We live in an infinite universe, which is expanding away from us at least as fast as the speed of light. There are already things out there that we will never see and this has been true for some time. The Big Bang which created it ‘happened’ 13.5 billion years ago, and the observable universe is already 90 billion light years across. This means that already we can’t see most of it. The things that we can see (stars, galaxies etc) are getting further away as the universe continues to expand, and so there are more and more bits of it becoming unobservable every day. We are never going to see it all.
The same is true of geocaching. At the time of writing there are 3,354,720 unique active geocaches around the world, and a further 33,784 which are currently disabled giving a total of 3,388,504 published caches. I have now found 17, 192 caches, leaving a further 3,371,312 yet to find. This has taken me almost 19 years, at an average rate, therefore, of just over 77 finds per month, or 924 per year. At that rate it will take me a further 3,648 years and 7 months to find them all. So would you all please put a date in your diary for a very special Event to help me celebrate my completion of geocaching, because that night we’re gonna party like it’s 5673!
However 5,015,262 caches have already been archived, many more than currently exist. While it may be possible still to find and log a small fraction of these archived caches, overwhelmingly they’re gone and will never be found. In an infinite universe you might argue that eventually all geocaches will be archived and so at some point finding all the remaining live ones will become much, much easier. However, there are also caches being published all the time. In 2024 alone there were 36,512 new caches published, not to mention over 85,000 Adventure Labs! On the subject of Ad Labs, if you count those in your stats then the expansion of the universe is accelerating more quickly now, as they proliferate without facing many of the physical barriers faced by the humble film pot, for example.
There are slightly, but not significantly fewer, caches being published each year, a deficit which fluctuates from year to year. This won’t make a huge dent in my caching inbox, to mix my metaphors, and it certainly won’t alter the fact that by the time I am statistically able to have found all the availables caches left in the world, I will have been dead for several millennia, Keith Richards will finally be of retirement age and Spurs will still not have won the Premiership.
So, again, I’m never going to find them all. We all know this of course. Most players only really cache within a couple of hours from their home. A few of us venture further afield, and some do this often enough to have found many thousand caches in several far-flung countries, but the vast majority, for a number of valid reasons, do not.
Some of us are less able to find certain caches. This might be because they live in North Korea, for example, but it might also be because of their own personal limitations. This doesn’t mean that they can’t enjoy a fullfilling geocaching ‘career’; I know of several prolific cachers who only ever use public transport, for example. Caches placed in many villages are effectively beyond their reach, although as we have already established, there are plenty more to find. In some situations, such as caching in central London, using public transport is the only practical and affordable way of getting around.
Perhaps their limitations are physical. Cachers with physical impairments may be less able to find caches up trees, or in caves. They may not be able to solve field puzzles which require you to identify certain colours, or to attend a T5 event at Everest Base camp. While the more inventive and understanding cache owners will undoubtedly make efforts to ensure that people are not excluded unnecessarily, inevitably not everyone will be able to find every cache.
I try to solve puzzles whenever I can, especially in preparation for a visit to a new area and, with help from others, I’ve certainly got better at this. But I’m surely not alone in recognising my own limitations and that there are a huge number of Mystery caches that, frankly, are too hard for me. Sometimes that can be annoying, but largely I shrug and move on. This also, therefore, reduces the number of caches available to me.
I’m a big fan of EarthCaches, and try to include them in any trips I make. I find that they add to the breadth and depth of my caching experience, and help me to understand better the places that I visit. But I also know of plenty of folk, who’s skills and talents I otherwise admire, who just ignore them all, find them annoying, or just don’t see them as true geocaches. Their ‘to do’ list is also reduced in size by this stance, while still leaving enormous potential for finding other sorts of geocaches- you know, ones with actual containers!
And each of us has our own special area of interest. Although, as I’ve said before in these pages, I enjoy the broad scope that geocaching provides as a hobby, there’s also a few things that I really like that others barely acknowledge. I love Virtuals, for instance, and before the introduction of the Virtual Rewards sceheme it was a realistic possibility that I might one day find all the Virtuals in the UK, as no new ones were being published. Even with four rounds of new Virtuals, they are still relatively small in number and therefore become a must-do on my journeys. We all know cachers who love the Church Micro series, and focus on them almost to the exclusion of all other hides. And there are those who only look for non-nano caches, won’t cache in urban areas, hate all multis with a vengeance, or think that Adventure Labs are utterly pointless. Again, these choices all reduce the size of our observable and receding geo-universe.
So even if you’re a ‘numbers person’, and love nothing more than spending your weekends following long power trails with a team of leapfrogging bean counters, or sitting in a car park stabbing your thumb at endless multi-choice Adventure Lab. You’re never going to log each and every cache. This isn’t Pokémon Go; you’re never gonna catch ’em all!
The same is, of course, true of many other collectors. If the subject of your avaricious eye is still being created, the best you can hope for is to stay on the trail; you’re never going to find every geocoin, Matchbox car or train number, especially given the other hazards and obstacles before you. For me, that’s kinda the whole point though. If there were only 100 geocaches in the UK and they were all just a short walk from my house, where would be the fun in that?
So predictably, the net of all this is fairly standard advice that you can get anywhere. Do what makes you happy and don’t do what makes other people sad. That’s it. All other arguments are invalid.
Andy, 07/02/2025
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