Kerrs Hill Climb (Nelson) Golden Downs, South Island, New Zealand
By bumandworker on 30-Jun-11. Waypoint GC2Z838

After a much easier than expected up the road, I came back to this one where the downhill parking was ideal. 100m later I was at GZ and searching and searching and searching. Then re-read the logs to concentrate back where I had already looked. Yay, there it is, well under dirt. Signed and returned but with a heap more rocks on top.

GPS took us up the road to within 8m except gz is at the top of unclimbable 4m bank. No obvious track leading up the top of the bank.

Walked along the overgrown track for a quick find.

I got as close as possible to GZ from the road, then began to scratch my head trying to figure out how to get to the cache. Looking at the bigger picture, I assumed there was a path, but I had to go back along he road to get to the entrance.
The path was quite overgrown, but still passable. I just had to deflect lots of branches and other foliage out of my way.
At GZ, I looked around the SPOR and eventually spotted it. TFTC.

I have never tried to get this one before, but have driven past many times.
Usually excuses are I’m going in the wrong direction; I am strapped for time; it’s persisting down; I just plain forget about it or, more likely, I get intimidated looking at the fact no one has found it for a while.
But I had pluses on my side today. I was out of work early, the weather was good and I hadn’t targeted many caches to look for.
So I stopped by, parking in the obvious safe spot across the road, and made my way up.
The track is getting encroached on by young trees and other vegetation, but not gorse thankfully, so I pushed past it easily enough.
At GZ I was not sure where to start, so I looked for the oldest looking tree and searched around that. Leaf litter can cover old caches pretty quick, so I gave it a good dig. No luck there, so I moved my attention to other rock/tree combos in the area.
Then I made a discovery. I found what must be the original container, 1 metre from the tree I first guessed at. (See photo). No lid though, and no log, so I went to my pack and pulled out a replacement container and a RITR log. Then I made a rock cairn at the base of the tree, and resurrected the cache with my new container.
I then turned around, saw what must be the original lid also on the ground, so undid the rock cairn and put the original cache container and lid back there with the new log.
Glad to fix this one and find some of what must be the original parts, it’s all good for a while now.
TFTC B&W

Both The Seagnoid hunted for some time with no luck today. Is it still here???

This geocacher reported that this geocache should be archived. A community volunteer reviewer has been notified.

Another DNF on our loop trip today. I don't believe no one has looked for this cache in the past three years. I do believe those who looked for it are too ashamed to DNF caches they can't find. I think the area around GZ has changed significantly since placed, for example one previous cacher reckoned he could make this a PNG and I know his 4WD skills are novice. I think a hard core 4WDer would struggle with this now. What would have been pine saplings when the cache was placed have now matured and not been thinned thus making access to GZ a struggle. We did get the GPs to read zero and expanded our search several metres in all directions with no luck.
My feeling is the reason the cache has not been discovered in three years is because it is no longer there.

QEF but log saturated...there was more water in the cache than outside.....got a name scribbled in and a smiley face, thanks

A biting wind back up the valley had me retreating to the car for the first while of HorseGirlNZ's riding lesson today. Setting off with the main objective of grabbing a recently published multi for this weekend's GC challenge, this, and a few other caches a little further up the road were calling.

I had driven past this cache a few months back when I last headed out this way, so knew where best to park before the short walk to the GZ. Seemingly lots of options initially, but taking a different approach yielded a view of the CO's trademark hide style.

A quick sign of the log and a pause to admire the snow-covered hills towards the Lakes and I was back to the car.

Thanks

#1242

The pleasure of having a 4wd, we drove right up to the cache.

Today was the day we wanted to crank up some numbers so we went caching for 'park and Grabs'. It was a lovely day and we started in Wakefield before heading south and then back north. This was cache No 29 and we were rewarded with great views. Thanks to all the cache owners who made this a special day.

Out and about today in the day light finally found this one mist it in the dark last time TFTC

A most enjoyable day on the road, I went to some places I’ve never been to before, and revisited some I hadn't been to for a while. The weather played its part as well with a fine day. 50+ caches along the way, so all in all a super day all round. Took a leisurely route to GZ and found it without any problems. Cheers and TFTC

A weekend trip to Nelson to attend the event then cache our way back to Blenheim via Brightwater, Wakefield and 88 Valley Road was hatched earlier in the week and with Pi Day kindly offering up not one, but two shiny souvenirs, it was agreed that we would head over the hill, again!
Saturday morning to the Event, sleep in the car Saturday night (for me, the Seagnoid would take his bivvy tent and sleeping bag) then a long and slow trip back to bag as many caches as possible. Somehow though, this was lost in communication and the Seagnoid kindly volunteered himself to be Joe le taxi on Saturday night so the whole thing was brought forward 24 hours. My G P S has packed a sad and won't work anymore so I was on borrowed equipment and hastily loaded a G S A K list of potential finds, and some solved puzzles, and off we set at about 5:30 from sunny Blenheim. Grabbed caches before it got too dark to keep going, and managed 6 by torch light which helps towards one of my missing M G S C attributes, yay, just the Events to go now to qualify. At last it's Pi day. Wake up after an uncomfortable and too warm, then warm enough, then too cold night.
On the road home, the long way round, via Brightwater, Wakefield and 88 Valley and St Arnaud.
Nice little climb, reckon could have done a P&G on this one. Probably a neat camping spot too, just don't drink the water. Blackberries lower down are nearly overripe, so much later than Manawatu which I picked over a month ago!
T F T C b&w

[green] Suddenly I find this weekend is free, So capperz and I set off to the Pi Day event in Nelson. And to grab a few puzzles. Gotta get them souvenirs! And, since we are out there anyway, grab a few dozen caches along the way.
Spent Friday night in Grampions Reserve, got to the event, and now heading back to Blenheim via St Arnaud. Main objectives out this way - the wherigo and a letterbox cache. Those done, we are now heading home the long way, via St Arnaud.
I got delayed. There were blackberries! Lots of them! By the time I got to the top, capperz had already found and signed the log! It wasn't my fault! There were blackberries!

An enjoyable short leg stretch to earn this smiley and some great views. A favorite for this one, thanks.

Abandoning St Arnaud, now en route to Nelson.
One of a series of caches along the way.
Enjoyed the views from here on a clear sunny morning.
Straightforward find. Cache in order, log signed. Cache re-hidden safely, just as found.
TFTC found with team cacher Sweet P too
The Turtle strikes again!

The top of the hill. A bit of claggy weather so sadly no views today. Found on a big day with Team Gators down to St Arnaud and up the Wairau, this was one of 139 smilies for me for the day signed as KMTG. Cheers.

In Richmond on a wee family holiday. Headed out for the day with KiwiMoose on a caching mission through St Arnaud and up the Waiau Valley- to save on the possibility of RSI we signed logs as KMTG.
A long fun day. 150 caches total. No views - a bit cloudy wot.

Weekend away with MuzzaL53, heading to Lake Rotoiti, phones in hand, personalised manual for the weekend, and collecting caches as we go.

The cache provided some amusement as our caching partner in crime took us on a wild goose chase before we gave up, walked to the other side of the track and found it almost straight away!

#3453

This entry was edited by KiwifruitsNZ on Saturday, 13 December 2014 at 05:00:21 UTC.

No problem this time. Got soaked in the wet grass but what the heck. Worse things happen!! Thanks BW. Pleased to finally get this one ticked off the list.

#8567. Our second climb up the hill. Good to stretch the legs; a bit more of a walk to the new location; good views from there. TFTC.

First find of the day en route to St Arnaud. We had looked for this one in its previous location without success but today it was an instant find. Broom was in full flower today, a mass of bright yellow.
Thanks for replacing, and good to turn the DNF into a find, especially after our second DNF down the road at Blue Glen Forestry Rd. TFTC.

07/10/2014 9:03:00 AM
4871
This was one of the most epic weeks ever, and definitely my most epic caching week ever.

Me and mum headed up on a holiday north to Nelson and very wider surrounds. In total during the trip, we found almost 500 caches! (470 odd I think, but final results are yet to be in! ) We covered about 3000 odd km I think too. Crazy! And had our absolute best caching day ever too at 160 found. Spend 9 days travelling, caching, and having the best time ever!!

So sorry about not so epic logs, as otherwise this would probably take me the rest of my life to log, especially with two big events to organise coming up! Eeek!!

Almost every single log we signed as 'Team Polak' to avoid needing to write out both usernames taking up space on logsheet - as well as precious caching time!! Haha.

This was it - one of the caches on our big day

Consec caching day # 702

TFTC!!

-------------------------------
For info on the next NZ mega, and to pre- register, go to:
www.nzmega2015.com

For the sake of sanity we set off with sonia26642 for a crazy geocaching trip, aiming to cache until we drop. The main destination was Nelson and the ‘surrounding’ area, but then we ended up covering a few miles in three northernmost regions, plus a few in Canterbury. We were signing/stamping the log as 'Team Polak' or ‘TP’ for the two of us on this trip to save logbook space. We found a lot of different caches, city ones, road side, park side, up a hill and on an island, and we enjoyed every single one of them. It was good to be a professional thingfinder for a few days!

Today was to be our biggest day. S planned the route to cover the most possible easy to get P&G’s but we ended up not limiting ourselves to only those. D2.5? Why not? Let the brain have a bit of fun! D3? I am sure we can get there quickly!

We had great fun and are grateful to all CO’s who placed caches for us to find, and help restore our sanity before returning to our other non-geocaching lives!!

Come and join us the next New Zealand geocaching MEGA event!! Register your interest now at www.nzmega2015.com to receive newsletter updates and be the first to know. It will be a great event, come and be a part of it!!

Coordinates changed from:
S 41° 38.869 E 172° 52.392

Coordinates changed to:
S 41° 38.844 E 172° 52.388

Distance from original: 153.2 feet or 46.7 meters.
wee move....to friendlier spot

Replace missing cache....can't do much about deminishing view though.
Still micro.

Found something amongst the broom that would have made a good hiding place but no cache there. There may have been other items like this but the broom was too dense to have a decent look.
Not a wasted visit as enjoyed the good views from up here.

We found a tree stump deep in the broom. That seemed like a logical hiding place, but we found no cache there. Or anywhere else.

Another DNF for us here. Too many fake paths to follow. We didnt want to waste too much of the daylight we had left.

Nope, no luck for me today. The fantastic view made up for it mind!! Thanks BW

Flunked on this one just over a year ago and with the broom even bigger than on my last visit I wasn't confident. Persistence did however pay off in the end, and I was very pleased to finally get a smiley on this one.

TFTC

12834... Drove to within 25m of GZ, great views up top. Took awhile before we found the elusive cache hidden nicely amongst the broom. TFTC.

As we wandered up the track, which we could have driven up, we thought this wasn’t going to be too difficult. How wrong we were! We searched around for quite a while before eventually finding a narrow track of sorts through the broom leading to a likely object. We emerged sticky and covered in pollen. TFTC

Arrived at this one thinking OH NO not here. We came here once before with some time constraints and were sent all over the place and made no find. Today was heading the same way but with GPS and phone basically zeroing out within a metre or so of each other i started to widen my circle. Was rather interesting doing this at night as i was soon out of sight of Niteowlnz. Stumbled about untill i saw something that looked like a good place to look. Bingo cache in hand and another smiley face. TFTC

#27 for the night - not sure 11pm ish is the best time to attempt this cache ! - we had tried this one once before and it eluded us so we were pretty determined to find it tonight . We thought we were not going to find it this time either as we wandered in aimless circles for awhile thankfully avoiding the water trap resorted to reading all the logs and finally decided were we needed to be it was a ver relieved "got it"from Stretch0 - phew another off our list of revisits thanks for the cache

This entry was edited by niteowlnz on Saturday, 07 September 2013 at 06:46:57 UTC.

Nice bit to the cache seems strange in such a place

[blue]Day 4 of our 31 Days of Caching Challenge.[/blue] Its seems this cache can be abit hit and miss. Today we missed. We spent awhile following all the false geotrails to the obvious places and the GPS kept moving GZ. In the end we didnt want to be searching in the spit any longer. This is the onlt cache we couldnt find today out of 40 finds. Thanks anyway

A weekend trip to Lake Rotoiti and time for a few caches along the way. The sun was shining and the caching gods were happy. Find number 9. Prepared for the worst I wasn't disappointed spending many a fruitless moment looking where it wasn't, then suddenly the obvious appeared and there it was. Wahoo. TFTC

Stopped on the way home from a weekend kayaking. Took a few minutes to find but then had the ah ha moment . TFTC

#911

This entry was edited by paddle chick on Saturday, 15 June 2013 at 13:28:03 UTC.

still thereburger

No good could be goneburger? Blenheim Bear

Ha ha. Pig tracks indeed!!! I rather suspect a succession of cachers have been flailing about in the undergrowth looking for anything that might pertain to the clue - - - or the cache!!! We did the same for some time but then suddenly - - - aha - - - something that was not baseless and maybe knew something about the cache. Success!!! TFTC

I remember this as as hill climb venue, but no luck today finding the cache even with help from Mr KE . Not sure what the clue relates to? Appears to be numerous pig tracks around GZ.

checked today.....cache is definately still there. my my, the broom has gone mad. but there is a straight forward approach....then look carefully, it is not visible.
OK, the view is nearly gone, but as this was still in place, we have left it as is. Will up the rating.

this has had a recent find, but we will check it (again) soon.

Looked and looked and looked and looked, is this it, no, wonder about, no.
Have to try this one som other day.

TNLN

A big DNF on the way back from Tophouse. Plenty of places where I thought yes got it..no..yes got it ..no. Zeroed in nicely and widened search but still nothing.

Attempted to find with Team RJay on a caching trip to Lake Rotoiti, on a perfect Nelson day for caching, or pretty much anything else.. no luck.. but plenty of evidence of a massive search taking place

just need to trust the GPS and search where it tells us TFTC

No, this was too wet for us after the rain. So we have to come back.

Cache found whilst passing.

TFTC
helennbrian n 2/4 tribe

Changing enviroment here....place was bald when placed.

A quick stop on the way south and mopping up a few caches which had till now escaped out attention. As previous logs say, the broom is taking over but it really just adds to the experience. Left micro TB. TFTC.

This entry was edited by holymu on Sunday, 04 November 2012 at 08:26:48 UTC.

Along the way to pick up the grandson at St Arnaud there were still a few caches that missed out on our personal attention. This was not as easy as initially thought. We found some decoys which only made us more determined to find the cache. Coords were pretty good yet the dense vegetation made it impossible to follow directions. Good fun and relieved when a kind of marker to the cache suddenly appeared in sight. TFTC

Found at 7:07 AM GAFF3 in the company of Phetlern. We were able to park fairly close - even with our camper vans and a quick find was expected - however we have learned that whenever we see the words "park and grab" we know that we are not going to park and grab, but park, walk some distance and then search and search and search .
So too was the case with this cache. We could not see anything in the surrounding area and certainly not on the perimiter of the broom. Eventually we plunged in deep and there it was - gosh that was a tough cache for the terrain rating listed.
Thanks bumandworker

10:05
Two weeks of traveling in the South Island in company with Pprass has shown us the wonderful natural side of New Zealand. The grab of the broom was quick and sticky as the log was signed.

NOTE TO CO: Given the fact that this cache location is now completely covered/surrounded by a significantly large and deep patch of Broom, perhaps an upward adjustment of the Difficulty rating might be in order?

TNLN . . SL . . Thanks for the hunt bumandworker.
4463

This was made harder by the item alluded to in the hint being completely overgrown by broom.

Awesome views especially with the snow on the surrounding hills. Would happily give it a favourite. point despite the DNF but not possible untill you make a find.

we will check this one soon b&w

Well the view was certainly worth it but we thought our coordinates were spot on and yet this one escaped us.

Easy find on the way to Lake Rotoiti hunting TFTC

Well that took a while! For there in the end. Beautiful day on the hill, just a light breeze. TFTC

Took way too long to find this one. Must look harder at the obvious places! Thanks for the smiley.

Nice area and fairly quick find. SL TFTC

our last cache for day
great cache
TFTC

We followed a wee morrie minor right to the cache site so no prizes for fastest today. Great views. TFTC #3053

Quite a cool wind up here today as the southerly blew in. Easy find otherwise. Cheers Gav [10367]

Found quickly on a brief stop while driving from St Arnaud to Nelson. Signed log, TFTC!

Seems I have following usa kiwi today. There can be ice on the road in winter but not today.

Nice One!!!!!!!It may be a park and grab, but it sure has to be one of the best. Great view for the Oldies and lots of tadpoles for the Youngies. Bit of a generatiob gap here. Much fun! Well done on placing this one. Thanks

Mrs SoBad solo so she parked and walked. The usual comment is true that she would never have stopped and gone up here unless there was a cache. Nice view from GZ. Thanks.

Great views today!

Found on way home from lake

It's not what we call a park and grab. Tftc

Easy find with Wilson#41.
TNLN

Easy find with Kwaka40
TFTC

Interesting 'crater lake' nearby. Great view.

50TH!!!

A very nice view from the gz and a quick find in the obvious place. TFTC - 39 of 75.

Easily found in the dark and rain! TFTC.

opps must have missed logging this one. quick find this time. tftc

4 pairs of eyes spent 60seconds in the cold drizzle. Found an obvious great hiding spot without a cache, and left.

No idea.

did not find. could not find. 2 sets of eyes still no cache.

Great views.-Bitsprayer

Have driven past here many a time but didnt realise what a beautiful view there is,lucky we had the camera Mr L went to find the cache while I took pics,looked gorgeous today with all the snow on the hills,thanks for the cache

Heading home from a long weekend on the wet coast, we decided to take an alternate route home and gather a few of the new caches along the way. Just a short climb from the road to GZ. No problems here. TFTC, Biggles.

I ran up and grabbed it, must be a nice view from here on a nice day, TFTC.

My careful and very attentive driver took pity on me here and let me win the race to the cache. Translated - he picked the wrong spot this time. Thanks.

Last time I performed the No GPS trick. AFter this I let Mr KE win the rest. It makes for a peaceful drive home that way. TFTC

FTF
FTF no7 for the day.
Ms M had the people mover zipping along the dirt track. Luckily she found the turnaround area before the deep wet hole.
Great view today.
TFTC

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