Wood Blaxlands Ridge, New South Wales, Australia
By teamMerlin on 07-Mar-17. Waypoint GC70NZ4

Find # 12991Following an event at Colo boat launch, it was the start of a day kayaking down to the bridge and junction with the Hawkesbury. Fun times!! Large group off down the river. Signing today as Hunter Sydney Canberra 24 or (HSC24).Joolay, KittyKatch, Fitzy, Minniek, FurfacesLL, GLISS!, Aykayem, Flintstones, Sacada, Aquillis, Search4, Smittengranny, Boots65, Nibletricecakes, Loci612, Googlehihihi, TikvaNZ, Foxnjox, Angel, MightyMinions, BigMat, Everest, Its_Dozzie, Samuel737, Leon737, gavingo4, Many thanks to teamMerlin for placing Wood for us all to enjoy. Your contribution to the game through the placement and maintenance of this cache over the years is appreciated.

Found with a fun group of geofriends during a weekend geocaching kayak adventure. The best part of group caching is having lots of fun, lots of laughs and lots of eyes to look for containers.Signed as Hunter Sydney Canberra 24 (HSC24). TFTH

Found with minniek and the rest of Team HSC24.Since we were nearby before launching into the water a bunch of us headed over to find this one. A nice quick find and sign. Replaced cache as found. The puzzle was fairly quick to solve when compared to others in this series !Thanks teamMerlin !!

And so the adventure begins. After the compulsory photo was taken at this morning's event, 23 kayaks of all shapes and sizes were launched into the Colo River. Then we were off in search of the caches that had been set out by the GOMS to entice people like us to conquer their incredible trail. It was a brilliant sunny day that was just perfect for being on the river. Luckily we had a safety boat as a few of us needed a helping hand at times. (Thanks El Capitain).Most caches were found in an acceptable time, while some were real challenges. Unfortunately, some were not found at all, but we had permission from the COs to replace them. This resulted in just one DNF. All logs were signed using the name HSC24 - Hunter Sydney Canberra 24. This has been a remarkable day thanks to the company and the challenges that we overcame on the river. We didn't loose a single person - not for lack of trying at times! Again a huge thanks to all involved in making today so enjoyable.

Colo River TripHeading to Wiseman's Ferry area for a weekend of caching with Joolay. Signed as Hunter Sydney Canberra 24 (HSC24). We found the cache before we headed out in the paddle. Thanks for hiding and maintaining this cache teamMerlin

We started the day with a 40 minute drive, a mass kayak drop, car shuffle and an event. An early start to have us out on the river about 8am. Lots of Canberra caches taking advantage of the opportunity to join in on a paddle up the Colo River had made our way north to join in for the day. We signed as HSC24 (hunter, Sydney, canberra) for all our many people, and groups, almost 30 people.The tides were gentle and flowing with us. A beautiful river, calm, great bushland setting with the hills high about us and crazy, fascinating sandstone rock formations into the water by us.The caches were a mixed of finds. Easy generally but just the attachments, strings, or tops on occasion. Permission sort prior, to replace any needing maintenance that were clearly missing or in need of repair.A great day out on the water, shallow at times across sand backs and fish jumping. Great scenery, it was easier going than expected. The change of tide brought a calm stand still to the water and almost 14km and 5 hours later, a gentle tide change to paddle against which wasn't noticed and we made ut to our end spot.Quicker than expected to finish, off for some caches, shower, rest and then the dinner event at Wisemans ferry before a few caches on the way home. I'll sleep well tonight, but a great day. Thanks for the event!

Spending some time caching around the NSW/ACT southern tablelands with lots of side trips. TFTC.Today was a trip to Windsor, Sydney to join a group of cachers from Hunter, Sydney and Canberra to kayak the Colo River. Signing as HSC24 (HAVOC, Sydney & Canberra)Today was the big day with a large turnout of many cachers with many caches. There were some caches with signs of being swept away, one totally gone and quite a few in need of repair. The maintenance crew did a wonderful job.14 km later and we were finally at the end. What a long paddle.Finished off with dinner at Wismans Ferry with a few caches on the way there and back.Great puzzle and nice quick find

Enjoyed this puzzle. Enjoyed finding this location. Quickly found. Signed and replaced. Bit of water in container, tipped it out. Signed and replaced. Fav. Tftc

Spending a few days in the area for some hikes and a paddle down the Colo river. A beautiful part of the world. TFTFun!

A great day exploring the region with ESCR. We just selected caches and walks that looked interesting to get a feel for the area and ended up collecting a decent number. TFTC!

On a maintenance run and came especially to fix this one. Container did have water in it, but the log was dry in its bag and the previous four loggers do not appear on the logsheet!!! (see attached photo of log). Have added an additional rite-in-the-rain logsheet to the cache and replaced.

Found this one with SciFiRulz TFTC:)

#14580 11:50A day of caching with Everest High in the northwest corner of Sydney.Main purpose was to find some of the YY puzzle series and the challenge caches of ilook4geo.TFTC teamMerlin

Found with PapaGrouch. On our way north from Sydney we stopped to find a few caches. We had driven past this area about 5 years ago, but at that time I hadn't solved the puzzles. When I started solving them I realised where they were. This is the first time since that we have come this way again so managed to pick up a few at last. This one has been under water, the container was covered in mud and wet inside including the log. Tipped out what I could but didn't have a dry log and bag to replace it with. TFTC

Today I had a big geocaching day out in the Hawkesbury District with It's_Dozzie. Our main targets today were to find as many Yin-Yang caches as we could, and also some of the many Challenge caches in the area. TFTC teamMerlin

This geocacher reported that there is a problem with this cache.

Out for a day of kayaking on the Colo with Rats and Steeba. We had targetted this series as our primary objective for today. The day started off foggy, but the weather cleared up into an absolute stinker around lunchtime and early afternoon, before a classic summer storm rolled through in the late afternoon. THankfully we were off the water by then.On the water we found many caches. Some were high and dry. Some were floating under water. Some were just lids (missing their bottoms). Some were missing altogether. Where possible we replaced those caches that were missing, but we did not have enough replacement cache containers to do this to all of them.A truly excellent series, on a river that I had actually not kayaked on before (but I have hiked and li-lo'd further up-river). Thankfully we timed the trip right, our early start coincided with the high tide, and it dropped throughout our trip. I highly reccomend this series!Cheers

Out for a weekend caching with steeba and Hoojar. We targeted NW Sydney and the Colo area. With plenty of choices we had a great weekend canoeing and hiking.Today we enjoyed a paddle along the Colo river collecting the Grumpy P.TNot where I expected to find it, but tucked away safely TFTC

Out for a weekend in and around the Colo River with The Rats and Hoojar to find plenty of caches- a fair bit of legwork needed beforehand though. Some enjoyable country.TFTC!

Absolutely everyone stayed in the van and 4WD and let me walk over through the bush for a quick find with spot on coords

Visited GZ this afternoon and can confirm that the cache is missing. Placed a new container and logsheet. All good to go.

Another DNF from me

??

After completing the rest of the series earlier today, we detoured to have another search here. However, we still failed to make the find. Too bad.

We returned to have another search here and despite spending some time digging around and crawling on hands and knees we still couldn't find this cache. Thanks anyway.

Cache check and maintenance run - all good at GZ. Replaced logsheet and a new resealable bag inside container, before covering with some natural camo.

Needs to be checked out after so many DNF's

DNF at 1:40 PM.
We had a good go at this one. We approached it from the top road and found a rock ledge and started to search in all of them - but nothing after about 15 minutes labouring in the high humidity.

We scrambled over a fallen tree and through some lantana towards GZ. Dan even put on his knee pads and crawled under a canopy of lantana to reach GZ. Like the last DNFerers, we found flood debris all around GZ but no cache. It may be buried under some silt.
TFTH teamMerlin

Caching with with WaywardWoman, this was our last cache to look for this morning. There is still a lot of debris from the recent floods and a tree over the trail, so sadly we weren't able to find it.

A DNF from us today while out caching with thomo31. We gave this one a good look, but with evidence of water levels at least a few metres up in the trees and signs saying the road was closed due to flooding it definitely looks to be gone. 6/7 for the morning is certainly respectible.
Many thanks to thomo31- Mr and Mrs T for all their determination and patience working out these mysteries and to the CO for placing them and his help along the way. We still have more to do, sometime....
Thanks

I'd planned for the last few weeks to take today off work to try and pick up all the remaining in Yang series.Unfortunately the nearby bushfires and my fear of being savaged by Eastern Brown snakes (thanks to a friend who lives at nearby Colo) caused me to scale back my plans. I managed to find another 17 Yin Yang caches today and this was the eleventh.

I do a bit of amateur woodwork and was sure I could find the way into this one. TFTC.

Still slowly descending into madness, another of Merlin's madding puzzles. I had to ask the Master Puzzler for guidance. I have mentioned before how much I detest puzzle caches??? The cache itself is easy to find.... tftfhc

Walked around in ever diminishing circles and then luckily found the direct through the lantana. Tftc tnln

MissMouse must have lived a reasonably sheltered life. On the way home, I was talking about the number of bongs I spotted on the trip. "Bongs? I didn't see any?!?". Well, there were three within 5 metres of this cache alone

"Chudles, the car now says 39". "Ok, not too many more then ...."

On our way back down south as our holiday comes to an end, we headed to the Yin Yang series to pick up as many caches that time and weather would permit.
With many hours spent solving these mysteries, a little nudge or 2 from the CO was needed to get us over the finish line for a couple. We found the themed puzzles to be extremely clever as they flowed together giving us the coordinates needed today to make a few finds. Unfortunately we weren't able to pick them all up as the daylight started to fade and we still needed to be on the other side of Sydney, so we had to move on We will be back in NSW next year so we certainly will make our way back here to finish the series and enjoy the area once more [^]
Making our way into GZ I was able to make one of the rare finds my dickie knee would allow me to reach. Wood it is!
Thanks teamMerlin for all the hard work put into this brilliant series , testing our mental and physical abilities, we loved the views that the caches took us to

Found while camping in the area
With Team CCRuDDSS

I was never too keen on puzzle caches when this series was first published, but once while caching in the area i crossed paths with some fellow catchers, and joined their expedition. To my shame i hadn't solved any at the time, so after getting back home i attempted to solve some of the series. I couldn't even solve 10 of them!
Since its been so long, i had to get some help from a little birdie to get the rest.
Left a trackable, picked up a path tag

Thanks for the cache.

Cache find No. 2713
Streak Day: 1016

Headed to the Colo river for the long weekend with Snoopy1976 and stopped by here on the way in for and easy find. TFTC

Streak Day #1905 - On way to a camping weekend with dave8153 and stopped by here to nab the cache, was an easy find in the dark. TFTC

A selection was made this morning of some of the Yin Yang series that we had not found as yet. It was time to go bush walking again and get them out of the "puzzles with solved co-ords" list. There was no problem with walking the tracks or doing a bit of cross country bush walking to get to each GZ. As each container was located and each log signed, we stopped to take in the views and notice the spring flowers starting to bloom.
Thank you to teamMerlin for more puzzles and more caches to find. Some were more challenging than others, but all were enjoyable.

Yet again, out collecting this series with LouLou0212, in between moving house. The locations and puzzles are all fantastic with this series. Thank you for placing the puzzles and series teamMerlin. I’m sorry for the generic logs, but it was a while between solving and collecting the puzzles, and then a lot in a short period!

Out and about caching with BeckNmonts this week, this series has had some amazing views and I’m so glad I had the opportunity to find all of these - thanks for putting out this fantastic series - TFTC teamMerlin, I really enjoyed it!

Sunday drive with Ris768 & Geodogs to grab a cache. Thanks teamMerlin for placing this cache


Log 1528 Streak Day 582

At the recent Coffee, Cakes and Conundrums night, a group of us worked on several puzzles, this being one of them. It was Dave8153 that made the breakthrough in how to solve it. Deep_99 and I decided to take a couple of my geodogs for a drive today and find this cache. I have never been here before and was pleasantly surprised. Quick find, SL #3666 on streak day #2222 TFTC fav awarded for the location

The yin yang series has been on our radar for too long. After finishing up work for the week, we made the trip down for the weekend. Over 2 days we travelled around the different trails, finding all these caches. Thanks for the effort put into this series, it's been fun.

Another simple puzzle that required a bit of patience.

An enormous day out with the whole gang - M95, GD__, B7, 154C, MCMD.
Admittedly I did not and could not solve most of these puzzles. I was tagging along for the drive and physical manpower. Thanks For The Caches!

After alot of endless nights working on the puzzle series we had ourselves the coordinates needed to make a start on the series we now just needed to find a weekend the gang could all get together.muppet called out again late last week,this weekend suited us all so the plans were soon made to meet for a very early start.We cached all day and well into the night finding all the target hides,a good balance of terrain and difficulty provided perfect harmony.
Another really enjoyable day out caching with good friends.
Thanks teamMerlin for all the hard work you've put in setting up this series.

Apologies for the repeated logs
TFTC

Admittedly I had only worked part of the way through these puzzles but when I got the call to participate in some trail walking and bush bashing I was packed up and ready to go in nothing flat. Bit of a drive to get here from Wollongong via the Southern Highlands but the day was well worth the effort. I'm glad to have earned some hidden creature souvenirs while getting some great geo-art. Thanks for the caches and the series.

We've been working on this series on and off since they first appeared last year. Today we set our sights on a power-binge to snag them all in a single day... only to discover many of them were just as challenging to get as they were to solve. No matter, though, because we attacked them like a well-oiled machine and plowed through the lot with precision and determination. The weather was on our side and it was a perfect day to accomplish our goal: we were out before sun-rise, rendezvoused with the usual suspects, made the trip from the Southern Highlands, made the first find by nine, the last by seven, and scored two bonus caches in the process; then we had a bite to eat where we could reflect on the day's adventures before refueling and heading for home. All up, a challenging series of puzzles, definitely a challenging day out, and some great art on our map. Thanks Team Merlin for the caches and the series.

What an adventure it has been to get here…

This all started back in August 2017 when I was notified of the puzzle series. I was really on top of puzzle solving skills at the time, so I set to work on the GeoArt. The puzzling process reflected the Yin Yang philosophy – a balance of easy, hard and everything in between. By February, I only had 8 puzzles to go. A few emails between the CO and other puzzle solvers had set the last 8 straight. We have sat on the completed list for 5 months, waiting patiently for the stars to align.

Now that I am on session break, my time has been significantly freed up. It was by chance that I had a weekend day off work, which was an ideal day for the others. A few messages were sent around late in the week to see if everyone was interested in finally getting around to doing the Yin Yang series. We had enough interest to go ahead with the plan.

Rise at 5am. Rendezvous at 7am. Arrive at 9am. Cache until 7:30pm. Return by 9:30pm. Home by 11pm. We managed to find all 59 caches in the Yin Yang series in 10.5 hours. Just like the puzzle solving, the cache finding reflected the Yin Yang philosophy – some caches being effortless, extremely challenging and everything in between.


An absolutely mad achievement! We wanted to smash out the series in a day to appreciate the whole series in its entirety. A momentous day spent in great company! Thanks to teamMerlin for this wonderful series – a lot of time and energy has been put into developing such a cohesive and interconnected set of Mystery caches.

While typing this log I found this great quote I thought I’d tack on:
“Yin and yang, male and female, strong and weak, rigid and tender, heaven and earth, light and darkness, thunder and lightning, cold and warmth, good and evil...the interplay of opposite principles constitutes the universe.” – Confucius

Apologies for generic copy/paste logs. There weren’t many cache-specific field notes that we needed to record. We were just really impressed with completing the series as a whole and overlooked potential points of interest.

Back in the area today for the first time in a while so decided to grab a few more of these puzzles. It feels like so long since I solved some of these that I doubt I will do them justice in the logs.

Overshot the GZ so made it a bit harder than needed but got there in the end.

It’s a pretty area around here. I really should bring the family camping in the Colo some time.

TNLN TFTC

Although this puzzle didn't pose any real problems in the end once I got going, it was the getting-going bit that was off to a bad start. Perhaps one of the issues was that I was using my phone and an app to look at the puzzle; as such I missed some vital information, namely the related web page, which was not displayed in the app. And without that I went on a bit of a wild goose chase, trying to find an atlas of Australian trees (there doesn't seem to be an Australian equivalent to the Southern African tree species numbering system). Then I looked at a particular property after someone suggested that was the way to go. Alas, wrong one, too.

Eventually, someone pointed out the little link to the related website and after that everything went swimmingly. The co-ords that popped out were happily accepted by the checker and I could file the puzzle under the completed list, but still to be found.

We were in the area for a pleasant drive with the intention of having some lunch at a nearby establishment that we've been to several times. I think I also want to camp in the area next year when it's a little bit cooler. Really lovely down this part of the country.

It was a nice quick find out of view of muggles who were enjoying a picnic in the general area. I added my name to the log sheet and also placed one of my signature small wire dogs in the container.

A familiar place that we've been to before but couldn't remember if it was because of an old cache or just a place to stop? An easy find nonetheless. TFTC
Cheers,
The Hancock Clan

Mr Hancock and I both remarked this was not the usual place for a hide in this series, an easy find though.

Good one teamMerlin, helped us spend a wet day interestingly

One more of the myriad of blue ?s in this area knocked off on our wet Sunday Colo trip. This one taught me something about wood I woodn't have known. Thanks teamMerlin.

Day two for our grab on more of these great caches in this picturesque area. We managed to find all of the puzzles that we had solved and some of the other traditionals along the way.

The terrain ranged from nail biting cliff scrambles to easy flat walks that just varied in length. All of the hides were well tucked away and sometimes presented us with a challenging search. Some of the locations played havoc with the GPS and we found ourselves using the 'Where would we hide it' technique which also served us well.

We had a good solid day and certainly feel a bit stiff and sore but with a huge sense of achievement. Thanks again for the obvious effort injected into these interesting and challenging puzzles and for showing us a large portion of your backyard. We enjoy geocaching here and will return again for sure.
SL TFTC

Much fun was had using my new PHL app to get the caches that are often beyond my grasp. Every cacher should have one!

Out on a Sackville puzzle blitz this afternoon. Very much enjoying this series.
All the puzzles are interesting and nice to explore this area.
SL TFTC

I came for a drive to collect some puzzles I had solved over the last couple of weeks.

The puzzle took too long to spot what was right in front of my nose!

The cache on the other hand was easy.

TFTC.

Enjoying this round of puzzles. Quickly saw the wood amongst the trees and placed on the to do list.
Fast forward to today and an opportunity to make a find late in the afternoon. Parked below and wandered up. Good coordinates had me signing the log in quick time. Thanks TM for a fun puzzle and hide.

#1137 well all up that took a long time to complete. First it took a while to find the correct informnation that gave me the correct final location. Then I put it in my pile of to find sometime when I'm in the area, today is the day. Now I am in the area I spent al lot of time wandering around with the GPSr saying 10 metres to go. I even resorted to going back to my car to see what the hint was. Well that didn’t help here so kept wadering around till i had a thought that I may be on wrong side of the lantana. Went to the other side of the lantana and I spotted a place that matched the hint. Soon had the cache. Signed the log and replaced as found. Both the cache & the log are in good order. Thanks for the cache teamMerlin

The following TBs visited for the distance - 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, & 2016 phlphotos NSW geocoins, phlphotos' Spindoc Bob Memorial Geocoin & Rainbow Spirit’s Caching Dilemma's Geocoin,Help for Heroes Geocoin, Heart Strings, Matsi's First Geocoin, Jasmer Geocoin & Kitac 2

Looking for a cache to fill a calendar day I had a series of recent mysteries solved so a loop drive this morning netted me four of the solved ones.
This was the first. Found after a short search at GZ. tftc

We had a look about the place when we got there. There were some toilets which Toriaz appreciated as well as a war memorial to check out. It seemed like a nice place. We ended up on the wrong side of the road to start with and had to double back because it was obvious the GPS was not pleased with our efforts. After that was corrected, we made a nice easy find. Thanks

#4,966

As we started looking at the cache page to solve this one, I noticed something and pointed it out to bikerbuddy. He was horrified - could things placed in that part of a cache page actually be seen by someone other than the cache owner? He made some rapid edits to several of his own puzzles where he had inadvertently given away too much information .

This one took us to a nice little park which would probably make a great location for a caching event - lots of space, seats, toilets, and now a few caches to find. We went to the wrong side at first, then had to go back to the other side of the road to make the find.

Thanks

I managed to injure myself going for this terrain two cache. Total lack of coordination on my part. Not much blood spilt, but a bit of a wake up for me, knowing that some terrain 3.5 and 4.0 was coming up soon. Quick find at GZ.
The puzzle: I saw what to do, and slowly made progress. In the end I stuffed up the maths, but that was obvious when I plotted the coordinates I had. When I doubled-checked my working I saw my error, and the checker went green for me, which always puts a smile on my dial.
Thanks again TM!

After the CITO and Event we headed out to get a few new local caches. We had most of the current series solved and picked up a few hints to finish off the remainder from the earlier events. A bit of googling and some more calcs and we had want we needed. Some nice walks on trails and some bush bashing for others plus some almost drive bys TFTC. Interesting to see the Art work proceeding

#1245
This one took a bit of research to come up with the right numbers. But I kept chipping away and eventually got something plausible.

Thought I would go for a longer drive and check out this area with lots of new puzzle caches. This one probably took me the longest to find today but it was #14 so that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. Surprised to sign as STF.

I'm really enjoying these puzzles!

TFTC team Merlin

[*FTF*] on a 4.30 Friday afternoon. Left work early to collect this one battled up Windsor road. Arrived at the approach to the GZ and looked over the edge and thought the cache may have been claimed by the munching machine that clearers the bush fringe. This was not the case and I soon had the cache in hand an came up smelling roses with FTF. I haven't been to this part of the country before thanks for bring me here. I will return with family in tow. TFTC

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