Utah in 2019

I used to do these every year, but lately I just forgot about the blog, and the numbers. My caching habits have changed to caching in the hills on trips. That was cut down a but this year with remodels, and repairs to the yard after the city tore it up and walked away from it.

The numbers…

Well the numbers are down. Slowly declining. A few years ago we topped 30,000. Well kind of, a few weeks later I archived a bunch of caches and we slipped below 30,000 and we have never gotten back.

I don’t think that is a bad thing. Anyone out caching knows that a lot of caches in the hills are old, very old., and some are in bad shape, washed away, carried away, or just gone somehow. Many of the cache owners are gone from the game, making the caches just abandoned.

Well enough of me babbling. And onto the numbers. Yes, these screenshots are a bit small..

The above list is from Project GC and does not include the archived caches. There were 1500+ new caches placed, and I would guess about 1800 archived. I can only guess because I dont have numbers from Punk Rock Girl. Only my personal archiving number.

Utah, Salt Lake, and Tooele are the big three this year. Utah and Salt Lake are always in the the top three. Others vary, This year Tooele jumped into the mix. Specific location that are an active area this year are Lehi area, and south Utah county, plus there seems to be a busy group out on antelope island.

Piute, and Wayne were the two bottom counties that did not even make the list. It was interesteing to me that half the counties had less than a dozen caches placed in them.

Saying Goodbye to the Past

We reached the end of the Utah Geotour after a long run of five years. We should really thank the Utah State Board of Tourism for their funding the geotour. They spent a lot of money. I have not heard officially but I have no doubt it reached into the five figures paying for the geotour, the coins, jackets, and patches. Not even counting the costs to send a representatives to Geowoodstock in Denver to advertise Utah and the tour.

Along with that there area number that I would personally thank to get things going. HikingSeal is on the top of the list, and there are a number of others that I should list but once I start way too many will be left out. Some did a lot of legwork at the start, and others came in later.

We are also coming to the end of the first 20 years of geocaching. Interesting to think where the hobby has gone in the time. I remember cachers when I started that talked about how many they had found in the state. Some claimed over half of the caches in the state had been found/placed by them. The numbers at the time were about 10,000 caches.

The Future .. who knows

We have had a number of discussions as the the state of caching in Utah. I know those discussions have gone on. Emails have been sent, and discussions in smaller and larger groups. Many people work hard to maintain facebook sites, smaller local groups, and holding events to keep the local communities together.

Punk Rock Girl and I wish everyone the best for the new year. We hope that the next year has a lot of new things on the horizon.

Already a few things are announced. People are signing up to hold special events. A special locationless cache will be published for the year. These are only a few things that have been announced. We hope that all goes well for you, and your friends

We will see you around the corner, and at the next cache.