Terms of Service & Trail Safety

1. Acceptance of Terms

By creating, printing, scanning, logging, or viewing trackable items on QRCache ("the Service"), you agree to abide by these Terms of Service. If you do not agree to these terms, please do not use the website or its physical tag generators.

2. Outdoor Field Safety & Assumption of Risk

Geocaching is an outdoor activity that may involve physical exertion, remote backcountry hiking, crossing streams, adverse weather conditions, steep terrain, and wildlife encounters.

• Personal Responsibility: You participate in geocaching and search for droppables entirely at your own risk. You are solely responsible for evaluating trail conditions, your physical fitness, and weather forecasts.
• Never Trespass: Never enter restricted government facilities, military grounds, active railways, private property without landowner consent, or hazardous construction zones to retrieve or drop an item.
• Safety First: Carry water, a charged phone/GPS, emergency whistle, and appropriate footwear. If a cache or location looks unsafe, turn back. No trackable is worth injury.

3. "Leave No Trace" Environmental Ethics

All QRCache participants must adhere to the international Leave No Trace principles:

• Plan Ahead and Prepare: Know the regulations of the park, nature reserve, or public land you are exploring.
• Stick to Established Trails: Avoid cutting switchbacks or trampling fragile alpine or wetland vegetation.
• Pack It In, Pack It Out: Never leave plastic wrappers, broken container pieces, or debris at a cache site. Leave the area cleaner than you found it.
• Respect Wildlife: Observe animals from a distance. Never store food, sweets, or scented items in a geocache container with a droppable.
• Cache Container Care: Re-seal containers tightly and re-conceal them exactly as hidden by the cache owner to prevent animal intrusion or weather damage.

4. User Content & Acceptable Conduct

When registering droppables, creating tag designs, submitting field logs, or uploading trail photos:

• You warrant that you own or have permission to post any photo, text, or graphic you upload.
• You agree not to upload offensive, hateful, defamatory, sexually explicit, or infringing content.
• You agree not to spam tags, fabricate fake discovery logs for items you have never found, or engage in automated scraping.

We reserve the right to remove any inappropriate content, revoke owner keys, or delete offending logs without prior notice.

5. Physical Droppables & Loss Disclaimer

Physical trackables (coins, wooden nickels, 3D printed tokens, laminated tags) move between public containers through the good faith of fellow geocachers.

QRCache does not guarantee that physical tags will not be lost, stolen, or damaged during their journey. Owners release items into the wild understanding that trackables may occasionally go missing or sit in remote caches for extended periods.

6. Disclaimer of Warranties & Limitation of Liability

The Service and all software, tag generation tools, distance calculations, and mapping feeds are provided on an "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE" basis without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied.

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, QRCache and its operators shall not be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising from:

• Personal injury, property damage, or accidents incurred while traveling to or searching for geocaches;
• Loss or theft of physical trackables or coins;
• Any inaccuracies in coordinates, elevation, distance calculations, or map tiles;
• Temporary service downtime or data loss.

7. Contact Us

For questions regarding these Terms of Service or to report community violations, please reach out to us via our Contact & Feedback Page.