A hard spit. (Auckland) Whangaparaoa, North Island, New Zealand
By G-2 on 11-Apr-17. Waypoint GC73NJE

This one also had as going around and around But we got it in the end still nice and dry

Up this way with ABCDF4 for a few daysSo to the CO for making our time away enjoyable

Wow! What a path or no path! We followed the GPS and soon spotted the cache. Lig signed and now in search of another one! TFTC

what a track, never seen it so muddy like today .??... we even met a couple who took their shoes off??????. TFTC

Noticed a few dnfs at this one but thought I would take a quick look. Hmmm nothing where hint suggested then noticed cache lying out in the open on the ground. Signed log then jammed it back where I thought it should be so it wouldn't fall down again. Tftc

A challenge to get to but we made it eventually. Unfortunately we were unable to find. Sent out a couple of PAFS but as the storm came in we didnt go back for a second look. Hopefully we will find next time.

Second time looking and I accidentally found it.
Was busy messaging G-2 to check if I was barking up the right tree when I found it on the ground right under the spot.
Thanks G-2 for messaging me back so quickly and for all the effort you put into your cachs.

After 45 minutes and a phone call from my wife to check on I'm calling it.

No joy with this 1. Got to the area ok but could not complete. Will try again another time.

Oh boy. Talk about hard! Had absolutely no idea here. Gps wanted me in the thick bush & i was sure it wasnt going to be there. So it came down to lots of muttering while i did the elimination method. Finally finally found it, phew. TFTC

Headed up this way again as we spotted a trail of challenge caches we had qualified for, so thought to make a day of it...Joined by team HeMaLuDy, well actually HeMa only .....
Parked up and headed along the trail to this cache ....

Luckily the weather was on point for the walk, but still managed to get soaking socks as the grass was saturated from the days before rain and a heavy due this morning...

Mr HeMaLuDy has a little story to tell about this one....hehe...

The cache was found at GL and full of water, so placed it back at the height mentioned ....

TFTC.

The Stik-A-Crane's planned to do this costal walk and a nearby series on a road. Mr and Mrs HeMaLuDy decided to join them for the adventures. Beautiful weather allowed us to really enjoy this very pleasant coast line. Followed the devices and hint to find GZ. Found a probable location, full of water and a toy in there. Mr HeMaLuDy reached in to search and ended up with a very aromatic hand but no container. The water stunk!!! Checked previous logs and found a photo that matched our location. Expanding our search downwards found the container on the ground. Returned the container to the correct hight but wedged it out of the water. Glad we had drinking water and sanitiser with us to reduce the smell and use of sand and salt water by the next cache completed the job. TFTC

Great spot

Damn, very scratched heading for this one!

Bit of mission to get to the correct place and after 1/2 hour searching we flagged it for another day

Took me a wee while to get here as the path comes and goes if you head the bush way to GZ. After getting close and low single digits I moved shore side then back inland again and spotted the container. The RITR paper IS wet, but still signable, so doing its job here. Removed the toy thing from inside as it was impeding the lid.

A double pronged geocaching attack on the area North of me; first up was a trip to the wonderful Stillwater and get all those here and there caches that have been previous DNFs or just not attempted as too far off the main trail when my companions haven't liked the diversion option. This was followed by a quick dash to Orewa for one before finishing off out on the Whangaparoa peninsula grabbing random caches here and there. Two dozen was the haul and the day was a combination of blazing sunshine and warmth, and Sou-Wester gusts and torrential rain dropping the temp down to low-double digits, strange weather day. Thanks to all (both?) COs for their placements.

Found but full of water and too wet/gross to sign. Photo proof. Took a bit to find with my phone jumping us all over the place. A fun adventure!

Quick & easy but sneaky hide. TFTC

Great quick find. Revisiting an old haunt and loving the walk.

We all started to make our way out to the Pig on a Spit, but about halfway out Mark realised that this wasn't good terrain for someone with only one working eye, so he returned to the trail. Checking on the App showed another cache not far from where I had turned back. Headed out again and was soon carefully approaching GZ. I heard the others returning along the beach and they came over when I called them. Tracey ended up making the find for me at a spot on the spit that would have been hard for me to approach at present. TFTC

So hard to get to

Little adventure!!

Nice day out caching
Quick easy find

Family outing walking around part of the coastal track at Stillwater with a chance of collecting some new geocaches.

Heading back to the car now and collecting a couple of caches we bypassed on our way out. Came across the remains of a couple of rabbits along on this spit which suggests there may be an active predator in the area. Glad the gorse has been chopped back. Would have made getting to this hide much more unpleasant. Cache quickly found once at GZ. All good - TFTC

You must be quite tall

Straight forward find. Log was wet inside container, making it tricky to sign. Lovely spot.

This was a bit of a challenge to get to but not as bad as we expected as we were lucky enough to choose the best path. Looks like someone is camping here so we were as quiet as possible in case they were around.
A check of likely hiding spots soon turned up the goods.
Nice to get off the beaten track. TFTC.

Find number 6599. Decided to do a couple of days caching in the area. With an emphasis to try to clear the Dalmatians.After parking up in Riverhead and riding the bicycle from there. I only got a few done before the batteries on my GPS went flat and when I lost phone coverage I had to change plans. In the end I ended up with 29 caches today and spent the night at Murawai.
Day 2 was. Murawai, Dalmations and then onto Orewa for the night. Another 50 caches done.
Day 3 was Shakespear and Stillwater. 29 More caches before heading home to Hamilton. I made my way thru to this one ok and then took some time to find. Pleased when I did. Then managed to take a different route back and ended up walking on some of the estuary before jumping the fence on to the main track.
Thank you for the placement.

A bit late logging this one. This was quite an adventure.
I took a new permanent pen with me to log, then headed off. After some bush-bashing I managed to find the cache (coordinates were spot-on). Went to sign the log...but no pen. Lost in the undergrowth somewhere. So decided to come back later with a new writing stick.
Round two. Armed with the aforesaid and my young granddaughter (KMS5) we traipsed back into the wop-wops to seal the deal. With cache found and duly signed, we bushwhacked our way back. We were nearly out when KMS5 got hit in the face by a branch she didn't see and started crying (she's not yet 6). Then got into some prickles which didn't help so I picked her up and carried her out. Got to the fence-line, tripped over a low-riding fence wire and crashed to the ground, partially landing on a rotting tree stump with KMS5 still being carried. Then the howling really kicked off...She hit her head on the ground quite hard while I was left with a gash on my arm from the tree stump. After a quick trip to Silverdale A&E to have her checked out, we returned home with my second (brand new) writing stick gone, no real damage being done, and a young geocacher vowing never to return to that particular place again. All good fun...

Found this morning on our TA thru-hike while waiting for the tide to go down so we can cross the estuary ahead. As far as bushwhacks go, this one wasn't too bad.

Bit of a mission (including negotiation of the barbed wire) but found in the most likely spot

Glad to find this after a couple of disappointments.
Will rest and have a coffee to celebrate.
TFTC

As it was a long weekend and today being better weather than yesterday, work having been done around the house it was a chance to get out and find the odd cache in the company of 11HPG11.
Today we managed to find a grand total of 58 caches with only 9 DNF's along the way, and even managed to be home by 4,30pm so as not to annoy Mrs Dragon too much (although privately I believe that she may rather enjoy a day at home without an annoying husband being about the house).

Setting out from Hamilton nice and early meant that we managed to locate quite a few caches without any traffic to contend with, in fact Auckland is rather pleasant at this time of the day without both people and vehicles to contend with.
It has been possibly 7 years since I have walked along here and as there were a few caches they were part of the target grouping today. We headed out and cached the way back in, with the entire place to ourselves it was magical, adn made the effort of the early rising all that much more worth it. The cache was quickly located with following the interesting path we took to get here.

Thank you to all the CO's for their hard work in making this day possible, in both the placing the caches and maintaining them. We both had a great day.

When Cats&Dragons suggested a day in Auckland collecting a few caches I was very keen. When I checked the weather forecast I wasn't quite as keen. Determined to stay dry I packed all my wet weather gears and my gumboots. Was happily surprised to not need any of this and we were treated to a stunning day of great weather and great caches. Logs were signed with either HOAC or a combination of our names.

Took the hard way into this one and the easier way out. A nice spot to visit on this early am.

Bit of a hike to get here - tftc - quick find

Went for a hike along the coast. First of the day. TFTC.

I had a call of nature, so my caching buddy carried and found the cache, I caught up with him shortly and we carried on to try our luck at C.O's disabled cache further up the spit.

Log later

Nice quick find here with Gorby. Good coords. TFTC

Another side track I didn’t know about. Tftc

I am out and about for a spot of exercise, today, along the northern end of the Okura Bush Walkway. Generally nice weather for it, cool but fine. Oh, and there may have been the little matter of adding finds to my tally. With the walk out to the cottage complete I am heading for the trail head, but not before I find a couple more. I bush based along the spit to GZ and took the mangroves back to the track once the find was made. Once at GZ the cache was soon in hand. Cheers for the cache placement!

A bit of bush bashing to get here but found it! The container was covered in little slaters/wood lice. They don’t hurt anything so wiped them off and headed out to the end of the spit for the next one.

Spotted in the area of GZ one more likely hiding place but I was wrong so I had to look in another spot which was it. Bingo. All good at GZ. TFTC

We'd had our eye on this track and series for the last 3-4 years, and the mission of this summer was to complete it. Mission complete, but our geosense was definitely off today, or was it the new GPS. Found the entrance easy enough, marked by a chair of course. Not too much bush to bash through, and easy enough find here, thanks

I suggested to Mr & Mrs Beconaze we go for a walk - the walk for me and mrs beconaze, this walk so Mr beconaze could zoom off ahead of us and collect the caches while we meandered along.

Here I came across Mr Beconaze heading further and further from where my phone said GZ. Even with his searched else where he still spotted this one before me (about 2m from where I was standing). whats wrong with my eyes? why aren't they working yet????

This was pretty tricky as the GPS was not so happy under the canopy cover. So used my geosense to ask where would I put it and there it was. It was a bit damp so emptied it out as good as I could.

It was a nice day for a walk so Jag50, Aiden29 and I headed here for the day. This one wasn't quite as difficult to get to as we expected as there had been some spraying done in the area. We were rewarded with a nice quick find once at gz

We headed out to walk the Okura trail with Aiden29 and Merlot58. After reading some of the previous logs mentioning cutty grass we followed Aiden29 (as she was the only one with long trousers) to GZ. There had been some spraying in the area so we didn't need to worry about the cutty grass. Once at GZ the cache was quickly spotted.

We headed out to do part of the Okura Bush walk with Jag50 and Merlot58. I got sent ahead to scout the area, as I was the only member in long pants! Was a little bit of a mission to get to this spot, but cache was easily found

Having done the Okura Bush Walkway South of Dacre Cottage last summer I thought I'd tackle the North side with the kids... although I had no idea it would be so muddy This was the 11th find of the day. Once we had worked out how to get in toward the middle of the spit through the reed, cutty grass, gorse and mangroves the cache was quickly found thanks to the hint I also had to get past the guardian slugs that had attached themselves to it. TFTC!

Nice easy find here....went under fence and walked out on edge of hard spit!
Thanks for the adventure Glyn !

I was out for a walk along the Okura walkway today with a muggle friend and looked for the 2 caches located on this spit on our way back to the cars in Stillwater. After taking a muddy approach to the cache at the tip of the spit, we followed a trail back to the main path and took a look for this cache along the way. I actually found it lying on the ground, so popped it back up where it should be. TFTC!

Now I am geocaching! just got my first scratches for the season on my legs - gorse and blackberry, a perfect combo

Followed the faint geo trail, like the previous finders, and spotted the Directors chair that was randomly placed in the bush?

Thanks for the hide.

It sure was difficult to get to this one. After reading the logs, I looked for and found the same trail leading in. It brought me to a clearing where there is a director's chair set up for no apparent reason. Then the trail became harder to follow. Fortunately, there was enough room to navigate through the small trees and I got to GZ quickly. TFTC.

There's a faint trail that leads to GZ, so had no problems getting there.

TFTC

Nice find. Not so difficult. Tftc

I have set myself a challenge for this year to have at least the same number of caches on each day of my calender as the number of years I have been caching.

Today the target is eleven. A nice bit of open bush bashing needed.

Cheers for the cache.

Made my way around the edge of the spit to here. Managed to avoid the gorse which was good with barefoot and ended up where the GPS was pointing. Looked like a good hiding spot but no cache. Wandered around checking out other likely spots but kept coming back to the same tree. Decided that I was in the right place but the cache wasn't and eventually found it lying on the ground. Replaced according to the hint. TFTC

Nice quick find, with GPS being spot on. TFTC

Interesting bash to get here past some interesting sights along the way. Kept at it though and wasn't too long before we were at GZ and had the cache in hand. One more down for the day - TFTC

Compared to the last spit, this one was much less accessible, with evilno9, TheMexican and I managing to fall foul and some cutty grass. Once we eventually reached GZ however, it didn't take us long to find what we were looking for. Nice hide, TFTC

Published

Having found most of the caches around this area now, I am fairly familiar with the terrain. However I still wasn't expecting this interesting off the trail type excursion, with a nice mix of bush bashing, tree dodging, and mud hoping. All good fun and once at the GZ the coords were spot on with another quick find. Wahoo blank log and FTF !!