What are your high-level goals?

Question

Many geocachers will, sooner or later, do things like filling their date grid and filling the D/T grid. However, as time goes by there are more and more cachers who have been in the hobby for ten or even fifteen years who will have done that a long time ago and are looking for more difficult goals.

Personally, I've been working on filling other calendars. I already have a complete calendar with only traditionals and a complete calendar with only mysteries. I'm slowly working on doing the same with multis, but there are too few around here so it goes slowly. I know others are working on the D/T grid using only one cache type.

When you've done the "normal" goals, what are you aiming at that isn't one of the standard targets?

Answer 1

I've been caching for a while and have satisfied most of the statistic-based goals one can attain.  I have a full 366 day calendar, I've streaked as long as I felt I needed to streak (only lasted 102 days), my D/T grid is full three times over, and I've found more than enough caches in one day (100 was too many; never again).  At some point I need to finally get to a May 2000 hide to kill off my Jasmer grid, but otherwise, I'm pretty happy with my numbers.

Since I am guaranteed to move around every two years or so, I make it a point to focus on geographic challenges.  We started caching in Germany, so before I left I made sure we had a find in all 16 Bundeslaender, but that wasn't for a challenge.  I did, however, qualify for Die Kurpfalz-Challenge, GC18EX3, which I quite enjoyed.  So with each new move, my goal has been to complete county and Delorme challenges where I can: Virginia, Alabama, Olkahoma, New Mexico, and now Maryland and Delaware.  And even when it's not for a challenge, I enjoy filling in new spots on the map.

I also enjoy celebrating milestones in new locations.  We found our 4000th cache in Japan and our 6000th in South Korea.  So this year, I was excited to celebrate our 8000th find* in the British Virgin Islands.  I'm not yet sure where our 10,000th find will be, but I plan to enjoy it, and to take my time caching our way there.

*Well, it's supposed to be our 8000th find.  Since project-gc still doesn't calculate milestones using lab caches, according to this site, it was our 7990th find.  But hopefully that functionality will be added at some point.

Comments

It actually does, for paying members, in our development environment. That should be a hint to that it's fairly close to doing it on the live servers as well.

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Very glad to hear it. I'll look into accessing the developmental environment, I had not explored that option.

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Nice one :) I have to try something like that

Answer 2

As a startze I mostly make my own goals. By day, month, year. Haven't done the grid because there are not enough different D/T ratings nearby. But yes, I still want to fill it (probably next year).

I only have one goal for next year that's considered High level. I want to find 3000 caches in 2018.
Or maybe also: log 200 caches/day on MTB.

Other small goals are
- Trying to visit the 3 (mega/giga) events that interest me.
- Log caches in Belgium (home), Holland, Germany, France, Luxemberg, Italy and maybe other countries.
- Start on treecaches.
- Make a small mystery series
- And host at least 2 meet 'n greets

Comments

Looking forward to some of your goals

Answer 3

To fill my D/T grid with Project APE caches.

On second thoughts, perhaps I've set my target a little too high...

Comments

Now *that* is a high-level goal. Maybe you should consider changing it to a full D/T grid with webcams? However, that's not possible since there are not caches to fill all the spaces. A year ago (https://www.facebook.com/ProjectGC/posts/1264183740305879) that was true for virtuals as well (but since new virtuals are being published now this may change). Thus it seems that the most difficult but still possible cache types to fill the D/T grid with would be earthcaches and wherigos (since events with high D ratings are not published any more).

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Nice one, I like that...

Answer 4

I currently have one goal and one goal only:

• Achieve 1,000 finds before 2018

Comments

38 to go in 3 days.  You going to make it?

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Sadly did not. Oh well, I will make that an easy 2018 goal then.

Answer 5

Hi, I'm a relative new cacher, have done around 100 caches with my son 3-4 years ago and have started this year again.
I found a  365 Challenge short after restart, so I  decided to go on streak, I live in Berlin with lots of caches , so this could be achived. But not sure if I will do so, as it is not always fun to go out every day.
I have added the 365 challenge with the 360 degree Berlin challenge, and I feel fine as a new baby to go around my home position and try to cache in all directions, this is a low goal but as a new commer it should be not to tough. I can recommend this 360 degree challenge for new commers, this is a real fun

Answer 6

Well, after an intense 2016 I was even more busy this year, and will achieve over 2500 finds, including a loooong day with 322 finds by bicycle, completing my D/T matrix, having done a long streak that I thought I would never do, and adding a few old caches as well as new countries. I am still thinking about completing hidden months (Jasmer Challenge, right?) as well as a few more challenges, and, more importantly, try to issue a few caches myself - there are some good ideas around already. And, as well, continue to meet new and interesting people, and get inspired for new places to visit...

Answer 7

I am still working on the 360° challenge. It's really a hard challenge.

Answer 8

As my D/T grid is filled several times, calendars are filled, the jasmer light is filled, I am focussing on the counties map of my own country. I have seen a lot of nice places in the mean time.

On the long term I want to finish the complete jasmer, the children are looking forward to it :-)

Comments

Yes, discovering nice places and meeting new people is the best bit!

Answer 9

Very long term: trying to get all the green bars in badgegen to diamond. Though for some this will be impossible (like trying to find 3 Ape caches; there are only 2 left).

But even more important and shorter term too: just enjoy geocaching, not focusing too much on goals. My life is usually already very goal oriented, so I don't necessarily need that for my hobby too . . .

Answer 10

For all of us "just having fun" should be the highest goal!

In 2012 I set a target for a longest streak of 30 and in 2013
of 111 days. I reached both, but I'll never repeat something
similar, because waking up in the morning and knowing I
have to find a cache somehow is killing all fun.

Now I just aim targets without any time limit like filling
calendar or D/T and it's completely secondary when it
will be finished.

Caching with a pressure to succeed is no fun!

By the way: Meanwhile I regret, I didn't know about PGC
at that time when I stopped the 111-in-a-row. I wished
my decision was >122 :-(

Comments

I just made a very long streak including a winter then have some reluctance just going outside to grap a cache. So sad this situation after having some pressure to 'accomplish a goal' the same when i promised to hide few caches and come to the last day before an event. So keep it a fun moment! Do not target or await anything than having pleasure to find or hide or meet! Have fun next year!

Answer 11

We have completed the 4 primary grids this year and completed a 360 degree challenge. We enjoy working on various challenges to keep things interesting.  We are currently at over 630 days in our streak. We are working on a "Shades of Green" challenge, where you need over 11 caches for each day of the year. This actually is rather tedious. working towards our double fizzy nd double jasmer. We enjoy challenging ourselves.

Answer 12

Our high level goals are probably slightly lower than a lot of cachers as we are only just coming to the end of our third year of caching, but over those three years we should have averaged over 1200 per year. Our greatest achievement so far (something we are proud of as this has not been achieved by many of our local friends who have between 10,000-20,000 caches on their profiles) was to have done the 366 days consecutive streak (taking in leap day 2016). We can fulfill any 365/366 found or hidden dates challenge, but we still need to finish our first D/T grid (13 to go, but plenty of ideas and plans to try and achieve that next year).

Our longer term goals, therefore, probably centre more around challenges like finding caches in all the british counties (46), challenges requiring a certain number of countries visited or a number of types of caches in a number of countries. We have 7 countries and are working on achieving more over the next few years.

In Beltgen we aspire to achieve the highest belt - the gold black belt. We are on the 5th dan black belt at the moment. Most of our future points will probably only come from a few more gemstones, the rest of the D/T grid, favourite points on our caches, points per 100 caches etc. as we have already hit the ceiling on many of the others. It is a long term goal as it may take a while!

Badgegen - we have 20 gemstones so far - add the other 17 as and when we can (not including APE and Lost and Found). This will take a while as well!

There is a UK 360 degree challenge and we are still working on it. And, of course, there is the Hidden Months Jasmer Grid!

Answer 13

Following on from my jokey answer above, a dream goal would be FTF for a webcam cache. A year ago, this would have been a joke. Not possible at present (at least I'm assuming there's no unfound webcams out there), but in the light of this year's virtuals, who knows?

Comments

One would think so. One would be wrong.

https://coord.info/GCDECD
3.5/5 webcam published 2003-03-04 and still awaiting an FTF.

Answer 14

Sometime around 600 caches someone showed me a project-gc and started tracking badges and belts.
About 2000 caches I focused on filling the calendar and the streak.
A year ago, someone showed me a lot of other statistics on project-gc and started filling out the D / T table, hunting by FP, and so on.
Now it stops having fun, and I'm thinking about GeoTrophy. But what do I do for a year or two, I do not know.
Now I'm looking for more difficult and FP caches to keep the fun at least.

Answer 15

Currently my goal is to finish my d/t grid for the first time

Answer 16

I just want to find caches and meet people, everything else is a bonus

Answer 17

One goal still not fulfilled is the Jasmer grid, I have three empty months.

Not sure how "high-level" this is, but for the next year I have planned to visit Mingo, it will fill one of the missing Jasmer months. I plan to fill the other two slots on the same trip, if not earlier (I live in Sweden, so Mingo is not exactly next door).

Maybe next year will be the year I finally get around to learn climbing with proper climbing gear, that has been on my to-do list for a while. "High"-level goal, get it...? Sorry, bad joke (I'm from Gothenburg).

Will try to attend at least one Giga event and a few Mega events next year as well. This year I didn't get a Giga, I have to settle for five Megas (in five different counties btw).

One or two new countries would be nice too (have 16 so far of which 14 in Europe, so Europe is filling up).

Have done 365 days and 366 days. Have done 600 days in a row. Have two (almost three) loops on the D/T matrix.

Answer 18

High level goals...

Actually we are having an eye on our stats and love challenges - even more if they are about puzzle caches, but after all it shall be fun. All those (sometimes cheatet) daily steaks or x-caches per day/month/year is nothing to aim for. We'd rather put a challenge on ignore if we feel we don't like the challenge.

So what could be a high-level goal?? What is a high-level goal??? Filling any grid for x-times+? Getting as many souvenirs as possible? If so when would it be fullfilled or will it be done at a certain point of time?

If we would have to define one, we'd say: Finding as many high quality caches in as many interesting places as possible all over the world.

Answer 19

I have no goals for now. I have fullfilled lot of stats during long geocaching "career" but in my opinion geocaching is not about stats and in many cases all stats changes good idea of geocaching just to hunt for some numbers and lot of people just for numbers goes from cache to cache without any attempt to enjoy places,cache covers etc...

Answer 20

I'm hoping to travel to complete my found grid for year 2000. I still need 6 spots out of the 8 grid boxes in that year. My closest one is 172km away and my farthest is 1135km. Of course, not in the same direction!

Comments

You're lucky to have them all close by. I'm in Sweden and to get some of the ones I'm missing I need to go to either the US or Australia...