I just received the following email from the GSA.

Thank you for your wonderful ongoing support for Earth Caches! We hope that you get as much fun out of visiting and developing Earth Caches as we do here at the Geological Society of America (GSA).

Firstly, we send out a big thank you to the geocaching team we work with at Groundspeak and the tireless Earth Cache review team. Thank you for helping to make the program grow around the globe.

We are pleased to announce that we now have close to
11,000 active Earth Caches around the globe that have been visited by over 1.3 million people with an amazing 13,250+ Earth Cache Masters being awarded. We hope to continue growing the program through 2011 with some competitions, new Earth Cache Masters levels, and plans for an Earth Cache Mega Event-Conference. More news next year!

We have also worked on some changes to the Earth Cache submission guidelines that will be released shortly and come into force on 1 January 2011. We think the changes make it easier clearer for everyone.

So from all our team - Gary, Matt and Jen - we hope you have a safe and happy holiday season and look forward to working with you to make Earth Caching great in 2011.