Winterfest 2011

When we left our house the temperature was -3. Ten miles later when we arrived at Chapman State Park, the temperature was down to -6. A team of cachers from Buffalo were already there for the event.



When we spent New Years Day here placing the caches, the trails were so icy we had to shorten the event. We usually spread 8-10 event caches over about 3 1/2 miles of hiking. On New Years we gave up with eight caches spread over about 2 1/2 miles of trails. The weather today was so cold, I was glad the attendees were on the trail for a much shorter time.




Big congrats to GEOCATZ!. They celebrated find number 1,500 at today's event. Last January, they celebrated 1,000 at the Winterfest.




Ali with a bag of prizes on our way to the final meeting area. As usual when we host this event, we didn't get to enjoy much of the day so this walk was special.





Besides us, five NEOGEO's braved the cold and snow to make the trip east. loftongal is not in the picture. She was signing the cache log.


Ahhhhh... our reward at the end came from the newly opened Tims in Warren. Hot chocolate in a mug!


There were a lot fewer people this year than last. I was amazed 110 people showed up to cache in weather this cold. By the time we arrived at the park the Polar Bear Plunge had already been canceled since the cold water team couldn't guarantee getting participants from the open water to the warming hut without skin damage in the single degree temperatures. We had two brave cachers planning to take the plunge this year.

It literally takes days to prepare for this event each year and each year I say this was the last. Why break tradition? I can't imagine doing this one again. Maybe it's time for a big March event in NEOGEO land. We haven't had time to host both winter events since we became reviewers. Hmmmmm.

Geocaching Poll Results

The poll results are back. Sixty-one people participated (Thank You).

Most poll participants like:
1,000 Cache Pocket Queries.
Being Able to Run My Finds Every Three Days Instead of Seven.
Voting for Favorites.
Downloading Pocket Queries Instead of Receiving E-mail Attachments.
The New Stats Page.

Poll participants weren't so excited about:
The Beta Map.
The New Look of the Forums.
Souvenirs.

While 1,000 cache pocket queries carried the highest percentage of positive responses, the new favorites system gathered the most support (28%) as the new feature most liked. Interestingly, 5% of the responses also marked the favorites system as the new feature least liked.

There were no real negative results. The response to souvenirs seems to be indifferent at the moment. The forums have a base of geocachers who don't use them which was reflected by one quarter of all the responses. The Beta Map was rated positively by only 53% of the responses, but looks like it could be a big winner if a cacher's finds could be filtered.

This was fun. It certainly wasn't scientific. I enjoyed stopping back to see the voting progress. Again, thanks to all who participated.

GeoWoodstock's First Trackable

This Bear Cachekinz is a GeoWoodstock IX trackable. It will be available very soon on the official GeoWoodstock website, but attendees at this Saturday's AGT-Warren - Winterfest 2011 can buy the Bear in advance. It will be really cold this Saturday at Chapman State Park, but this cool bear will be out of hibernation for the day.

Goals

Every year we set this silly batch of goals and spend the year watching our progress. The goals are always a mix of things from both geocaching and waymarking. So, at the start of 2010, we agreed to these goals:



Okay, so we left a lot of the goals in the red, but we had fun watching them. I really wish we had hit the 700 3+ terrain finds, but I finished that when I got sick. The two county goals were interesting. We're a bit nomadic so it was fun finding so many caches in so many different places. As for the rest of them, like the Cleveland Indians, we'll wait till next year.

Speaking of next year, it is now this year. Yep, we've got another batch of silly goals for the year. We settled on a dozen:



We left out some of the tougher ones for this year. Goals like 40/40 counties (and even 50/50)and finishing the Ohio County and Ohio DeLorme Challenges would be fun, but with a really busy year at work and GeoWoodstock there will only be so much time to play. No matter how many we meet, we'll have fun doing it.

Does anyone else have geocaching goals for the year?