Are virtual caches set to return in the near future?

This article was originally published on Cache Up NB. It has been mirrored here for archive purposes only.

It’s been discussed over and over again by many many people and the majority of folks who talk about it, favour the idea that Virtual caches should be brought back into geocaching. Virtuals were discontinued several years ago but left within the caching community to log finds, but no new listings were permitted. Instead, users were directed to another Groundspeak project called Waymarking which was a place they thought was better suited for what virtuals were intended to be.

Since then, there has been a growing movement among cachers to have the listing of virtual caches re-enabled with new guidelines that would prevent the issues of the past from resurfacing. For specifics, check out this article on retired cache types. This movement can be seen most notably by the constant posts on the official geocaching forums where almost every month, there’s a new thread about virtuals.

There was also a new Facebook group created called “Bring Virtual Geocaches Back” which serves as yet another place where people can “rally” to try and bring them back. This group was started by a man named Keith Solbrig who very recently posted a message on the wall of the group regarding the future of virtuals. The message read as follows:

Hey guys. I just got a reply from Jeremy Irish (one of the top dogs at geocaching.com) and it said..” We’re actively looking into bringing them back in some way that doesn’t cause the problems they did in the past. Stay tuned…”

Now Jeremy is actually the guy who started geocaching.com and runs Grounspeak so if this in fact did come from him, it is promising that something might actually happen. There’s no way to know whether or not this is just a stock reply he gives people who ask the question, but it would seem to imply that the idea of bringing virtuals back is on the table.

There have been some hints given by Jeremy and other bigwigs at GSP that some new stuff is in the pipe. I’ve seen it mentioned in several interviews and other posts around the net so perhaps this is something we’ll see soon.