So near so far (Canterbury) Lake Pearson, South Island, New Zealand
By SuperJK on 05-Jan-13. Waypoint GC44HNP

That was a fun one.Easy going for a swim, its just around 10m to swim the rest you can walk.No need to bring a pen in your mouth while swimming, there is a pencil in the cache.TFTC#530

Thought about this one for a while and after having been through cave stream we had suitable gear to brave the quick dip.

The wind was blowing through the channel and we thought we would get pulled along but it wasn't too bad.

Has to be the most exhilarating cache we have claimed. We just wish the bach owners were home and had the fire on...

Thanks for he cache and for making us swim through a lake!!

Logbook was pretty damp.

After climbing the summit found this one. I had parked my car by the road opposite here and then walked the long way. That meant I only had a short dash with wet everything to the car.

Having been to the summit the energy levels were running pretty low. In the middle of the swim stage the tank was empty and I was swimming on determination and curse words. Was very pleased when I lowered my legs to discover the water was just over my waist.

900th Cache Find for Dracophyllum!!!
We had always wanted to find this cache but it was just never quite the right time to do so. Today was the day!. Swam across the short but chilly stretch to the other side only to find no cache where the hint and GPS took us. Fortunately the bach owners were there and we discovered that it had been moved it to the next tree over!! After signing the cache and taking photos we put it back where the hint suggested covered by a rock and small branches. Then we braved the cold waters (and the nor-west wind and waves) once again to get back to the car. Thanks for the challenge SuperJK and well worth a favourite from us! TFTC

This cache has been on our to do list for a long time.
Today was the day! At the moment we have family staying with us from the UK and one (Nana B) is a keen lake swimmer. Thus, she was positively chomping at the bit to swim in this lake and find the cache.
Mr B and Nana B headed out into the water with the phone floating behind in a waterproof box attached to Mr B. As they exited the water on the far side a dog at the nearby bach started barking and a man's voice called out, "Are you looking for the geocache?". "Yes", called back Mr B and he began to search for it. He soon had it in hand and the log was signed.
After the swim back, Nana B was keen to keep her wet gear on and to have a go at Cave Stream! There is no stopping some people....
Thanks for the cache and the memories for our UK visitors. A favourite point from us.

So honoured to have a cache right near our wee family Bach at Pearson. The land is owned by DOC so is open to the public. We do our best to maintain the surrounding area by cutting down wilding pines and respecting the local endangered grebe bird etc. Cache was a little damp but next time I’m there I will try and dry it out in the sun a bit to keep it going a bit longer. Tftc and enjoy Moana Rua like myself and my family do

I great day to take our new kayaks for a test. A quick find after a nice paddle across. Thanks great place will be back.

Me emerging from the lake with my phone strapped to my head. The things we do for geocaching. Hahaha

28/03/2017 - Today I managed to get an amazing (and extremely difficult) run done up Avalanche Peak in Arthurs Pass, spot of lunch, then off on a impromptu Geocache road trip on my way to Christchurch.

From a few park and grabs, the trip soon turned into something more, from Swimming across Lake Pearson for a cache, navigating through dense forest for the biggest geocache I've seen and running around the rocks of Castle Hill. What a day!

This cache was awesome. A great challenge and a chance to fill in a D/T spot. This is the kinda cache that makes me love Geocaching. Since I'm travelling the country I had everything with me I needed, Flipflops, Gopro headband and swimmers. I left the gopro recording on the otherside of the lake so I could share the story with others at home Will add a pic later on Thanks for this fun cache!

TFTC. Found after climbing purple hill and descending the scree. Rather than walk around the lake I put the cell phone under my beanie and took the short cut and did the quick swim. Cold!

Quick swim.

Kayaked across TFTC

After just conquering Mt Bealey this was my second target for the weekend needing to fill gaps in the grid and this was the closest and I do love a good swim having done the Clearwater island a few weeks ago .
the plan was to do the swim and stay at the lake over night before heading home tomorrow. on first approach to the area there were plenty of people fishing so I decided to postpone till a little later.
second attempt was better I managed to locate the track the Bach owner uses so access to the lake was a lot easier.

wearing my wet suit one bootie and one sock ( I had left the other at home) I took the plunge there were a couple of people fishing but they didn't notice me as I did my best navy seal impression and they were packing up as I reached the other side.
I made 2 passes along the shore line because I was working on the hint alone and wasn't seeing it but I did manage to find a find a lone croc so that made walking on the rocks easier . then bingo gotcha yippee all in good order tftc definite fav for me

Yuss!!! So many times we've gone past here and said...one day.

Today was the day, the lake seemed really low and it was only a short swim. Chilly but short. And cache soon located, what a rush!

Gets a fav point from us for sure, now Mr TS has dried out and warmed up. Left a new pencil in the cache too

This entry was edited by TwoSharpe on Tuesday, 28 April 2015 at 04:42:55 UTC.

This entry was edited by TwoSharpe on Tuesday, 28 April 2015 at 04:46:14 UTC.

Was nice and calm morning, cloud breaking up, sun starting to shine through so unload the Kayak and went for a cruise.
TFTC.

We checked the mountain weather forecast, YES, light winds in the mountains! Yay finally, no strong westerlies!! So we packed a picnic lunch, our kayaking gear & put the kayaks on the trailer. For once Metservice were true to their word, Lake Pearson was calm! We parked up at the main car park, changed in to our gears & set off towards the GZ spot. A quick easy find & yes the pencil was still in the container. The log book & inside the container were quite damp, so we dried it out while having our lunch. A leisurely kayak back looking for grebes but sadly there were not any to be found. In speaking to some old timers, they said that the bird life & fish life have diminished over the last couple of years & the quality of the lake has sadly gotten worse. Nonetheless, Lake Pearson is certainly a beautiful spot to visit. Thanks for putting the cache there, I have marked it as a favourite. ☺

That was easy, a bit of a paddle from the campsites on a nice morning and an easy find.
Cheers and many thanks for a cache that was bugging me each of the many times I have driven past.

I remember one winter a few years ago the lake was so low that I was able to walk all the way across. the lake had divided into two with a small creek flowing between them.

S.t.

Finally came over to sign the logbook, also rescue some trackables that have been here for 6 months over the winter. Cache still in good condition, looks like the nearby hut dwellers are setting up for summer stay, but the cache is definitely on public land.

This entry was edited by La Vista on Monday, 15 December 2014 at 22:03:58 UTC.

Wow good find this, told the family on way past that I will go for a spring swim to grab this, all of them thought I would chicken out but I am a man of my word. Got half way across in the cold water and found the waves crashing over me. Anyway got across quick log and then the return trip. TFTC and the experience and a favourite from me.

Tftc

Nice easy find. took the 5min drive up the road and then kayaked across to the cache. thanks for putting a cache here. The ground is owned by DOC

During our Journey to the south of New Zealand we found this Cache. The watertemperatur was ok, so we had to do that Cache. On the other side there was a women which told us that the ground is privatly. We had a short talk and swim back.

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

On NZ-Tour together with Ferdi.
Our decision: "so near" an we took the short way through the lake.
On the other side we had a "deja vu": again "so near so far" because
the owner of the ground welcomed us and we had a nice talk togehter with
her husband. We saw the stump but we couldn`t log.

TAKE CARE !!

Bavarian greetings
***mac***

Heading home from a caching trip in ChCh and it was SUPER hot. We decided while at Darfield that we would come straight here and swim across to the cache, but by the time we got here the wind had picked up and the lake was abit choppy. After the initial shock of the cold water we went for it fully dressed. About halfway across I started to lose my pants and took on some water so started to freakout. Mum told me to go back and she continued on to the other side and found the cache solo. We also took the pathtag that was in the cache. Thanks for the experience we wont soon forget... I think

[blue]Cache of the Day: 16/17 [/blue] | [purple]Our cache find: #2286[/purple]

Came back again and camped up for a couple of days so ducked across to grab this one, no one around today so a nice easy cache. TFTC. Cheers Bo

Stayed the night in Cv just up the road. Sunny and warm so - time for a swim with a mission in mind. Actually lake veyr low and only had feet off bottom 5 meters as the rest was able to walk. QUick find. TFTC

Hi - returned to cache filled in log and placed pencil there. Also placed PATHTAG 1067418 in cache. Grebe still nesting! TFTC

Thanks Dragon Ring for placing pencil in cache, very much appreciated. Hope this placement will remain safe from local muggle inhabitants.

Found this one during a partial grebe survey of part of the lake (saw 7 plus one riding chick and one nesting about 30m from cache). Unfortunately we did not take the pen so will fill in the log next time past the lake. Will leave a small pencil for those who leave the pen behind. TFTC

Coordinates changed from:
S 43° 06.576 E 171° 46.730

Coordinates changed to:
S 43° 06.534 E 171° 46.703

Distance from original: 282.1 feet or 86 meters.

Did a bit of maintenance. Found the old container lid and log after something had chewed at it. I have replaced with a new larger container in a new location

Cache replaced. In new location and hint

Congratulations Sonia on getting to cache FTF ! However sounds like the container has been under attack so will have to replace.

02/02/2013 4:36:00 PM
2402
Eighth one of the day... main purpose of this trip was to finally find a cache in the one and only region in NZ I had never cached in - the West Coast. And to hopefully let the cache I find on the West Coast be the West Coast CANZ... A great day for it too!!
And what a successful day it did turn out to be! With an epic cache placed, and an awesome as cache FTFed!!! AWESOME!!!!!! And the CANZ cache found too!!

So, I was getting back into my car after placing my cache at Cave Stream, and finding the others in the area. I looked at the GPS to see what was roadside on the way to the CANZ. Well, there was a couple, but quite far off the main road, and I was pretty exhausted already. Then there was this one. Well, that seemed pretty far off the road too! Wow that did look like fun though! Something I would swim out to at some point.

Scrolled further down the description to read the logs. And what was this?!!! No finds yet??!!!! Well... that had to be fixed!! How could noone have found it yet!!!

So I instantly knew where I was heading, and drove straight out there.

Parked on the side of the road, and back into the wet wetsuit it was! Hot day though, and FTF to find, so I wasn't complaining! Besides, the wet wetsuit was not as bad as the wet shoes I put back on!
But since I didn't know where I was, it was then a bush bash down to the water... had I parked about 100m down the road, there was a path... how does this seem to happen every time?!

Got into the chilly water slowly then, and spent a good 5 minutes argueing with myself on whether to dive into the water or not... Then, I decided that I could walk closer to the thinner part of the river to make it a shorter swim. So I waded (At some points almost over head height) to the thinner part of the stream. There, I again spent another 5 minutes debating whether this was a good idea or not... I knew I would go, half my brain was already set on that, but the other half was trying to convince me it wasn't a good idea. And, well, the fast moving water should have put me off, but hey, it was only about 200m, and I had swum much more than that in my life, so it wasn't gonna be a big deal I told myself, and dived on in to swim.

Was pretty tough swimming in the wetsuit, as it does really restrict your movements, and having heavy wet shoes on didn't help... Neither did the current! And then my wetsuit even became undone! Which made things even worse, as I felt like I was gonna slip out of it, or like my GPS might fall out! Though I had clipped it onto my togs too. I had to swim on a wee diagonal to be able to not end up way more down stream!! But I was really enjoying it!!!

Then, when I was like 10-20m out, I just lost all energy almost, and found I was completely physically exhausted. Slowed down a bit, and just slowly did the last few metres. And as soon as I got out of the water, I just dragged myself to the bench, and just sat there. Completely drained!! Phew it had been a long day! And that's when I decided just this cache, the CANZ, and hometime.

Eventually I got up off the seat, but still pretty tired, and walked to GZ. After doing my wetsuit back up properly.
I followed the hint, and was convinced I was in the right spot. But nope. No cache. Not where I was looking anyways. After like ages, I decided to expand searching to other trees, and other areas. And then I finally spotted it. But it was on the ground! Looked about for a container, as that was only the logsheet, when I spotted a lid that looked like it had been bitten all over! Haha, same thing happened to one of my caches! Possum ate it before the FTF got to it! And so that was pretty chewed up too! Except that possum had been a bit more intense, and only part the logsheet remained, with heaps of possum teeth marks in it...

(continued in note)

(continued)
Well, after deciding I wasn't gonna find the rest of the logsheet, I then signed what was there using the pen that I had kept up the sleeve of my wet suit, and returned the logsheet to where I had thought it had come from.

Suddendly a tandem kayak came up past the corner, and after the formal greeting, I decided I better get on to swimming back! Just incase something went wrong, I would have someone to yell to for help. So rather than waiting for all my energy, just went for it.

Paced myself a bit better this time, but was still very very glad to be on land again!! And then I noticed the path, and parking area and all. Well... something to consider next time! Haha.

An epic cache though. I really loved this! And having to do all the swimming and all!! Though I told myself as soon as I got home it was sleep time... well, then my flatmate invited me to a concert of someone who sings really epic, and so I didn't sleep till after that... and then I slept like a rock for about 10 hours straight... Lol!

TFTC!!

Found it today, which I will log later... Yay!! FTF!!!
But the container seems to have been eaten by a possum... Found lid and log with bite marks all over..,
So put it where I assume it came from, the log that is, but it will need a check up...
Thanks!!

Bugger I have just spent the weekend there, If only I had done my homework first. I will be back Lol. Cheers Bo

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