I guess this would be my question too. It would seem that more people engage in other types of activity that would cause more problems than geocaching. In other words, I can tell my friends that he/she should hike to this really cool, off-trail location that I found in a National Forest, but if it's posted on a website as a geocache then it's against the rules. 

 

I think you've probably nailed the heart of the matter here. In theory, you shouldn't be encouraging your friend to go off-trail either, but unless your friend a) takes you up on your suggestion, b) gets caught, and c) watches too many episodes of "Law and Order" and decides to drop the dime on you, you're never going to have any repercussions from your suggestion. We DO break some rules, and then we tell the whole world exactly where we've committed our infractions.

 

  Either way there is a possibility of a new trail being started as people find out about this location. I'm not sure of the difference. Isn't geocaching (in National Forests) just hiking with a goal of finding the cache. 

 

If the rest of the world was as honest and morally upright as we Geocachers, we could place our caches right on the edge of the trail, and non-cachers would just leave them in peace for us to find, and probably none of the land management agencies would care about what we're doing. But reality is different.

 

 If the concern is new trails being started, then wouldn't they just have to ban hiking altogether?  

 

There are those who would do just that.

  

 I'm not trying to stir things up, but this kind of doesn't make any sense. I certainly understand the need of the rangers to protect our National Forests and I appreciate their effors, but it seems like they are trying to correct some issues by banning a very small (in comparison to other activities) group of people. 

 

Small but rapidly growing. To some extent we may be suffering because of the ATVers, and I'm not blaming the ATVers. There are many land managers who feel that because their agencies didn't react to the explosion in popularity of those machines quickly enough, their lands were overrun, and they're not going to repeat that mistake with something that's growing as quickly as Geocaching. And the easiest (not necessarily the most effective) way to control something is to prohibit it.

 

Just some thoughts. 

 

Good ones, all.

 

Steve

Team Tierra Buena