This article was originally published on Cache Up NB. It has been mirrored here for archive purposes only.
Have you ever done a powertrail? Whether you have or haven’t, I noticed something this morning which has me curious as to what other folks think.
Months ago, Groundspeak removed the “powertrail” verbiage on the listing guidelines. In doing so, it now allowed for individuals to hide a large amount of caches all in a single row. Previous to this, the reviewer had the option of denying a listing even if it met the distance guidelines. I know several cachers who experienced this first hand during the initial creation of the Dobson trail series.
A suggestion has been posed to Groundspeak to reinstate the anti-powertrail guidelines, and Jeremy Irish (GSP CEO) himself has commented on the suggestion by saying “I’m updating the status as “under consideration” since this is becoming an epidemic of poorly placed hides. The original intent of geocaching is to bring people to new places, not to a lamp post a tenth of a mile from another lamp post.”
It has spawned a very large group of responses both for and against powertrails. It seems that GSP opened a can of worms when they removed the powertrail guideline and things like the ET Highway have popped up and many more trails have appeared.
For the uninitiated, a powertrail is basically a big long line of caches hidden as close together as possible, and used primarily for cachers to up their numbers quickly. The ET Highway series for example is 1000 micros along an old highway in Nevada. There’s also the Tribute series in Maine which many folks from NB have done. There was also a short lived trail in Nevada called the Trail of the Gods (which has since been archived and should not be confused with Viking’s trail here in NB).
What’s your take on power trails? Should they be allowed? Should they be restricted to hike only trails? Have you done powertrails and if so did you like them? Do you think they promote the “all about the numbers” game?
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