By Mike Malvick (Greatland Reviewer/LadybugKids)
In prior Reviewer columns, I have discussed the “sweeping” process of looking at long disabled caches and caches with a growing list of “didn’t find it” logs. My curiosity was piqued about the archival rates (Cache Owner plus Reviewer generated) for various regions of the Alaska, so using Geocaching Swiss Army Knife (GSAK) and a database of all caches ever published in Alaska, I generated the following statistics after dividing the state with an east/west line drawn roughly through Cantwell.
Looking at my more than fifteen-year tenure as a Community Volunteer Reviewer beginning in July 2010, reveals the following:
- North of the line, 783 caches out of 2242 caches were archived, or 34.9%.
- South of the line, 5187 caches out of 11358 caches were archived, or 45.6%.
- TOTAL: 5970 caches out of 13600 caches were archived, or 43.8%.
Looking at geocaching statistics dating back to the beginning of geocaching in Alaska in year 2000, including caches published and archived by my predecessors erik88l-r and Crow T Robot, the numbers look like this:
- North of the line, 794 caches out of 2250 caches were archived, or 35.3%.
- South of the line, 5955 caches out of 12089 caches were archived, or 49.3%.
- TOTAL: 6749 caches out of 14339 caches were archived, or 47.1%.
So, overall archival rates across Alaska have slightly decreased during the past fifteen years. Of the caches logged by my player account, which has been active for 21 years and 53.7% of the finds are outside of Alaska, 52.6% have been archived, indicating that Alaska has a lower archival rate than many areas where I have cached.
I do my best to be impartial when sweeping caches, even eliciting comments from cachers that are amused about my player account’s (Ladybug Kids) caches receiving Reviewer Notes. Players may e-mail or message me through my profile if they have a question about something I did as a Reviewer. I may or may not be able to directly answer the question depending upon the need to comply with Geocaching HQ confidentiality policy. If you are unsatisfied with the response I provide, you may contact Geocaching HQ via the Help Center’s Contact Us link.