Groundspeak Portal

We have been geocaching for a 3 years, and have only visited/posted a couple of waymarks, so the activity is still relatively new to us. One of our side interests that has developed has been visiting remote and abandoned fire lookout towers. While browsing through the categories, the closest one I could find is Lookout Towers, however it states that one of the logging requirements is to climb to the top. Some abandoned fire lookout towers may have the cupola on the top removed and/or have government signage prohibiting climbing the tower. I was hoping to post a couple of these towers as waymarks, but would not want to require a visitor to climb to the top, as that is something they should do at their own risk. After reading the description for the existing category, Lookout Towers, it seems these would not fit the category, and perhaps a separate category would be appropriate. Abandoned fire towers differ substantially from publicly accessible lookout towers in that they are often remote, and require considerable planning and effort to get to. Any thoughts?

Send the group leader an email explaining the situation. I posted a lookout tower we wern't able to climb and it got accepted.

Team Goju:

We have been geocaching for a 3 years, and have only visited/posted a couple of waymarks, so the activity is still relatively new to us. One of our side interests that has developed has been visiting remote and abandoned fire lookout towers. While browsing through the categories, the closest one I could find is Lookout Towers, however it states that one of the logging requirements is to climb to the top. Some abandoned fire lookout towers may have the cupola on the top removed and/or have government signage prohibiting climbing the tower. I was hoping to post a couple of these towers as waymarks, but would not want to require a visitor to climb to the top, as that is something they should do at their own risk. After reading the description for the existing category, Lookout Towers, it seems these would not fit the category, and perhaps a separate category would be appropriate. Abandoned fire towers differ substantially from publicly accessible lookout towers in that they are often remote, and require considerable planning and effort to get to. Any thoughts?

Firetowers would be an awesome category! You could have a variable for Active/Inactive. I agree that they should be separate from Look-Out Towers as they serve totally different purposes.

BQ

some of these might also qualify as benchmarks too.....
i think ive posted a few of those....

A good portion of the submissions to the Look-Out Tower Category are Fire Lookout Towers. I'm not sure if a new Category just for Fire Lookout Towers wouldn't be a huge overlap (I'm guessing maybe half the submissions are for Fire Lookout Towers, but I haven't sat down and counted, so who knows).

I'm not sure what the solution would be. Perhaps, like has been suggested, you could write the Category owners and ask if you can submit these, since they were originally for looking out of but are "closed" now, essentially.

Are there enough of these to warrent a Category just for abandoned/missing Fire Lookout Towers? I can think of only one or two in our area. The original Locationless for Fire Lookout Towers allowed for abandoned/missing, and I logged one where all that is left are the cement footings.

I too have photos of several abandoned towers which do not qualify under the current category. I think a new Cat would be ok if someone wanted to start it.

ambrosia:

A good portion of the submissions to the Look-Out Tower Category are Fire Lookout Towers. I'm not sure if a new Category just for Fire Lookout Towers wouldn't be a huge overlap (I'm guessing maybe half the submissions are for Fire Lookout Towers, but I haven't sat down and counted, so who knows). I'm not sure what the solution would be. Perhaps, like has been suggested, you could write the Category owners and ask if you can submit these, since they were originally for looking out of but are "closed" now, essentially. Are there enough of these to warrent a Category just for abandoned/missing Fire Lookout Towers? I can think of only one or two in our area. The original Locationless for Fire Lookout Towers allowed for abandoned/missing, and I logged one where all that is left are the cement footings.

That is my impression as well.  Sometimes a category name can be misleading because of the way it is actually defined and restricted.  Some things I didn't think would qualify do, and some that I thought obviously qualified, don't. 

But, abandoned fire lookout towers is such a small subset, that I don't think a separate category could be sustained.  Maybe this would be an example of a "Special Interest" type category as raised by BruceS.

Anyway, I would certainly communicate with the category leader about your concerns/intentions to see if these would be allowed, esp. since they were part of the old locationless cache.