Arizona State Land Managers?

[Taz]

I guess they have made Geocaching.com archive a bunch od caches and getting the owners to remove them. Anyone know anything about this? I am loosing some of my best finds because of it. Does it have anything to do with "power trails"?

[Taz]

After looking deeper I have a LOT of finds that suddenly were archived in AZ. Very sad.....

[rambrush]

So far I've lost 12 of my caches. BLM is also removing caches in wilderness areas.so that's next shoe to drop.

[Corfman Clan]

I've been hit fairly hard by it. There's a lot of AZ state trust land in my regular stomping grounds. 10 of my caches were archived and I lost about 300 points for them. I was 17th overall LonelyCache wide and today I'm at 20th. I'm not sure what my point total was before this but I lost from four to five thousand points.

[Taz]

Every day I check in my point total goes down. Its no where near the bottom yet. My highest point find is going away.

[Corfman Clan]

Every day I check in my point total goes down. Its no where near the bottom yet. My highest point find is going away.

Yep, so far I think only about half of the archived caches have been removed from LonelyCache. Ugh.

[chris geertsen]

Fortunately i have not been effected by this at all. However i want to add that rocky mountain power in Utah has started cracking down on caches that are on there property. Several days ago, geocaching HQ and the reviewer archived a lot of my caches as well as other owners caches. It was no where near what was just archived in Nevada, but still was a significant amount. It was a great loss to part of the geocaching community in Utah. I've lost over 300 lonely cache points. My most loneliest cache, my first micro cache was archived in the Process. it's not as significant as all the archives in Arizona, but could become another one of the domino effects. From what i am told by other geocachers several geotrails that were on there property have already been archived in other states. For one "the trail of the gods" series was a trail that was archived. Similar to the state trust land, rocky mountain power allowed them but now is rescinding them and now are saying they are unauthorized. Caches have been on there property at least 2 years or more but why rocky mountain power wants them gone now is a mystery. However it coincides with the time frame caches in Arizona were archived, being that this took place just days before. Co incidents that it so happens to be the same time frame? i don't think so.

[Team Opjim]

I'm lucky to live miles away from any state trust land so haven't felt near the effect of those in more urban areas. Still, seeing good caches disappear is never a good thing.

Does anyone have any information on why the ASLD decided to do this. I've heard "rumors" that it was instigated by a former geocacher who was banned from the site and was disgruntled. Is there any truth to this rumor?

[Team Opjim]

So far I've lost 12 of my caches. BLM is also removing caches in wilderness areas.so that's next shoe to drop.

I wasn't aware that there were any caches allowed in wilderness areas.

[geost4fun]

Geocaches have definitely been allowed on Wilderness lands in the past. It seemed to be mostly at the discretion of the district manager in any given area, so I don't know what was coming down from higher up. When I first started caching in 2007 the reviewer would allow a cache without difficulty. In 2011 I placed my Wildlife View cache-GC2Y68T-in the Mount Nutt Wilderness but had to get permission from the local BLM Recreational Manager. After sending that information to the reviewer the cache was approved. At that time I don't remember seeing anything on the BLM site that prevented geocaches on Wilderness land but their site now prohibits them. I am hoping these caches might be grandfathered in or I will end up losing a number of high point caches near Kingman, mine being one of them. But that isn't the way bureaucracy usually works so I really don't have my hopes up.

[Taz]

Good part of my top point caches.................................gone...........................sad I went to a lot of effort to get some of those. I was very proud of a couple I got, oh well time to find some new challenges to attack.

[Corfman Clan]

I believe that the fallout from the great geocache purge of 2014 is now mostly complete on LonelyCache. There are still some geocaches being moved and unarchived that will be added back but those numbers I expect will be small. So far I've moved one of mine that was unarchived this morning and plan on moving another.

I was hit hard by this as about 1400 of my finds were archived. I dropped six places on the LonelyCache wide Best All Around Leader board and lost over 10,000 points. Like Taz, I lost my top find and several more high point finds. My backcountry score dropped considerably.

So it appears I need to take action and find a bunch of high point caches to make up for it.

[rocketsciguy]

Makes me very sad to see things like this happen. Also makes me wonder whether it's the presence of the cache or the cachers that the land managers find objectionable. One of my pet peeves is seeing caches get archived when there is container in play and it seems clear that the C.O. will not be removing it.

A side hobby of mine is picked up archived caches (geolitter) and disposing them or putting them back into play somehow. I'm working on building a multi-cache that is comprised exclusively of geolitter, and will be called named that when I'm done. I recently discovered a 10-year-old ammo can in a buried 5-gallon bucket (an off-the-interstate dirt road park-n-grab with over 600 finds, not a lonely cache by any means) that was archived a few months back because muggles or law enforcement were removing the ammo can. The C.O. couldn't justify maintaining it so had it archived, but the ammo can was returned. Since it was archived, at least four groups of muggles (one may have been a scout group) have found the cache and writen their names in the logbook. I checked it out, and am working on getting it unarchived and possibly adopting it. If that doesn't happen, I will relist it and do so without violating any placement guidelines (because the hole and the bucket are already there). How often do you come across an "Original Stash" style find? It's too good a cache and placement to not have it active.

Anyway, the point is now suddenly there are all of these archived caches out there on AZ State Trust lands, and a good share of them I bet were owned by inactive cache owners. If I lived in the area, I would be collecting, relocating, and relisting them -- if for no other reason than to show responsibility as a community to keep our game board clean. I don't like CITO turned to Cache-Out, but it's the right thing to do if our caches are no longer welcome in an area.

My condolences to the AZ cachers on lost points, etc...

[Taz]

There are some I would love to go get as a part of the clean up project. Maybe I will ask the COs if they have any ojections before I head out to them. AS an FYI with the wording it is actaully tresspassing to go clean up the caches...............how crazy is that? They want them moved but in their verbage we will be tresspassing in order to do so.

[Corfman Clan]

There are some I would love to go get as a part of the clean up project. Maybe I will ask the COs if they have any ojections before I head out to them.

I encourage you to ask first. I would be a bit peeved if someone went and took one of my caches that was archived. I had ten archived. So far I have retrieved one and moved another. There's a few I haven't yet decided what to do with and another I'm planning on moving. I'm also hoping that the state land department will have a change of heart and I'll be able to unarchive some of them. This isn't necessarily unfounded as I hear rumor that the department has requested a meeting with some of the local cachers.

AS an FYI with the wording it is actaully tresspassing to go clean up the caches...............how crazy is that? They want them moved but in their verbage we will be tresspassing in order to do so.

It would only be trespassing if the person picking up a cache doesn't have a permit to be on state trust land.

[Taz]

That may have come out wrong as I wouldn't go pick up any with out asking first, just thinking of some that it would make a fun trip to get and was thinking about planning a "clean up" trip. I will wait and see what happens though as I keep hoping they will allow the caches to be taken out of the archives.

[Team Opjim]

Last week the governor reversed the decision about State Trust lands. Groundspeaks official position is that all "archived" caches are removed, but they aren't going to check if an old cache is submitted as a new one (this from a reviewer from several years ago).