Scott & all:

"just sneak in....":  With all the extra patrols on the Coronado(even the
'radio guy' is involved!), sneaking in is less and less likely.  It also
appears that the Federal judges are less and less 'forgiving".

"if people are to stupid...":  I won't say people are stupid.  Maybe to
trusting.  Generally I rely on the cache owner to insure that a cache is
placed in an area that is 'legal'.

"...does a real disservice...": Absolutely!  Consider this scenario:  A
cacher tries to find a cache on the Coronado NF.  They get stopped by the
Forest Service.  When asked, "Why are you in a closed area?"  How do they
answer?  If they answer that they were geocaching, then how are the Forest
Service line officers going to preceive geocaching?  Probably as something
that needs a closer look. A closer look usually means more intense
management--that often means asking permission and getting a permit, etc.,
etc., etc.  My God, whatever you do, don't start a signal fire if you get
lost......

Things are crazy at work.  Fire fighting resources nation wide are pretty
well tapped out.  We've had crews and engines in Tucson from all over the
country, including Puerto Rico (they're on the Rodeo Fire now).   Now we've
only got initial attack resources on the Coronado (and I suspect the Tonto,
Prescott, Kaibab, and Coconino are in the same draw-down state). I haven't
heard about using the military, but I suspect with the War on Terror, that
option will be limited this year.   What is going to happen if we have
another ignition that gets beyond IA?  It'll probably burn for awhile...
Y'all only hear about the fires that get beyond IA.  We're responding to
roadside fires almost every day, rather than the couple a week I was told is
usual.

And I left the Cleveland NF (in San Diego) last January to get away from the
stress of working in on a big 'fire forest'.

--Fred
Team Boulder Creek
(although we haven't been caching for about six weeks--can we temporarily
disable our team, at least until the rains come?)

> Some of the caches, including mine, have been temporarily disabled, but
> most of them haven't.  During private e-mail conversations with some of
the
> cache owners, I have gotten everything from "just sneak in and find the
> cache" to "a note should be good enough because I don't want to
temporarily
> disable the cache" to "if people are too stupid to know not to go there
> then they deserve what they get."
>
> I think this does a real disservice to all of us.  Am I missing something
> or do people look at marking their caches as temporarily disabled as some
> sort of shame?