52 Cache Pickup - Ten of Spades Ngaruawahia, North Island, New Zealand
By McCutchan Cache Clan on 20-Sep-11. Waypoint GC34EMY

Coordinates seemed a little out, not the first post we were looking at

Getting busy road here with the afternoon traffic. Thanks for the fun!

Completed the power trail with Bapboy1996 today, meeting 'halfway' between our respective cities. Had to miss a few on the trail due to muggles nearby, and some DNFs, which Bapboy has logged. It was a pretty successful day though, which ended on 50 caches thanks to some extras we found nearby too - this is about 2.5x my previous most in a day, and about the same as I've found in the last 8.5 years thanks to a bit of a hiatus. Was also the first time I had properly attempted a power trail so that was a fun adventure, I'll definitely bring snacks next time though. Logs are signed as Bapjtp, but some were quite damp and were unable to sign, though we attempted to dry these ones out where we could. The roadside could definitely do with a CITO at a few spots. TFTC McCutchan Cache Clan

Went through this power trail today with JTP2001. It was a nice day for it - overcast, but not raining until the last few of the trail, and a pleasant temperature. I drove down from Auckland, he drove up from Hamilton, and we got going from Ngaruawahia northbound. A reasonable success rate without too many challenges, although there are still a few gaps to fill in another day. Thanks heaps to McCutchan Cache Clan for getting these organised and looking after them, this was a fairly enjoyable way to spend an afternoon. Log signed as BAPJTP where possible.The GPS was a bit out here, but we did eventually find the cache. TFTC!

Was a very wet Saturday when I decided to fly solo and find some caches from this series. Was very wet inside container. TFTC

Well this was a cracking game of cards...a bit of twisting; a bit of sticking; mostly came up trumps, but I was also dealt a few bad hands.
Many of these logs might be similar, so I will chuck in some interesting(?) facts which I found on the internet...so they must be true
FACT! :

One thing that can bother the Ten of Spades is this feeling of lack of security in their home and marriage. Often, their work and home is closely associated, and may interfere with each other. Many Ten of Spades decide to run business from their home, where they constantly get interrupted by family members.

Thanks McCutchan Cache Clan
#4571

Headed down this way today with the intention of collecting the Pickup 52 trail of caches, and any others along the way....as am in need of some numbers for my goal for the year.....

Thank you to the CO's for cache placement, and bringing me to these locations.

Let the adventure begin......as I was travelling by car and by myself, I didn't attempt all caches in this series due to unsafe car parking/walking.....

Very wet log book here....

TFTC and the series....

A bit damp hard to write log TFTC

Abit damp but still able to sign

We put a new one becausd the lld one apparently disappeared

Unfortunately unable to find. Maybe has been obliterated by that mower

TFTC

Easy park and grab

Another quick find, thank you

Easy find. Where should be

Need 50 caches today for a challenge so got the bike out to try these.

This is number 14. Gps out so went for biggest

New container in place ready to be found

Found but didn't have a lid.

Found. Looked like chopped with a mower. Wasn’t in right spot so just put back where I found it

Second time round, found it

Dnf at the base of any post within 10 meters of gz

No find today

No find, possibly missing from location

Finally had the opportunity to collect this series. I missed some as my geo-eye was off and some of the parking was a bit precarious. I went on a road trip following the "Mega that wasn't" in Auckland over Labour weekend. TFTC.

TFTC

New container now in place, updated hint

Couldn't find the right location as the white posts are missing.

White post no longer at coords. Has this been relocated?

No sign of anything behind the sign

Such a fun day caching with SarahB20 and sharing turns to find the hides along this series along a route I'd never traveled before. Tftc

Kathykaches and I have been looking at this trail for a while and finally today we managed to complete it. It was a great day of parking and grabbing, running out of petrol, driving to Huntly for a top up of fuel, then back to caching, lots and lots of caches We had 5 DNF's for the day, so only managed to find 47 of the 52 on the power trail. Of course we had to find 3 others to make it up to 50, a new record for one day for both of us. Mostly signed as SB20 + KK. Thanks so much for placing all of these caches and maintaining them. Sorry for the copy and paste!

Day Two of our 11 day binge trip we are signing as NNES.

Yay school holidays! Time for a road trip with my friend Ethness. I flew from Christchurch to Wellington. The idea is to drive up to the top of the North Island and back. We planned the trip ages ago.

Thanks McCutchan Cache Clan for placing this geocache 7699 find for me.

Sadly there was no large event in New Zealand in 2019 but there are a few Mega events planned in Australia. New Zealand will have another large event in 2020 in Auckland. 
======== NZ Mega 2020 ========
Planning for the NZ Mega 2020 event is well underway. It will be held in Auckland over Labour Weekend, 23 to 26 October 2020. Thanks for hiding this geocache.

The school holidays are here and NosyNel and I are on a road trip north - to the far north. Today is a numbers run and for me, time to complete this series that I started in January 2015. TFTC and series. Signed NNES.

***======== NZ Mega 2020 ========](http://nzmega.com)***

Planning for the [NZ Mega 2020](http://nzmega.com) event is well underway. It will be held in Auckland over Labour Weekend, 23 to 26 October 2020. It's going to be a massive celebration of geocaching:

* 20 years of geocaching worldwide.
* 20 years since New Zealand had the very first geocache hidden outside of USA.
* And it's 2020 - all the 20s!

Talk to your geo-friends and start planning to be part of [this event](http://nzmega.com) - you won't want to miss it!

Nice and easy to find thanks

Have done some of the series before so getting some more

Another quick find in good condition. These are going down very nicely! TFTC.

On a mission for the Cache Carnival challenge. Trying to make as many finds as possible this morning, This series was tailor-made for this purpose. Tftc

Nice and easy park and grab as usual. All nice and dry, cache in good condition. Found together with Pyphant and Greenkiwikids and signed as Team Piraten. Tftc

On a souvenir hunt for Cache Carnival. Nice series.

....../. )
.....'. /
---'. (_____
T.F.T.C.._ ((___)
........... ((____)
..........((____)
---.____((__)

Down from Northland for the weekend along with Lis's Crew and DaffyNZ, with the challenge to get 200+ caches in one day and set some personal records. All logs signed as Team G0LD ( Geocachers 0B8, Lis & Daffy )

After arriving in Hamilton on Friday evening, we grabbed a few caches and then Saturday was the main event. With some good planning and teamwork, we managed 214 caches for the day.

Today was time to head home, but we had to make the trip really worthwhile and get some more on the way. This trail looked appealing and although it was drizzling at the start of the day, we charged into it anyway, continuing our good teamwork from yesterday. Part way through, the drizzle stopped, the sun came out and it got really hot again.

A few more DNFs on this trail than yesterday, but still a neat series that added good numbers to our weekend tally. Apologies for cut & paste logs, but no time to make notes about the individual caches on the day, especially with the damp conditions. TFTC

Out for the weekend with Team Gold (Go 0B80B8, Liz's Crew, DaffyNZ). Thought we would look at this series on our way home. Thanks for the challenge.

I'm down from Okaihau in the Far North with 0B80B8 and DaffyNZ on a three day caching mission. We aimed to get the Kiwi puzzles, the NZ series and The Eyes Have It series in one day. Not a feat for the faint hearted geocacher. 

We arrived in Hamilton on Friday evening grabbed a few caches and had dinner in the lovely Hamilton gardens. We then set off to grab a few more caches.

On Saturday with careful planning we managed to get a massive 214 caches. We worked really well as Team GOLD and had a great day.

Today we're heading home caching along the way. I started this trail back in 2016 on my way to the Turangi Mega. We had started at the wrong end and today I was keen to finish it off. It was drizzling at the start of the day. The team in the car were on signing duties to protect the logs from damage. Soon the sun was out again making my job much nicer.

Thanks for the series

Caching today with TheMexikiwi looking to finish the year off with a few more caches and found ourselves here.

Happy to turn this DNF into a find, no troubles with this one and back in the car in no time.

Nice hide - TFTC

Whilst staying in Hamilton, I decided after not doing well with the caches locally to make the trip up here to complete the caches that I didn't have time for yesterday. Todays caches were not so good, as the majority were quite badly soaked, and I ended up with quite a few DNFs. Still, it was nice to have a drive in the countryside and add a few more finds. TFTC.

Easy find thanx

Found with NZFlossy

Out on a road trip with NZBiscuit collecting this series and catching up as it has been awhile since we have been out caching together. The weather was not the best and I was the runner while NZBiscuit handled the driving like a pro as a lot of the parking was in hard places. We had a lot of fun and thank the CO for the series. Some of the containers are broken and have wet logs while some others are all good. It wasn't the day to do maintenance as everything I touched go very wet. TFTC

Bit tricky when there are hint items on both sides of the road. I got it right though first time.

Nice park n grab - tftc

I was quite keen to complete the current Hidden Creatures souvenir challenge and so I thought that I would focus my attention on this series. So I came down from Auckland to begin just as the sun was coming up. I was in absolutely no hurry at all and just enjoyed the experience. Over all I found most of the caches with only three DNF’s. I also met Team BOPnJAM in the process which was cool. It was quite adventurous at times with the traffic and trying to find places to park… but I got there safely in the end. Some of the log books were also too mushy to sign. So thank you McCutchan Cache Clan for taking the time to set up this series. I really appreciate your efforts in doing so ?

Great looking house up on the hill...cache all good ..replaced as found tftc

It seems to be a good place to hide these caches, but sometimes thay can be a bit tricky to remove when in a hurry! Thanks for the cache MCC

We had some extra time today and thought this power series would be a nice trip down memory lane for us. Thanks for some easy to find caches, but you do need to watch the traffic on a Sunday afternoon.

A plan was made with Team BOP to come to Huntly and do some serious caching for the Hidden Creatures souvenirs. 52 Pickup was a good place to start and we signed BOPnJAM to save space on the log. Most were nice easy finds so thanks for the series.

Out for a day's caching with Team BOPnJam. Most were quick easy finds and a little bit of maintenance. This was a card game I never found enjoyable, but this was a better way to play the game. Thanks for bringing us over this way.

We made up a team BOPnJAM with a group of cachers from the BOP (McJandals, TNxPro, Philip Perry, FrogyBeCaching and Davidson Clan) and Merlot58 to complete this 52 cache pickup series and to earn some some of the Hidden Creatures souvenirs. Great weather and great company and a lot of fun - TFTS

Out with friends today collecting caches for the hidden creatures souvenirs this power trail was a good option to get half the souvenirs. Looks like it was a busy day on the trail with alot of people having the same idea.
Thanks MC Clan .

Another big trip planned this time in an effort to obtain all the Hidden Creature Souvenirs. Team BOP (Davidson clan, McJandals, Frogybecaching, TNXPro & myself) joined with a couple of Westies (Jag50&Merlot58) to fill up the van and finish this series... and most of Huntly as well! We signed the logs as BOPnJAM for expedience and to save on log space.

I've always thought this was a really good idea for a power trail but getting motivated to do it was an issue. Today we've got a good team on and were able to knock this off in a couple of hours. 95% of these were found quickly with accurate coords and a good hint. Some logs were mush, some containers were broken and at least 1 was missing entirely. All of our cache repair kits will need restocking when we get home but we're all stoked to have *'picked up 52'* caches.

A big thank you to the McCutchan Cache Clan, we had a good day

***

**What are you doing Labour Weekend 2018? Wellington is set to host New Zealands largest Geocaching Event of the year! Check out the details on the [WENZ Website](https://sites.google.com/site/wenzgeo2018/home) or visit the event's [Facebook Page](https://www.facebook.com/groups/590545297801072/). Once you're registered and have logged your attendance on the [WENZ Event Page](https://www.geocaching.com/…/GC78NMQ_wenz-event-2018-wellin…) you're all set, see you there.**

Out with team BOPnJAM today to knock off the long anticipated 52.
This series didnt quite win our hearts, but we aced it and managed to score the full deck with a little maintenance on the way. It sure was a good way to clock up a large number of caches in quick succession and were were glad to have completed it.
Thanks for the series MCCC.

With Hidden Creature souvenirs up for grabs. A plan was hatched with our Westie buddies. We were all ready for a stormy rainy day but the weather gods were good to us today with no rain until getting home at 10pm. A great numbers trail with many of these caches needing maintenance, we will definitely have to restock caching kits as many log sheets were mush and unsignable!!. Still a fun day was had by all and many thanks McC for giving us a reason to come here. Please excuse my cut and paste logs in advance due to numbers. Cheers

Sunday trip on the bikes to complete 52 Cache Pickup - Waikato's power trail. Great company of Janno216. We just had one DNF today. Plesant day - great wetaher for cycling and joy! Thanks for placements. We had great time along Waikato river.

Some time ago tramyard and me already thought about doing this 52 Cache Pickup Trail. Today we both were free and it didn't rain so we made our way to Ngaruawahia (what a name !), prepered our bikes and started our journey.

All the Caches were fairly hidden and very easy to find. A couple of them were really wet so we were not able to sign the logbook. We only had one DNF, so we were done after three hours and made our way to the Bonus Cache after a nice lunch breake.

After this tour we had still time to find some local Caches.


We had great fun finding all These Caches!

Thank you McCutchan for hiding all of These!

Fun day out, thankfully with little rain, with cragger, laval and Dragon.Griffin collecting this series. We found all except 2, a few were quite wet so we dried as best as we could. I think we did them back to front but found ok parking in most spots so was no issue. Loved the document that you uploaded which we ticked off as we went.

Thanks for the caches.

thanks for the cache

I was out on a fabulous day caching with Keylev, Laval & Dragon.Griffin.

Thanks for the cache McCutchan Cache Clan.

This was a series that myself and Keylev had wanted to do for a while. As it was the school holidays we made a plan to complete it today with Cragger and Laval as well. We did the series back to front which meant some parking spots were a little tight, especially with the amount of big trucks steaming along that road but we completed the series with two only DNFs. Unfortunately it was those two that had the codes we needed for the Joker Bonus. After a few tries with different coordinate scenarios we settled on one that was plausible and made our way there and soon had the cache in hand.

This was cache number 34 and a quick find , TFTC!

No problems finding this today cheers

last full day in the Hamilton/Auckland area, awake at 5am so decided to wait for first light and head off and get some caches, on the way to visiting a friend in Tuakau via Auckland to attempt a few challenge caches that I qualified for awhile ago.
set off around 6am when the sun hadn't quite come up yet, but by the time i got to the first cache it was light enough to see what I was doing, headed towards Ngaruawahia first to get some petrol and then on to having a go at the 52 cards power trail.
All was well here, noticed that most of these caches had really good parking opportunities, only a few had a couple of interesting spots, lucky I had set off early enough where there was no traffic, until further in where more and more traffic came down this road. All caches were simple finds.
signed the log and replaced exactly where I found it. thanks for the cache.

Happy Easter

NZPatoto and I set off to find the Pack of Cards caches. 53 in total. We were going to bike but as I wasn't feeling 100% I offered to drive and NZPatoto did the finding. There were times we both did the hunting. Our road was very busy, with a cop car travelling south with lights flashing. SH1 heading south was at a crawl until lunchtime. Parking was interesting, would have been better in a 4x4. A few times I would drop NZPatoto and then find a park. I did manage to find 8 and there was 2 DNF. While we had lunch and a coffee we solved the Joker cache. #18 of 53 Found by NZPatoto. All good. TFTC

Nahkins and I set off to find the Pack of Cards caches. 53 in total. As Nahkins wasn't feeling a 100% she did the driving and I did the hunting. There were times we both did the hunting. Very busy road and not many places to park it was drop me then find a park. I found 42, Nahkins 9 and 2 DNF. While we had a cuppa we solved the Joker cache. #18. Everything good. Another smile. TFTC

Big write up in under the Ace of hearts. Thanks for keeping us caching all day

Nice trail and we had lots of fun... more details from me at the Ace of Hearts.

Another one bites the dust.

Stopped at every cache along the trail, replaced log sheets and containers as needed, relocated 2 of them to better places. Trail is now 100% ready, happy cache hunting.

Check the drop box link in Ace of Hearts GC34EG3 for an updated spreadsheet that contains updated information for each cache.

#5041. Had a short but enjoyable stay in Auckland. Now its time to head home to Wellington for Christmas. But first another mission. My DGSC bulk find challenge concludes on Boxing Day and by then I will be trying to find up to 200 caches to bring up 1500 qualifying finds this year. So have three full on days of caching ahead of me before I get back home. Today I am tackling some Waikato power trails and staying overnight in Te Aroha so I can visit the old timer cache 101 tomorrow morning. Time to do the 52 cache pick up series. Quite a lot seem to be missing unfortunately. After a while I got pretty picky about the pick-ups and only stopped for those with recent finds or not in the direct gaze of muggle houses. Still a good series to get the numbers up quickly. Managed to find 28 between 3pm and 7pm then time to head off to Te Aroha. Thanks for the caches McCutchan Cache Clan. Nice quick find here.

Very quick park and grab. Used to the white sign ones now.

Found this one on day 3 of Caching New Zealand. TNLNSL. TFTC!

Easy find for day 3 into Kelligula and my New Zealand holiday. TFTC

Another find along here...we spent so long doing these we took a break and came back refreshed after lunch and a pit stop. All good here, though the log is chocker.

Deceptive hint Cache was dry but log was full. TFTC

Having an enjoyable trip along the river bank. Thanks for another one. Log is full and very wet.

I was in Hamilton for the weekend for the Dahlia Show. Today I planned to find 120+ caches - the pack of cards series was the first to attack. A lot of the logs were full, and I just stamped where I could. I replaced some with paper where the containers weren't too wet. I just found 41 of this series - 7 DNF, & 4 didn't stop to look as they had had some DNF's. Thanks McCutchan Cache Clan for this series.

log full tftc

There is know room on the log book tftc

I set out today to find the caches on the 52 Cache Pickup power trail. Thanks McCutchan Cache Clan for placing the caches.

Having a flight home from Auckland this evening I took my mum out for a nice lunch, said my farewell and slowly cached my way north along the river.TNLN, TFTC McCutchan Cache Clan
NB: the log is full

Easy find

On a mission today to find 120 + as a team of 4. All logs signed Naki 4
Team is Blenheim Bear Thatsneat Tmninjaturtle and 2 Bulbars.
It was a fun filled day finding many sorts of different caches and visiting many interesting places.
Many thanks to all who placed these caches to help make it such an enjoyable day

Found this with the team "Naki 4" (Blenheim Bear, 2Bulbars, TMNinjaTurtle and myself) on our mission from Huntly to Hamilton on our hunt to 120. Was a long day but pleased to have it completed! Thank you for the cache.

Found this cache during the Naki 4 team (Blenheim Bear, 2Bulbars, Teenage Mutant NinjaTurtle and That’s Neat) run on the 120 caches in one day on the 3rd Oct. Many thanks Mission accomplished, this one is a wrap. TFTC! Blenheim Bear
This log posted with CacheSense for Android!

On my way up the line for a week of r&r and stopped for a couple of nights in Hamilton to pick up some caches. Decided to do this power trail to up my numbers. Another quick stop.

See Ace of hearts, TFTC

Found this series a couple of months ago...not sure of the date. Have just found all the details of this picturesque trip up the river. Have not traveled on this road before. Thank you for the placement of all the caches.

352 On way back North

On a brief road trip with tmann421 today collecting the 52 Cache Pickup Series. A few DNFs along the way, but managed to collect most of them. A nice quick find at this one and then we were onto the next. A lovely drive along the river. TFTC and the series McCutchan Cache Clan.

We have hit a little bit of rain but not enough to put us off, we are getting through the run and in great time, thanks for taking the time to place the caches, we have placed our cards in the caches and our paracord keychains where we were able.

Getting into the groove of this now!! Quick and cheeky. Love this

Crikey things were becoming a bit much now. Jet planes not helping the concentration but found it. Busy road.

A quick find here exactly where the hint said it would be.
My thoughts were starting to wander a bit at this stage.

The river is further away now, more rural rather than the aquatic! another quick find and a smiley