Gnome Hunters: JacobsCrew Serpentine, Western Australia, Australia
By firnsy on 29-Sep-13. Waypoint GC4P69D

Find #821Well 11 years after finding the ants and Gnomes I returned here to hunt the hunters!This one was found fairly quickly but cache was in literally a million pieces. I replaced with a 200ml sistema in the exact same position with a new log and bag. A few twenty eight parrots were seen around here, along with ample bush and impressive cliffs, although they reeked of the goblin folk who reside here. From here I continued directly to the next two cache ignoring the COs advise, I paid the price.10 finds today, 8 mystery and 2 traditional, 0 DNFs for once. Thanks firnsy for placing these, and OOH YEAH and others for the continued maintenance

Tfth
Found with hunterzed and axell33

From time to time I have looked longingly over this part of the map but after reading some of the logs of previous cachers, I hadn't quite been game enough to head out here solo. So you can imagine my delight when Axell33 suggested that Rexxy17 and I come along on a trip to Gnome territory to tackle the Ant series of caches and possibly some gnome caches too.

After successfully completing the nearby Gnome fun multi we made our way to the start of the Serpentine Ant Trail. With Axell33's previous knowledge of the area, and taking turns navigating; we managed to complete this series and knock off a few of the more difficult Gnomehunter caches... not without a fair share of trips, scratches, and prickle bush face slaps..

Spirits were high though and a thoroughly enjoyable day was had.

Much discussion was had about how to tackle this one but I think we may have overcomplicated it and ended up taking the most direct route in the end(I think).
Well, the least amount of bush bashing as possible anyway.

Thanks firnsy and OOH YEH for placing and maintaining this series.

All I can say is Luna Maya must have already been lost if having a picnic nearby here

In 2013 as novice geocachers Mr Luna Maya & myself completed the original Gnome series and the Gnome Hunters final . There is a lot of good things to be said about gnomes but overall " I Do Not Like Gnomes ". For clarification please see GC4A791. I vowed NEVER to find another gnome cache again ! Fast forward 7 years and after a lovely picnic lunch nearby with Mistraluna we found this cache. SL TFTC Firnsy - I still don't like gnomes
* I must say those nasty gnomes were up to no good as on the way to this cache I fell over into the middle of a blackboy, most undignified - more evidence that " I Don't like Gnomes " *

Quick find TFTH

Once we got through the bush to this one cache was located after a brief search, we took a couple of extra minutes to rehydrate and have a chat before starting the ascent towards so ANT caches.
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The call came through from Mr Fratra last week to see if I was available to head back out to Gnome Territory and complete the western section of the caches out here. After a bit of back and forth we found that today was a good day for both of us and organised to meet nice and early to beat the heat.

When we met up at the designated meeting point we looked at the map and decided on a rough sequence to head to all the caches. Lots of heavy scrub meant some of the going was a little slow and the walking along the path for some of the ANT caches seemed luxurious.

In the end we were out for 5 ½ hours and collected all 18 caches that we went for before retiring for lunch at the Byford.
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Thanks firnsy for placing this cache for me to find, this is find number 1972 for me.

Hatched a plan with Cirrus_WA to tackle some more Gnomes and Ants. A pleasant if at times difficult and strenuous 5 hours with good company. Walked away with 18 smilies and a sprained ankle.

TFTC firnsy this is find # 8895 for us.

Hi there OOH YEH. While out today we looked for and found this cache after a short search - and while the log is in good condition, the container needs replacing.. This cache TN, LN, SL. Thanks to OOH YEH for this cache - our find 7412

Out in the area to pick off a few puzzles and the old school cache at the end of the track. I’m sure we did not follow directions as we tend to go via cache name rather than GC code. No real issues with the terrain. Some contouring between them and others straight off the track. A few Roos and stumpy tail lizards about. Can’t say we spotted all the previous finders in some of the logs.
Signing duties done and re hid. TFTC.

Today we completed the last leg of the civilisation tribe series all bar one pesky DNF, which we really enjoyed! Love the thought that goes into these caches, and the bush serenity helps aswell. We completed the tribes series early and then made our way to ant and gnome land.

We started well enough completing the ants series whilst collecting some of the various gnome hunter caches aswel which was a bit of a bush bash even straight from the path. We finished up grabbing the serpentine vista LPN cache at the very end, a nice touch to grab a 2001 cache. After grabbing the final on the way back to the parking waypoint we decended into hell.

Not having Read the cache listing we decided on a way to best approach the series using some satellite maps and some gut feeling. Don't do this. Read the listing. (After all steve usually prepares enough and reads about trails prior to completing)
What eventuated was hours of hard slog. Up and down, under and over and for the most part through. Through thick bush that two big blokes at times punched, kicked and generally bush bashed our way through.

Apparently We did the gnomes backwards . With some slight deviations going straight line caching from cache to cache. Again, not recommended. Read the cache page. Either way it won't be easy!!

About 5 hours of misery, mud, thick bushes, scratches. The last 100m to the path was bad, very bad. We didn't follow the directions. It was so bad Steve was tempted to walk in the creek to get back to the track. The last 300m to get back to the track took nearly an hour.

Safe to say we didn't get all the gnome hunter caches, but did manage to get the guardian gnome cache.

Being suckers for punishment we decided to go and grab a couple of others on the way home as there was no way we were grabbing the remaining gnome hunter caches an a couple of APs. They will have to wait.

We picked he perfect day for it. Max of 16 degrees, good weather and good company helped us amass nearly 50 finds for the day, including several caches that hadn't been found for up to 15 months!

I'm sure firnsy is probably sitting back in NZ having a chuckle at this log. On a side note we did replace some damanged containers, added log sheets to help the maintainer.

It would leave a big hole in any WA Cachers CV ti have not completed the gnomes.

Won't be back this way until next winter as reptiles will be back out soon. Thanks for the memories.

I would normally say TFTC or thanks for the cache in my log. I'm not sure if i want to say thanks for today's caching adventure!!

We completed the last leg of the civilisation tribe series all bar one pesky DNF, which we really enjoyed! Love the thought that goes into these caches, and the bush serenity helps aswell.

We completed the tribes series early and then made our way to ant and gnome land.

We started well enough completing the ants series whilst collecting some of the various gnome hunter caches aswel which was a big of a bush bash even straight from the path. We finished up grabbing the serpentine vista LPN cache at the very end, a nice touch to grab a 2001 cache. After grabbing the final on the way back to the parking waypoint we decended into hell.

Not having Read the cache listing we decided on a way to best approach the series using some satellite maps and some gut feeling. Don't do this. Read the listing.

What eventuated was hours of hard slog. Up and down, under over and for the most part through. Through thick bush that two big blokes at times punched, kicked and generally bush bashed our way through.

We did the gnomes backwards basically. With a some slight deviations going straight line caching from cache to cache. Again, not recommended. Read the cache page.

About 5 hours of misery, mud, thick bushes, scratches. The last 100m to the path was bad, very bad. We didn't follow the directions. We went our own way (don't do it). It was so bad I was tempted to walk in the creek to get back to the track. The last 300m to get back to the track took nearly an hour.

Safe to say we didn't get all the gnome hunter caches, but did manage to get the guardian gnome cache.

Being suckers for punishment we decided to go and grab a couple of others on the way home as there was no way we were grabbing the remaining gnome hunter caches an a couple of APs. They will have to wait.

We picked he perfect day for it. Max of 16 degrees, good weather and good company helped us amass nearly 50 finds for the day, including several caches that hadn't been found for up to 15 months!

I'm sure firnsy is probably sitting back in NZ having a chuckle at this log. On a side note we did replace some damanged containers, added log sheets to help the maintainer.

It would leave a big hole in any WA Cachers CV ti have not completed the gnomes.

Won't be back this way until next winter as reptiles will be back out soon. Thanks for the memories.

Hatched a plan with Granett to come out and grab the last of the Gnomes. It's been a fair while since we were out here, with good reason too!

Another one down, only a few left for us now.

TFTC OOH YEH.

OOH YEH, I found your cache Gnome Hunters: JacobsCrew on 10/6/17.
This is my find #5224 and find #15 today.

Well it's taken 2½ years but KrabiBoy and I were back today to clean up the rest of the Gnome Hunters and cross off the Ant Trail series. After about 4½ hours with a few slips and slides here & there our mission was complete.

Glad for the downhill trek to this one where my accomplice came up with the goods.

OOH YEH I found your cache at 10:33am, this was the 14th of 22 finds for me today and brings my total find count to 4019. The cache was in good order and I replaced it as found.

SLTFTC

Heading to this cache not from the trail but the scrub to the north I think we added another degree of difficulty, as always if there is a hard way and an easier way, we will find the hard way. We finally made it to gz and started the search. After a brief search the cache was spotted. Log signed, cache return and now dreading the climb to the next one. TFTC Firnsy and OOH YEH.

With axell33 and the geohound, I think we just like doing things the hard way! This bush walk is great and has some degree of difficulties, even the geohound has some concerns, but on we all go! And loving it! Tyftc

Gnome Hunters: JacobsCrew was transferred from firnsy to user OOH YEH

Lovely day for a walk in the hills. Firnsy TFTC

This was one of the first caches with any elevation change of significance attempted today. Getting close to the cache I noticed that there were a couple of blisters forming on my feet so I decided the it might be best to head back to the car before things deteriorated any further. And of course we had to pick up a couple of caches on the way. Found the cache OK, was surprised about the open location, it seems to work alright. Many thanks for the cache.

I've been eying off the caches in this area for quite some time but just haven;t got around to doing them. I had everything planned and ready to go last weekend but then something came up and I had to delay until today. I targeted the Serpentine Gnome, Gnome Hunter, Serpentine Ant Trail plus a few others. In the planning stage for the caches I wasn't looking forward to doing two loops to first pick up the Gnomes caches and then go back to pick up the Gnome Hunter caches so had a go at cracking the gnome code - and succeeded. This enabled me to plan a route that looked to minimise the distance whilst avoiding going up and down hill too many times. On paper the route I came up with was just over 10km. I started just before 7am and starting at the wrong caches for my route so I did a bit of backtracking to get everything back on course. I ended up getting back to the car about six hours later. It was then that I found that I'd lost the details required to find the Guardian Gnome so I set off again to redo the 6 Gnome caches and recollect the required info. The bonus to redoing these caches was that the views which had been shrouded in cloud earlier were now visible and there were some great views to be had. Finally another hour later I had the Guardian Gnome in hand. In the end the 10km planned route ended up being close to 18km on the ground.
Up until this point the going had been easier than I'd been expecting. That changed from here as i headed south to a couple of caches and then east. Thanks Firnsy for the great caches in the area.

Teamed up with the Richlinks and Iluvtrekking for a day off geocaching and my girlfriend came along to even the numbers up. The heavens opened up and we still continued on our way to take on this series, The boys were out to do a clean sweep of hills, This one being my tribute cache was still the type of challenge I expected, hard going and a nice challenging terrian to get too.. TFTC

Dropped off our geo-men at first parking waypoint at 9.45 am , it was drizzling and continued all day in varying volumes. Geo-hubby commented 'who in their right mind would attempt these caches on a day like today'. Who in their right mind indeed! So we waved off iluvtrekking, Jacobscrew and Mr richlink on their quest. Yes they had a 'list' again and this time they paid attention to it. However although the caches were completed in the order recommended by the CO, it certainly didn't make traversing the terrain an easy task. All 21 caches were found easily enough, but all caches had varying terrain challenges in getting to them, involving bush bashing through almost impenetrable vegetation, crawling, sliding on bums, clawing up hill - apparently not much of the saga was completed erect on two feet! Seven hours later the 'three amigos' emerged at the second parking co-ord. Geo-hubby said - I want to go to the pub, have a drink and a meal and I never want to geocache again - well, at least not today!. Thanks firnsy

We met richlink and Jacobs Crew in Armadale for coffee and breakfast before we set off on our Sunday cache hunt. The skies were black and the rain was pelting down so we offered the boys a change of plan, but they declined.

They were determined to complete their objective! They were going to hunt down all the evil Gnomes come hell or high water and nothing, and I mean nothing, was going to stop them. So we three girls dropped the intrepid Gnome Hunters off at the nominated parking coordinates and watched them march bravely off into the rain with spirits soaring.

They finaly emerged some 7 hours later, bloodied, bruised and nearly broken, having found all the caches in the series and muttering something about the pub, 18 year old female Scandanavian hikers and never caching again.

Thanks firnsy, they vowed that they would never to return to these hills again.

Kyzabra and I had been keen to get back to these parts and attempt the Gnome Hunters . We decided to head off early this morning and see how many we could get done by around lunch time. We left the car park at 6.50am and returned at about 11.30am, walking somewhere in the vicinity of 9km and we found 11 caches. A great morning out with stunning views from each GZ. TFTC firnsy

We headed here from leeuwinbybike and found the cache after a bit of a bush bash walk down the hill. Cache was found at 8.13am. More awesome views from here and we started to get a bit of a feel for what lay in store for us. . I must say, I was starting to feel a lot less confident about completing the series today. After a bit of an assessment about how to get to Tomthewizz we set off!

So, today was the day to venture back into Gnome Territory. Jinta 29 & I had planned this earlier in the week with the goal of finishing one section. Goal Achieved.
Four hours and about 9km later, we had this side done and dusted.

We crossed the path back from Leewinbybike to head down to Jacobscrew tribute. Wasnt too bad a walk down and after a bit of a hunt, we had the prize.
Left a couple of TBs here

Decided to stay on the same level and head to tomthewizz.

TFTH Firnsy

Another great location
Enjoying this series and the adventure that caching brings

Adding to the adventure by bushing from cache to cache

TFTC

Went Gnome Hunting with my family (jasenjanine)... We didn't find any gnomes, but we did find this cache! Thanks firnsy

School holidays upon us & we were looking for something to tire DangerMouse09 of his endless energy... With some unfinished business up in the hills! We suggested to DM09 that we head up this way & he seemed keen enough, although he did ask if he could take his bike

So after encountering the prickles all the way to ILT, we then had to retrace our steps... Of course we got spiked all the way back again, before falling out of the scrub a little more north than where we left off DM09 is starting to slow & not very happy when we start walking backwards & forwards on the trail as he quickly realised that we were again heading off the path! Still he bounced along, having a bit of a slip slide along the way but all was forgotten once he spotted the tell tale sign that a Gnome Hunter cache was present [^]

TFTC firnsy... We are now feeling well & truly stuffed, so can't wait to get back to the car for an icy cold beverage we have waiting for us DM09 has done a great job, although he has now said he does not want to find anymore treasures... & I don't either

Sooooo....making our way from Gnome Hunter...iluvtrekking, we were having a pretty easy walk to this cache and I was wondering why the terrain rating was so high?
OOH YEH opens her mouth and says..." This is a really easy walk" That's when it all went pear shaped!!
The slips, slides, crawling and crab walking started as we edged our way down the steep slope, grabbing onto trees and whatever else we could, to edge our way down to the cache.
We eventually arrived and took a well deserved break, food and water, and sat and talked about our next move.
Should we go back up the steep mountain or continue down? GPS said down so why do we want to travel back up? After all the terrain to the next one is only a 3!!! and we just tackled two 3 1/2's!
Wow...its only 10am and we only have one cache left to grab........so lets go.

"THANKS" FTH firnsy

Skippy 46 came over my house yesterday for a coffee and while she was there i came up with the idea we should head out today and get the 3 gnome hunter caches we still havent found....Sometimes i wish she would tell me my ideas are stupid and we,re not doing it but she agreed so today we headed out with the forecast of 26 degrees and we were hoping we wouldnt come across any snakes as we have both encountered them in the last couple of days. I thought i had this all planned out so i parked the car close to ant trail 1 so we could walk down a nice flat track.. After doing Gnome hunter Iluvtrekking we got back onto the ant trail and continued walking to this one. I think at this stage i said to skippy 46 these caches are really quite easy this time and at the same time i happened to look in front of me and there was no in front of me it dropped straight down. At this point im thinking i DONT want to do this again but we did and down we went till we got to the cache and took a 10 minute break before accessing the situation of getting to the last cache. Im not feeling so happy at this cache but i will still give a favourite point.....TFTC firnsy

[:(!] Went for a day of geocaching to do the Gnome Hunters Series and a few extra ones as well, this was one of them, parked the geoGrand Vitara as close as possible to GC4FX18 (Gnome Hunters - Kyzabra) and walked the circuit from there, on arrival at GZ the cache was in hand in a matter of minutes.

TNLNSL TFTC/TFTH/TFBMH Firnsy [^]

I decide it was time to see if I could find the Serpentine Ants and some Hunters.

I started from Ant1 and headed up the track finding Ant2, Ant3 and Ant4. From four I back tracked a little then went bush to Hunter: Kyzabra, then along top of the scarp to Hunter: iluvtrekking then onto Hunter: jasenjanine, avoiding the traps firnsy had set. The views to West were spectacular in the morning with the sun in the East.

I then headed back to the track and Ant5, continued up the track to Ant6 then on to Peters Vista. I could see and hear the Serpentine Falls another amazing sight. I now knew the Ant Trail Finale location and headed in that direction with another detour into the bush to find Hunter: JacobsCrew and Hunter: Tomthewizz.

Thanks firnsy for the cache.

Number two for today in our Gnome Hunter adventures. Approached along the busy ant trail. Lots of people out walking here today. Stopped to admire the view and wildflowers when the drizzle turned into a down pour. Just like last time started off dry and ended up soaked with the ant trail a flowing mass of water.Undeterred on to the last one. TFTC Firnsy.

With rain threatening the Gypsy and I hurried off down the pathway enjoying the wild flowers which lined our way . We got to the cache as the rain set in and we were amazed that in a couple of minutes the wonderful view across the hills were reduced to zero.

Yep another favourite.

TFTC. firnsy

(catch up log)

I decided today that I wanted to do some of these new Gnome caches so we planned to do the 'easier' ones and came to this one fourth and found a blank log, which was surprising so joint *FTF*

Thanks firnsy for the cache.

The better half decided today that she wanted to do some of these new Gnome caches so we planned to do the 'easier' ones and came to this one fourth and found a blank log, which was surprising so appear to be *FTF*.

Thanks firnsy for the cache.

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