The Tale of a Contest Newbie

Despite my involvement with Cache Up NB, and the constant presence of a winter contest in some form, I’ve never really bothered to participate in any of the winter contests until this year.

I started geocaching back in 2007 when winter contests were all about hiding as many caches as you could. It used to be a NB vs NS contest to see who could hide the most caches over the winter months. That all sort of changed the year Fredericton exploded into geocaching and that area was littered (almost literally) with so many caches there wasn’t any more room. With a chance to do something new, milosheart launched their own version of a winter contest based loosely on something similar found out west. Come Out & Play was born.

Then came Battlecache, and now the Scrabble version of Come Out & Play. It seems these days there’s no lack of things to do during the winter months as far as geocaching contests are concerned. But even with all of the contests that I’ve seen over these past 8 years, I’ve rarely participated. But just yesterday I logged my first claim on this year’s Come Out & Play, and plan to fire my first shots at the Battlecache board as well.

So for someone who didn’t play before, what’s changed?

I never bothered with the original COAP contest mainly because I personally was not a fan of the scoring system or the actual tasks themselves. I was more than happy to help support the contest as many loved it, but for me, it just wasn’t my cup of tea. I tended to shy away from Battlecache because of it’s roots in NS despite it being an “atlantic” contest.

But this year, a few things are different.

For starters, the new system for COAP far exceeds anything we have had in that contest before. The system in place now for tracking your claims and letters is much easier on the eyes and somehow actually makes the game a lot more fun. Not entirely sure how, but something evulc did in the development of that platform makes it feel more enjoyable and less like work. It makes me want to fill in more letters.

For Battlecache, I’m hearing a lot of people talk about it more and more and if I’m playing one contest, why not do both. Both use GC codes but for different reasons so why not just do both contests and see where I end up.

I think ultimately, the biggest reason I find myself being interested in doing these contests is they give me a real reason to get back into geocaching.

Since the mega this year, I have put some distance between myself and geocaching. I’ve had very little interest in going out and finding much of anything. When you spend almost two years working on a geocaching project, it’s kind of nice to take a little bit of a break.

But just this past weekend I went out with a few other guys and did the GPS Maze Exhibit in Halifax and really enjoyed being out again. Caching with others is really a lot more fun than doing it solo. And this time, I had ample caches to use for the winter contests.

I’m looking forward to another caching raid next weekend with a chance to make more shots and fill in more letters. Here’s to hoping for a great winter season of caching, with new and exciting surprises coming in 2016.