2011 Geocaching Goals
As my caching has progressed and I’ve evolved as a cacher, I’ve realized that the quality of the caches I find is just as important to me as the quantity of caches. And I like to set goals to challenge myself. As I am not GSAK proficient, the new statistics features on geocaching.com are a welcome addition. With it, I see some new goals for me to achieve over the next year (and a bit):
1. Hit 2000 finds. I am currently at 1864. Given that I only started caching in September of 2007, and with work and family committments, I am pretty impressed at my find rate. I hope to achieve that mark in the next month or two.
2. Find a geocache on every calendar day (366 total). The earliest this can be achieved for me is 2012, the next time we see February 29th. So, I am slowly whittling away at the months that have the biggest holes: January and February when I can, and all of the missing days after that right up until that golden date next year.
3. Fill out my challenge chart, every combination of difficulty/terrain available. This one will be the most difficult for me personally.
So, what are your goals for the next year or so?
Good post, I don’t like to set goals that way I don’t feel bad when I fail. I was hoping to reach 2000 last year and fell short by 20. I was looking at my stats as well (I don’t do them on my own) and it made me think along the same lines as you. It makes me want to fill in some of the blank spots in the grids and keep my graph lines rising. It is kinda cool to look at and make you think about approaching things a little differently but I usually just load up a GPX file when I plan on going out and finding whatever is in the area, I rarely plan to go for specific caches unless the are along the way. I only do up a pocket query when I go out and I keep nothing up to date, I only worry about the ones I have left to find not the one I already found…lol
I agree, this is an interesting post. Even tho it’s not a numbers game I think the numbers are good to be in competition with your own self. That’s the way I see it anyways. My goal for 2011 is to pass the 1000 caches found mark. I’m at 685 right now so I’m pretty sure it’s a reachable goal.
Another thing I wanted to raise in 2011 was my Unknown/Mystery cache type found. I came to a point that I had no more caches to do around here so I had to stay involved with geocaching in some way to feed the cravings =). One day, I downloaded every ML puzzles Ma & Pa had available and started to print them 5 at a time. I started to work on the first batch from 1-5 and after a while I managed to solved them all, I then moved on to 6-10 and kept working on them. I’m happy that I managed to solved 40 of them without help or programs (well I asked Pa for a hint once, and it was a stupid mistake on my end haha). I plan to solved many more before my next visit to Moncton so this should keep me buzy for a long day of caching.
Another thing I started to look at lately was jim52’s new 52 caches serie. Having solved most of his Tri-State previously I had a good head start. I solved 23 of his caches so far so that’s a lot more puzzles for me to grab. I haven’t been able to figure the I series yet but I’ll get back to it someday.
Finally, one cache I would love to get off my list is the damn 1973. I assume I have been thinking too hard on this one and I’m giving it some time here and there. Since the attributes says it’s not winter friendly I’ll try to keep it out of my mind for the winter and hopefully I’ll have it solved in the spring.
With the upcoming Ice Walk this should make up for another good caching year.
First, denislan, 1973 can be done in the winter, it just depends on how much snow has come down. If a LOT has come down, then it might be covered but it is not on the ground. I have removed that attribute.
Now, onto the goals… for me, I don’t have any real caching goals for this year as far as numbers go. 2000 was a big one for me last year.
I plan on doing another Wherigo on the scale of Jacob’s Bridge with a nice story but it’s trying to come up with a good idea and finding the time to do it. I also have a “signal” cache I want to hide this year which requires the person to use Chirp and Wifi to find a container. I also have to start the planning for the Race for Cache soon. I usually start that in late February/early March. Tentative day for that event is August 6th. With last year’s race breaking the 100 attendee mark, I need to do serious capacity planning this year.
I also have some other caching goals which are not so much related to the hiding and finding of caches, but more towards the promotion of the sport in general. Hope to release news on that by spring.
I do think I would like to fill my calendar map and my D/T map so that I could hide a fizzy challenge cache in our area. Not sure how many other folks actually have all 81 points.
Lastly, I have a goal of trying to get myself to GW9 with whomever else from the area is heading down. Hoping to make it a bigass caravan of cachers from the Maritimes.
We do not usually set goals for our finds but the new stats from GC.com has us wanting to fill in the 23 days left on which we havent found caches.
As for our own caches, I have no specific goals but I am planning to hide some more micro logics if I can find a place where I can put a number of them. We also want to place a series this Spring on the 9 km Bouctouche trail from the town to the Dune and then late this year we want to place caches on another bouctouche trail for next year’s Ice Walk event.
As i rounded off last year with 1300 exactly i’m hoping to reach the 2000 mark by year end, maybe break the 61 caches a day record i have now. and the other thing i’m really looking at doing this year is place some really diabolical hides as there is always need of some seriously clever hidden caches.
Last i’d like to put on a full fledged GSAK course that not only covers the basics but as much of the program as i have discovered as alot of people have been asking about it and because it’s such a powerful tool in our arsenal.
To find a cache on every day.
I have 3 days left to fill but the last date is not til Dec 15.
Also just to have a fun time caching .
We hope to hit 2000 sometime this year (we’re at 1721 right now, I think)but our main goals are to get outdoors, enjoy nature, get some exercise and spend time together doing something we love.