[Az-Geocaching] "NEED"? No way.

[Brian Cluff]

shan in az wrote:
> That's precisely what I'm saying.  There are hundreds
> of caches in AZ alone; until or unless you've been to
> every one of them, where is the NEED for any new ones?

Since the beginning of geocaching, cache placement has stayed in pretty 
much perfect proportion to the growth of the number of cachers to find 
them.  This has had the effect of making sure that the amount of traffic 
to the various caches is kept at a constant rate.  A cache placed 3 
years ago has, on average, the exact same frequency of traffic going to 
it today as it did when it was placed.
There are about 1700 caches right now.  It could easily be argued that 
300 to 400 caches is enough to keep 99% of the cachers out there busy. 
But with 3000 finds/month going on, that puts a TON of stress on such a 
few caches, and the caches that get visited once a month at best, like 
most rural caches, are now getting visited at least 10X more.  That 
would likely be enough traffic that even the most careful cachers would 
end up blazing trails to the caches no matter how far off the trail they 
were.  That would even be enough traffic to kill off all the grass 
around urban caches.

Is there any place that NEEDS a cache, absolutly not.  But we need to 
keep hiding them exactly like we have been to maintain the balance that 
we already have.

Brian Cluff
Team Snaptek