Highway To Hell (Central Plateau) Papakai, North Island, New Zealand
By Punga and Paua on 24-Dec-07. Waypoint GC183AP

CACHE HAS BEEN ARCHIVED AND REMOVED....no more log entries accepted past this date. Well, that will probably be our last walk up here, what a soul-destroying place this is, a real highway to hell!! This used to be a favourite short walk, up the track lined with green mossy banks and lush ferns. Now it is simply horrible, we didn't realize how much damage the Te Maari Lahar had caused. The picturesque waterfall has gone, the rushing stream beside the track is a dried-up mosquito-ridden trickle and the sound of water in the distance is just a big tease, as it doesn't appear at all. The lahar stretch of the track is smelly and sandy and looks like a badly trashed dead piece of bush. We hope it recovers but it won't ever be the same again. The dead waterfall is a sad sight, couldn't DOC have channeled the water back to its original bed just so that the waterfall feature remained the same? Strangely the cache area was exactly the same as before the Te Maari eruption, but now it lies just outside the Lahar Area sign, well sited, we must have known something when we placed it here. Cache has now been removed and no longer exists.
There were 3 trackable tags (NOT geocaching TBs) in the cache, they have been placed in the Ketetahi Guardian Cache further down the track. Happy trekking on the Highway to Hell!

So close to the end!!! Good job I had an old PQ on my GPS that still had this showing up - easy find, though there were a couple of older muggles taking a rest - time was of the essence and so I took the plunge, grabbed the cache and explained what it was that I had found - they were very interested and were going to go home and investigate further. This cache still has a number of trackables in it - had I known that it was archived I would have taken them all - there are still some in there......this needs relisting - the cache was in great order!!

TFTC

THIS CACHE HAS BEEN ARCHIVED.

14:15
Found at the end of Tongariro crossing, it was trouble to catch moment without muggles around to retrieve cache. Nice one, thanks.

Found with capperz

The crossing, a big day and a great series of caches and great views
TFTC

On the other side of the world we had an amazing experience while traveling New Zealand. Great impressions, lovely places and nice geocaches all over. Thanks for inventing and hiding. Lemmer

On great tour with Lemmer in New Zealnd we foundamazing spots. Thanks for all of it. Flatrate

Archiving our caches.

This cache was found on a wonderful trip through New Zealand.
Many greetings from a Danish geocacher.
TFTC

Found this cool cache while starting the Alpine Crossing. Thanks!

An easy find along the way. The area is absolutely fantastic.

TFTC
wasicu

No stealth required, nice pouch. Easy find.

Kolejny kesz w NZ
p.s.
P
proszę o logowanie geokretów

During our walk along the Tongariro we found this Cache.

Thanks for showing us and best regards from Ferdi/ Germany/ Bavaria

Certainly felt like I'd come from Hell by the time I reached here, but we're nearly at the end! Thanks for the cache to spur me on! Love from England

Found this one after a little stuffing around. The trees made it difficult for a fix but the clearing helped. TFTC Punga and Paua

tftc

On NZ-Tour together with Ferdi
Tongariro Alpine Crossing - you have to do this !!
We had a beautiful day without rain and clouds !

Bavarian greetings
***mac***

Easy find on the descent down. TFTC.

Found today doing the crossing.

Found it before crossing the river and finishing the Tongariro Crossing! [^]
TFTC

In: \
Out: Coin

#1135

Thanks for this beautiful cache (I liked the camouflage bag).
EGInFlames, me and Andrea from Austria (we met her on our way across the Mount Doom area) found the cache after a little looking around.
A very important cache for us because we left a geocoin in there which we got as a present for our marriage and the New Zealand journey is our honeymoon!

IN: Geocoin

I was pooped after the crossing and appreciated the hint. Awesome area. TFTC

We found the cache on our walk through NZ
Thanks for showing the beautiful place.

TFTC

There were quite a lot of big mossy rocks around, I had to look for the cache for some time, but finally I hit the right rock and found it. TFTC.

On our way to the parking place at the end of the Tongariro Crossing we saw there were a couple of caches to find.
So of course we want to take these. And yes we found them. It was a pleasure to search these caches at the last part of a long walking day.
TFTC
MrTJ2 from the Netherlands

Almost at the end of the Tongariro crossing! What an amazing walk, this was definitely one of the highlights of our holiday.

Folkert and Linda
#1291 10-12-2013 15:30

NIce, quick, easy find which was good considering how many people were on the track with us today. Signed log and put back before the next person came around the corner. SL TFTC

16:30
Found during a nice walk on Tongariro Crossing. This one is almost at the end of the track. That was good, because I do not have a time. the bus will go at 17:00. It was good that I found it in the first place I looked.
TFTC

Yep, I was getting quite worn out by this point of the hike, but happily this was a quick and easy grab, unlike some of the other caches I had tried to find on the trek.

Thanks for the cache Punga and Paua!

Wow, the crossing has totally flashed me. What a wonderful track. What a wonderful view down to the Emerald Lakes. Hope I can do this again in my lifetime.
TFTC nscho-tschi

Thankfully a quick easy find, because you are exactly right.. just about out of energy & looking forward to the bus "home" and a hot shower! What an awesome walk.
TFTC

Together with Thundercatcher, Bommelstation and Claudischen we make a trip trough New Zealand.

On our tour there are a lot of caching places. This is one of it and we found it

This is one of the most beautiful tracks I've ever done . There are no words to describe it...

Greetings from Germany!

Auf unserer Campertour in Neuseeland haben wir nach Caches gesucht und fanden diese Box. So konnten wir uns erfolgreich in das Logbuch eintragen.

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On our campertour in New zealand, we were searching for caches and found this box. So we could successfully log into the logbook. Thanks for bringing us here.

Greetings from Germany

TFTC

Auf unserer Campertour durch das schöne Neuseeland sind wir (claudischen, llamingo, thundercatcher und ich) an diesem Cache vorbeigekommen und haben ihn gefunden.

Viele Grüsse aus Deutschland!

TFTC
__________________________________________________________________________

On our campertour through the beautiful New Zealand we (claudischen, llamingo, thundercatcher and I) got past this cache and found it.

Greetings from Germany!

TFTC

We overlookt the board that this part of the track is closed and so we was alone on this route and found this cache.

Quick find at the end of our crossing.

Thank You !

Nice forest part at the end of our Tongariro crossing trip. Some meters of this part of the track are detoured as heavy rainfalls gave the original path some troubles, but that does not affect the part where the cache is located. Thanks

Kerstin + Lenz

We really did it! Together with 2 friends I walked the Tongariro Crossing. At the very end of the track we used our last energy to locate the cache. Fortunately it was a quite quick find. Thanks from Germany!

No problems with this one once we read the hint. TFTC!

Fond this one nearly at the end of a great day on the Crossing! Thanks

Gps was a bit wonky, but found fairly quickly. Others who went ahead had pen, so couldn't write in log. Lifted TB.TFTC

Found with NovaLightning, after a bit of a search as we over-complicated the who clue thing, pleased to finally get hands on it, TFTC

Took me a while to find this one with Cats & Dragons.... turns out one mans large is another mans small.

Eventually found the mossy gz and signed log. dropped TB

Final cache I went for on my trek on the Tongariro Crossing. I was running out of time to catch my transport back to Turangi so I was glad this was a quick find so I can focus on getting down to the end of the trail. Thanks for all the caches! The Crossing is amazing!

Zowaar! Couldn't find this one.. A bit pressed for time for the return transport, too many muggles, too cold, too tired to look properly, too far from home...
Do I need an excuse?
Thx anyway! Simone

After some days it was the first good day for the crossing.
I did the crossing and some caches along. Had to delete the log and write it again, because the caches along the crossing were not in the right order. I like to think back to the days down in NZ.Tftc.

After some days it was the first good day for the crossing.
I did the crossing and some caches along. Tftc.

We had to wait some minutes until all muggles passed, but then we logged this cache here; TFTC & greetings from Austria!

Hiked in from the Mangaetepopo end to complete the crossing. Totally missed this one but think my GPS was playing up as it never got any closer than 100m to GZ. Will have to get it another day.

Looked with friends, but too many muggles and a bus to catch, so had to give up the search. Will have to wait till next year

As a number of other caches along the crossing, this is well placed and makes the hide even more interesting. Thanks to th CO for taking the effort!

#437, found during my kiwi traveling. Log in may, because I was without net. TFTC

TFTC, had a great tour, unfortunately without views due to the bad weather. Liked it anyway!

This entry was edited by Sjokolade-guten on Saturday, 10 March 2012 at 10:20:59 UTC.

The Freezer Mice strike again!!!
Second time over the crossing for us... but this time as cachers!
Wish we had the cache notes, as checked the obvious cachers path on the wrong side of the track first!
Nice day for a walk over the crossing.
TFTC.

Co-ords were a little out and had us looking behind the wrong rock to begin with....backtracked just a little and found the right rock. A little bit of fake shoelace tying needed to stall for time with all the muggles coming down the path! TFTC

TFTC From N. Ireland A quick find with the hint. It needed to be quick with muggles every 10 seconds...

This cache is most probably muggled. We think we looked in the right place but only found some trash.

Quick find during the Christmas crossing, TFTC!

Today we did the crossing at perfect sunny weather. We liked this hike a lot. At the beginning we were searching at the wrong rock. But after reading the cache details carefully, it was an easy find. Greetings from Germany.
Claudie+Fabi

Another find by the boys as they completed the Tongariro Crossing. Fantastic day and nice to have so many caches along the way to look for.

Found this one while we were nearing the end of the Tongariro Crossing. Found quickly. Luckily it wasn't to busy and we weren't disturbed by any muggles.

TFTC!

The for last cache before reaching the end of this beautiful walk. Had a great time on the Tongariro Crossing!

TFTC!!

Lady Pinguin

Find #523. The penultimate find for us (#9) today on the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, by this time we had realised that we wouldn’t make the 3:30 bus, so it would be the 4:30 bus back to Ohakune for us.
We started searching in the wrong spot initially, but soon realized our mistake and found it in the last place we looked ! A nice spot, and another cache on the crossing, thanks! SL TFTC.

Thanks for all the great caches that you two have established. Must be a big job to maintain them all! I got this one while going up the track to meet a party that I had dropped off at the other end. The 15 folk included six over-70s, and all did well. The first to arrive was 76!

Found it nicely tucked away as described. TFTC, a great spot and nearly at my final destination!

I nice quick cache 'n' dash after a brillant day on the crossing. TFTC

Found it on our holiday in NZ.
TFTC!

We waited for a muggel-free-moment and then found it during a great togariro crossing tour.

TFTC and greetings from Germany,
NeuOF&HobbleFrank

A quick find on the crossing. TFTC

There are rocks and there are rocks, but it had to be there, just worked on elimination. There were enough of us to have a rock each! Great way to ease the long downward haul. TFTC

Getting a little tired now so to look for caches is a great distraction from thinking of the tired legs!!! TFTC

{^}

Nice little cache. Suppose the yellow bags are for collecting trash on the way, in case one is motivated.
No problems with muggles. TNLN SL
TFTC
Cheers
nzkeko

I just went for this one from parking lot while waiting for my friends...

Very tired now!! But so impressed with the whole hike! Very happy I completed the hike!! A new record for me with 8 caches in one day!! Thanks for all the caches!!! Amazing experience!!

During an awesome 4-week hiking trip into the Garden of Eden we stumbled into this one while doing the TAC! Weather was good, bit cloudy but clear.The cone of Mt. Ngauruhoe was only a few minutes visible. Thanks for this cache, greetz from NL , Ro & Jet

This entry was edited by ro & jet on Wednesday, 16 February 2011 at 22:52:18.

This entry was edited by ro & jet on Wednesday, 16 February 2011 at 22:52:31.

A quick find near the end of the tongariro crossing. we were already a little bit tired, but it didn't stop us finding this one! T4TC and greetings from Switzerland!

Found it on our holidaytrip. TFTC

We found it near at the end of our Tongariro Crossing Tour

Greetings from Germany & TFTC
Zweiblum

We found it on our Tongariro-Crossing-Tour.
Greetings from Germany
Severus

Quick Find thanks

Just about finished the crossing on a beautiful day

Found after Tongariro Crossing trek. The weather was simply perfect today, we have many nice pictures.

One of the many caches while doing the Toganriro Crossing today. TFTC!

A quick find as our Tongariro Crossing trip was coming to end. Our party of 10 walking to the carpark in various states of exhaustion and sore legs/feet. TFTC

Found this one on the way up to the Ketetahi Hut but only for a day walk. Otherwise I would have missed this part while doing the northern circuit. TFTC.

nice quick find

good to research the photos first for this one and be prepared for a quick grab
TFTC!

A nice simple cache with my school kids.
Thanks for the cache.

Had to wait a while for the muggles to move on, but then a nice easy find in a lovely place. We had planned to walk 'the wrong way' up the track to the Blue Lake, but were forced to turn back when the mists came down. TNLN TFTC

Took a bit of searching, but found ok SL TFTC

On this beautiful cloudless day we had a perfect day of hiking and caching.

Cheers
dschuko

Quick find. TFTC!

this was massive found me a travel bug in this one . . . so xtra special nice find cheers

Perfect day of hiking and caching
TFTC
Jenny_far_away

Not far from the end this one was motivation to keep going.

TFTC
Flozza1
#682

Found on TNP exploration at 1200. Second time on crossing, back after 7 years. Still as beautiful as ever.
Keep New Zealand and Tangariro Park clean. Don't litter, put it in your pocket or a bag.
TFTC

Great walk. Knees stuffed but 8 year old ready for more. Thanks for a cache near the end.