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Post by SSO JOAT on Apr 24, 2015 20:49:22 GMT -9
The Hobo CITO camping series shall go on! With some additional requirements added to GC Guidelines about Events, specifically event times, we will need to structure our camping trips so they meet the new requirements. I've given this some thought and come up with the following general plan for putting on the Hobo CITO series.
When we go on the road for the traveling CITO portion, our total event time is far longer than an hour, but we are traveling well away from the starting point. If someone shows up late, they may not catch up to the group due to the on-the-fly method of choosing CITO sites while we are on the road. To counter this, I think we can map out the CITO route with every specific site as an additional waypoint (which I did last year for most of the route) coupled with a starting time for each location. We would spend an extended amount of time at the published site before moving and plan to gather at each additional waypoint site and wait until the posted starting time before starting our CITO of the location. Times would be padded to make the route leisurely and allow for some PnG cache stops in between. By this method, someone who shows up an hour or two late would be able to meet up with the group at any one of the published additional waypoints at the time associated with it.
An example of how this might look:
Friday evening - Camping Social Event at single site with duration of at least 30 minutes (no problem; our campfire socials usually run several hours)
Saturday - CITO at published waypoint with a longer social gathering before starting out (maybe 30 minutes or so) followed by conducting CITO at the published site (which may even push our total CITO time at the published coords to a full hour, meeting the full letter of the new guidelines). Move to 2nd waypoint and gather by the posted start time, then perform CITO. Move to 3rd waypoint and hold until the posted time before starting CITO. Move to 4th, 5th, etc. The final ending point and time of the event should be easy enough to calculate.
Saturday evening - Camping Social Event at single site with duration of at least 30 minutes (again, no problem)
Sunday - CITO at published waypoint with a 30-minute gathering followed by conducting CITO at the published site. Move to 2nd waypoint and gather until posted start time. Move to 3rd waypoint and hold until the posted time. Move to 4th, 5th, etc.
Another alternative is to return to something similar to what we did in the original Hobo CITO with a single larger CITO site in the morning under it's own listing and a single larger CITO site in the afternoon under a separate CITO event listing. Each site would be longer than an hour in length. This would eliminate the continuously moving CITO crew that we have used (quite successfully) over the last 2 years. It would also double the number of CITO event "attends" that each traveling cacher would be able to log, giving you 2 social events and 4 CITO events for the weekend.
We once did a breakfast social event on the morning after the camping social and before moving off to the CITO for the day. This is another alternative, however it may start to push us toward "event stacking" when things are running too close together and without a specific and unique activity associated with them.
Also of note, I have talked to the Soldotna Parks & Rec folks and they would fully support our CITO efforts on any of their park areas as well as the use of Centennial or Swift Water campgrounds for our social camping events. So that is a possibility as a starting, center point, or even an ending point for the series.
If we can, I would really like to work an Alaska State Parks location into the mix this year. With our new 6-year caching permit, it would be great to show the folks at the Kenai District Office how geocachers take care of our lands. There are plenty of State Parks sites around the Kenai Penn road systems. One direction we have not gone includes the Captain Cook park north of Nikiski, which has campgrounds and multiple parks areas (with a number of geocaches available).
We could also approach KNWR again about doing something on the Skilak Loop, such as a repeat visit to Hidden Lake Campground.
At this point, I believe the target weekend could end up being the first weekend of October. We used the same weekend back in Fall 2013 and this is a couple weeks later than we did it last year. Weather could be a factor, but the campgrounds tend to remain open until there is notable snow on the ground, and it is quite rare to have snow in the first half of October.
Any ideas, thoughts and discussion is welcome!
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Post by GreatlandReviewer on Apr 26, 2015 7:06:08 GMT -9
Groundspeak recognizes that CITOs are transient in nature. Not much trash would be picked up if the entire group stayed pinned to the posted coordinates for an hour. It would be reasonable to have a thirty minute initial CITO at a larger location such as a campground to allow latercomers to join the group and then launch down the highway. As a courtesy, an intermediate meet-up hold point could be designated, but otherwise planning multiple intermediate waypoints could cost the clean-up efficiency as people have to regroup and then disperse multiple times.
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Post by barnacle9 on Jun 22, 2015 9:27:16 GMT -9
Looking forward to this fall's HOBO event! The target date will most likely work for me. People who have not attended are really missing out on a great experience!
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Post by SSO JOAT on Aug 20, 2015 14:54:52 GMT -9
After consulting with the 3 folks who had shown interest in doing a Hobo CITO run this fall, we have decided to cancel it this year. It seems the timing just isn't working out for everyone.
So, we will start working on a plan for a 2016 Hobo CITO run and see where that will take us.
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Post by TheFirefly on Aug 26, 2015 6:24:22 GMT -9
Looking forward to what we can dream up for Hobo CITO 2016!!
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