The Trudge - work nearly (West Coast) Denniston, South Island, New Zealand
By bumandworker on 22-Feb-13. Waypoint GC46C5M

Seem to spending a lot of time on the denniston plateau recently either for work or caching , today was a caching mission to tidy up the unfound ones...
No one at the lower car park today so able to sneak down the track to have a go at this and the bonus cache final...
More overkill on Doc's behalf as there's nothing wrong with the track up until gz ..its a nice stroll..cache was soon located at the obvious spot...back to the top I go.....wasnt until later that a realised I still had another "trudge" to get lower down...will attempt that one from below on another day tftc

Came up to denniston today. Amazing the old relics around. Only did a short walk on the track amazing that this used to be one of the only way up here. Cache was where it described and z nice easy find. TFTC

Found on the 31st of jan forgot to log, glad to find this one after unsuccessful looks for previous 2! Got to the top, yay. Tyftc

Abit of effort to get this one, stunning day tftc

Glad of the alternative route else I would have turned back. Eeek.

From a previous trip I knew that the "unpassable slip" is between the "mile log" track entrance and The Trudge - View Stop so this morning I skipped around the track closed barrier and headed down. Later in the day I spoke to the woman at the Westport ISite she said DOC is doing a lot of work up on the plateau and she wouldnt be surprised if the track is fixed and reopened. Fingers crossed its far to nice of a walk to be closed forever and the track is still in very good nick considering how long its been closed. There is one slip but a rough track has been made around it, you do need to rely on some thin trees to pull yourself up and down but its ok, maybe not when its wet and slippery. I had a fright about 100 metres from here when I heard a crashing noise behind me, I turned around expecting to see a goat, deer or wild pig but it was a runner coming towards me, he never came back up so must have got past the big slip as well like I did a on that previous trip. Cache was in the first place I looked all good. Thanks for placing b&w

#9946

The path has a "closed due to a slip" notice at the top and the bottom, so we didn't go for this one in case we walked down for ages and had to trudge back up.

Got one at last

A nice and quick find. The zig zags from the top to here are impressive. Cheers.

Todays plan. drive up to Denniston Plateau, grab as many caches as practible, and go down "The Trudge" to meet Ms KR at the bottom. Mission successful!

Thanks to all the CO's for placing and maintaining these caches. Cheers.

This one was soaking so we have added a waterproof log in a film canister. Took the sodden cover and page of logs on our trip to the top to dry it and replaced it in the cache on our return.

With so many caches along the bridle trail, it would have been a shame to bypass them, but the necessity of getting the vehicle to the other end meant we had to split up. I volunteered Andy to do the top half of the trail to the vehicle at midway and I would do from midway to the bottom where he would pick me up. The theory was good but the GPS resumed it's hissy fit just after he started and his work was cut out for him to find the caches. Stubbornness and perseverance paid off and he found all his allocation. tftc

Nice hiding place TFTC

Track currently closed due to a slip

Found it today very easy. It was raining but the walk was it worth

We had a couple of days in the area and I had long been going to walk this track but had never 'got round to it' so I now had no excuse not to. We had the company of a very friendly dog for the early part of it. In parts the track was worse than expected but overall was better than I thought it would be. After finding this cache it was time to trudge back down to the car. TFTC.

Sometimes things just come together nicely. If that involves our favourite playground it is very nice indeed. Today was one of those occasions. Weather forecast: tick, new caches: tick, unfinished business: tick. It was good to go up one of my favourite tracks around here once more. Even with the hint it took a bit of time. I need to improve my reading skills.... I secured the cache some more with stones. The tooth marks were impressive. TFTC

Gosh the wildlife around here must really be hungry to do that to the container. The walk to here was pretty easy but it was about to get steeper - onwards and upwards. If they could do it every day before working a 10 hour shift I can do it once. Thanks bumandworker for placing this cache.

#6951

Took a bit of finding as my GPS was sending me into all sorts of terrain. Just about to abort the search and thinking I had walked all this way in and nearly got cleaned out by the mad bikies coming down the hill 100 mph, that I changed my tactics and looked down in an other location and come up with the "chewed" up goods.
TFTC and I enjoyed my walk up here, now all I had to was to trudge out.

FTF
Took Ms M for a morning stroll on another perfect West Coast day.

This provided a laugh. After reading the hint, Ms M went "down" and found two out of place rocks but no cache. She even wondered if B&W had turned into Kiwi-Nomad by thoroughly inspecting said rocks. Time for Mr M to enter the fray. He inspected the rocks too [:o)] Then he looked down the slope. There was the lid separated from the bottle about five metres below. Pencil gone if there was one. Once retrieved it was determined that a Mustelid has been very keen to sign as FTF. Teeth marks on the lid and on the plastic bag. He managed to unscrew the lid but just couldn't get the bag and log out of the bottle so he was probably off looking for an extraction tool when we came along.
Cache now safely back under the rocks and well wedged. No guarantee that it's Mustelid proof though.
Time to turn back to the bottom. No need to hit the zig zag today. 1hr 20 to here including the three search and finds on the way.
TFTC

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