I recently discovered I’d been geocaching in a dangerous area. I’d placed one of my caches in a bad location. I didn’t think of it as a hazardous place until I started reading the Groundspeak log. Cachers were leaving posts about all the broken glass, metal shrapnel and other sharp objects around Ground Zero. After someone talked about how he nearly sliced his foot looking for the cache, I decided to take it off-line. I resurrected the cache a few days later in a nearby location.

As a mentor of mine used to say: “What did we learn from this?”

I learned to be very careful where you place your caches. Had I spent more time examining the area, I’d have noticed all the sinkholes, gullies, and other erosion into the dump which exposed the broken sharpies. I’d have noticed the piles of bottles left from collector’s digs. Indeed, the one thing I did get out of this experience was a glass chlorox bottle. Who knew it ever came in glass bottles?

As Groundspeak says in their “Fundamental Placement Guidelines”:

“In the case of public property, permission can often be obtained from the agency or association that manages the land. Worldwide, there are many such agencies and organizations that regulate geocaching on their managed land. As the cache owner you are responsible for determining who to contact to obtain permission.

Even if you are certain that geocaching is permitted on particular public property, ensure that you have followed any and all requirements established by the land owner or land management agency before placing the cache. There may be locations in which cache hides are inappropriate, even though not prohibited by local laws.”

So let this be an example to all cache owner’s out there: be very careful where you place your cache. If it doesn’t look safe in any way, shape,or form, find a new location.