What should we, as a community, be doing to ensure caches have the correct terrain listing? I maintain a private bookmark list of "Caches with Bogus Terrain Ratings", because I've run into a number of them--and it seems that if you comment about the terrain rating, the cache owners don't take it very well.

For example, there's an unknown terrain 1.5 cache in Tucson that you can't get to unless you've climbed a tree, and a terrain 1 cache that you have to go 50 feet off trail, climb a hill, and push through a few bushes. I DNF'd both these the first time because I figured my math must have been wrong because the location didn't match the terrain rating.

I chose to comment on the terrain rating issue in my log, and ran into the wrath of the cache owner. And some cache owners out there appear to believe it's OK to delete logs that indicate the cache descriptions are somewhat lacking.

Although there are "many ways to play the game", there are some standards everyone should abide by--and for something to be a "1", it must be wheelchair accessible. A great cacher I know listed a parking lot hide of his as a 1.5 terrain because the lamppost was over a curb and 2 feet away from the pavement--and that curb was enough to make it not accessible to wheelchairs--seemed like the perfect terrain rating, but many hiders would haven't listed it as that.

jaberringer