What is the BarterDash?

Join the fun in the premier game for the week leading up to the GeoFest. The BarterDash is a game that combines geocaching with the game of Haggle [Wikipedia]. You collect two types of information:

Game Cards each have a geocaching type on them, such as “Traditional” or “Virtual”.
Scoring Rules determine how many points a game card is worth. Examples of scoring rules may include:

• Webcam cards are worth 10 points
• Mystery cards are worth double the value of Letterbox cards
• Including a Virtual card in your had halves the value of all Multi cards

Your goal is to score the most points in your hand of cards based on the scoring rules you determine during the week leading up to the GeoFest. A similar event was run in 2022 as a Community Celebration event. To get a better idea of how the game went, you can read the logs and look at photos here:

How Do I start playing the BarterDash?

You can start participating any day before the main event. There will be a BarterDash table at every weekday satellite event leading up to the GeoFest on Saturday. You can register a team at this table and get your game packet to start playing at any time. The earlier in the week you start, the better chance you have of winning.

How do I Discover the Scoring rules?

Inside select geocaches released during the week of the GeoFest will be QR codes. These QR codes will always be under the top cover of the geocache container. By scanning these QR codes, you can learn one of the scoring rules. The list of geocaches published each day will be provided as a public List which includes the GeoFest event, so they are easy to find.

The more QR codes you get, the better you will understand how each game card affects the score of your final hand. You can barter this information with other teams, but remember it means that the team you trade with will not need to find the geocache the information was hidden in.

How do I get the game cards?

A physical game card (the size of regular poker card) will be handed out at each satellite event. The more events your team attends, the more game cards you can collect. There may also be extra challenges during the week to earn even more game cards, but that will be revealed at related satellite events. Again, you can barter game cards with other team to get the best hand possible. The more scoring rules you know, the more focused you may be on getting certain game cards.

When does the BarterDash game end?

The game ends at the GeoFest on Saturday at 1:00 PM. There will be a table under the pavilion to turn in your best scoring hand of cards.

Winners and prizes will be announced at 3:00 PM. Information about locations will be available as we get closer to the Johnny Appleseed GeoFest.