Geocaching goals for 2013

There are a few geocaching-related goals that I'd like to achieve this year. The first of these is to reach a total of 300 finds. We're currently at 267, so we've got a little way to go. If we can plan a few "cache-a-thons" throughout the year, then we should be able to get there. Our current record for most caches found in a day is 12, which we achieved back in August 2010. I think we'll need to break this record in order to get to our goal of 300.

The other goals don't relate to numbers, but are more about the caching experience. One of them is to complete our Difficulty/Terrain grid up to 3/3. What this means is finding at least cache in each of the 25 combinations of Difficulty and Terrain from 1/1 up to 3/3 i.e. 1/1, 1/1.5, 1/2, 1/2.5, etc. If this sounds confusing, click on the Geocaching Stats box on the top right-hand side of the blog page, which will take you to our profile on geocaching.com. Click on the Statistics tab and you'll be taken to our our Statistics page, where you can see the grid. Currently we're only missing the combination of Difficulty 1/Terrain 2.5 and there are a few caches around with that combination, so hopefully this goal will be met this year.

Finally, there have been a couple of "challenge caches" published recently which I like the sound of. A challenge cache is a cache with geocaching-related criteria that you need to meet before you are allowed to log the cache. The first is the Old School Challenge - New South Wales. In order to log this cache you need to find 10 of the 44 caches in NSW which were placed in either 2000 or 2001. Currently we've found two of these old caches, and we'll see if we can find another eight during the year. The other challenge cache that's on my to-do list is the Variety is the Spice of Life Challenge Cache. For this cache you need to find five different cache types within a 24 hour period. We've found six different cache types altogether, but not on the same day. For an extra challenge, I might see if we can do the challenge without finding a Traditional cache, as there are a lot of those around. There are two cache types that we haven't found which are in our local area (Letterbox Hybrid and Wherigo), so it would be nice to include these as part of the challenge.

It would be nice to achieve all of these goals this year, but I'd be happy to get any of them done.