. The first one of these ever held was in Germany in 2014. Two other Giga events were announced for this year, of which one of them has already gone by.
Lab Caches
Pegged as a research and development type of cache, these caches are exceptionally rare. The only places you will find lab caches today are at mega events. These caches are unique in that they can be anything, anywhere, and they do not fall under the saturation, or commercial guidelines. In most cases, it involves you going somewhere and finding a code which you can then use to log the lab cache. These are not logged the same way as other caches but are logged through a unique portion of the geocaching.com website. Lab caches will be available this summer at the M3 mega.
Geocaching Block Party
This unique geocache refers to the block party events that are held near geocaching HQ in Seattle every year. A portion of the streets near the offices of Groundspeak are blocked off and a big celebration of geocaching is held there. This event has been going on since the 10 year anniversary of geocaching. This years event will be the last block party.
Project A.P.E Geocaches
Originally conceived as a tie-in to the remake of Planet of the Apes, these caches were hidden all over the world in limited numbers. Each cache represented it’s own fictional story tied to the movie. Only 12 were hidden and now only one remains. Mission 4: Southern Bowl, is located near Sao Paulo, Brazil and is considered to be somewhat of the holy grail of geocaches since it is now the only remaining one in the world. Once archived, this cache type will be gone forever.
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So for those of you who are looking for new challenges in the world of geocaching, why not try and tackle one of the above icons. Have you found any of these?
I opted not to include Virtuals and Webcam caches in this list. Although they are not common in NB, there are MANY of these around the world, making them much easier to snag than those above.
We have the HQ icon and I guess we will go for one Lab cache to get the icon, after we figure out what it is all about. We plan on being busy caching and volunteering at the MEGA so that will limit us
PAul
Four lab caches will be available at the actual mega event itself, with another 6 being available throughout the city that day.
Stoked for lab caches, wish I could get the Block party icon. I have the GPS Maze Exhibit following a visit to T.O.
Do you think icons like Block Party icons should be perhaps retired and would hence disappear from a cacher’s page? I don’t really have an opinion, but am curious what others think.
I would love to get the block party icon, but it won’t happen. I’m on vacation that week.
I like the idea of those retired icons being on a profile page because I think sometimes it promotes discussion. I would never have learned much about Locationless caches had I not seen it on someone’s profile.
https://www.cacheupnb.com/retired-cache-types/
I had several locationless caches but after think hard and long about then
I decided they weren’t real caches and deleted them all.
You didn’t use coords to find them.
EX one of them was give the coord at a street that had your first name.
I was happy to snag the GPS Maz Exhibit in Edmonton last fall; I took the kids while the wife was at a workshop. It is in bad need of a refresh as some of the caches/info was outdated, and some of the displays were in disrepair. Price you pay I guess for a travelling exhibit touched by a lot of hands.
As for the Block Party, I thought the idea was to have regional parties once the one at HQ was done its run this summer-possibly the icon will remain in play, with more opportunities for more caches to get it?
I hadn’t heard that one before. If that’s the case then perhaps it will be available after this August
You should be able to edit your own comments.
Just after putting my last post I noticed that I wrote think instead of thinking and that I misspelled them ( I wrote then ).
Is there a way to edit your own comments.