Note ref COVID 19

Restrictions are enacted and enforced at a county by county basis. In general Kansas is fairly open, but social distancing and masks are encouraged.

Kansas Department of Wildlife Parks & Tourism Lands

KDWP has been very geocacher friendly and in fact runs an annual geocaching contest, however each park or public land has a manager and they would like to be asked for permission prior to cache placement on their lands.  

Contact Info: Most contact information can be found at http://www.kdwpt.state.ks.us/.

Overland Park Arboretum

The Overland Park Arboretum GeoArboretum Committee must pre-approve any geocaches before they are placed within the boundaries of the Arboretum. 

Please carefully review and then submit the form linked below to request pre-approval for your geocache.
https://forms.gle/hMWtuwzZM4JbXCft5

US Army Corps of Engineers - Tuttle Creek Reservoir

Corps policy mandates that caches be preapproved by the agency. Containers must be transparent, and cannot be placed in potentially hazardous locales.  Thank you.
Paul Weidhaas
Park Ranger
Tuttle Creek Project Office
5020 Tuttle Creek Blvd.
Manhattan KS 66502

US Army Corps of Engineers - Kanopolis Reservoir

The land manager has been open to geocaching in the area. Permission should be secured prior to placing caches on the area property.
Contact Info: (785) 546-2294.

National Wildlife Refuge Areas

Kansas has three Wildlife Refuge Areas that do not authorize placement of physical geocaches.

Challenge Caches: (Help Center Article)

A Challenge Cache requires that geocachers meet a geocaching-related qualification or series of tasks before finding the cache.  An older iteration of challenges existed prior to April 21, 2015 that may not adhere to the following, these are for the most part grandfathered. If you are thinking of creating a Challenge Cache, please keep the following in mind, challenge caches...

1. MUST include a Challenge Checker (Help Center Article)

2. MUST BE geocaching related

3. MUST BE appealing and reasonably attainable by a reasonable number of regional geocachers - you will be required for a list of local qualifiers in a Reviewer note

4. SHOULD NOT based on non-accomplishments, such as DNFs

5. SHOULD NOT require cachers to log caches that are disabled or archived

6. SHOULD NOT require cachers to hide cache

7. SHOULD BE independent of the actions of other cachers. (FTFs, Lonely)

8. SHOULD NOT require cachers to find an explicit list of caches or one's own hides

9. SHOULD NOT be a book-keeping exercise with overly complex requirements requiring a bottle of aspirin to understand

Event Stacking

When two or more events take place at times and in locations close to one another, this is referred to as “event stacking”.  This is not allowed as these events usually target the same attendees.  To avoid the appearance of event stacking, the “3/30 Rule” will be applied to all events submitted for review in Kansas:

Events must be separated in time by at least 3 hours unless the events are located at least 30 miles from one another.  “Separation in time” means the time between the end of the earlier event and the start of the later event.  If events are separated by more than 3 hours, then event stacking is not a consideration. Time and distance may be extended during MEGA Event weekends.

Exception to the “3/30” Event Stacking Rule: A simple social event may be held either before OR after a CITO event (but not both), as long as the CITO event is clearly the primary event. To be considered the “primary event”, the CITO event must be at least twice as long as the social event. The CITO event may not be stacked on the social event to clean up any garbage resulting from the social event. If the social event and CITO event are held at different locations, some time should be allowed between the end of one and the beginning of the other to allow participants/attendees time to travel from one to another.