The Shade Waiheke, North Island, New Zealand
By _Pax_ on 03-Oct-20. Waypoint GC90X2J

We headed out to the island today to do a little hiking and had the good fortune to find a number of geocaches. The day was largely a light mist, but turned into a good rain shower in the early afternoon. Thanks for setting this one up!

Day 13: Rangitoto and back againTodays business was to get one more high T cache in Rangitoto that I needed to complete my D/T grid and any other caches that happen to be along the way. Todays sunny weather meant that Rangitoto was quite warm, but the avid cacher persists despite the challenges that the terrain and weather presents. It was quite the tiring day but I always enjoy my Rangitoto excursions. Thanks everyone for the insane challenges on the island, though I couldnt get to quite a number of them owing to time.(End of the cut and paste bit)Heres the specific log for the cache:This was a useful bit of motivation and landmark for my goal for today, and indeed the shade and hide was much appreciated here. Easy find once at GZ. TFTC!

Had to get one onthe la al field tftc

Find #620Found today on a beautiful day to Rangitoto, what a beautiful fascinating and wild island. It was about halfway through my time when I realised climbing the scoria field, finding all the caches and returning via the summit pass would mean I missed the ferry, so resolved to come back another day. Some logs signed as LBB to save space. Quick find here, however cache log is slightly mouldy and needs to be replaced

We were fortunate enough to book a bach on the island with the goal to collect a number of the geocaches. This was our second day on the island and the big plan today was for Mr HeMaLuDy and Mr Stik-a-Crane to traverse the lava fields for the geocaches there, while Mrs HeMaLuDy took the more sedate route around the island via the tracks. SO glad we had gloves and a good supply of water. The trip accross the lava was a good challenge. This first cache accoss the lava fields only gave us a small taste of what was to come. A quick find here. TFTC

Day 2 on the Island....on my first visit here, we (HeMaLuDy team and myself), had the grand plan of scaling the lava field caches.....luckily the sun was not full streangth as this place would have not been a place to have fun....not that it was a fun place, as everything here wanted to rip the skin from your body...the caches were all, mostly good and in some sort of shade, but anything else was out to get you....moss that looked nice and delicate ,when touched would lacerate the shin, plants that looked like a form of flax would slice like cuty grass.....and let's not talk about the rocks/lava......leather gloves were my best friend, and savior on many occasions....heading for the lava fields we gathered a few along the way, then into it.....

TFTC.

Took a few minutes to find. This is a brutal place.

I made a suggestion to Merlot58 that we should do a trip to Rangitoto Island today a couple of days ago. She then suggested that Net61 should join us as well. So it was arranged that I would play chauffeur and shuttle them to the CBD in time to catch the 0915 ferry to the Island.

I love rock-hopping over lava flows - NOT.

Cheers for the cache.

Full day Rangitoto caching mission with Sanne. Cache #18. Log is wet, o-ring has perished. Thanks!

Found it! Race to find the cache with Mike. Thank you

The plan for today was to visit Rangitoto and collect as many of the caches as we could. However we hadnt realised these ones would be in the lava field so one of us wasnt keen to take this path but did allow to me to attempt this one. It wasnt easy to get to but carefully I got there in the end. I started off in the wrong place which didnt help but once I had given it some thought it made sense where I needed to be. Luckily I then spotted the cache easily enough. I thought about continuing on to the next one as it wasnt too far away but by this time my other half was yelling me to come back to the path. I would love to come back and look for the others. Just need to be a bit more prepared. I did have alot of fun.

We caught the ferry out to Rangitoto this morning in the company of Team Welsh, Bennett24 and Tuolei. This one was a little further onto the lava field than the others along the perimeter track, but a quick find was made once at GZ. TFTC

Sorry, catching up on some logs - have got a bit behind what with lockdown, one thing or another. I visited this cache on a trip to Rangitoto with Kiwicouple, TeamWelsh and Bennett24 - it was a great day and while I didn't do much intrepid caching I enjoyed our finds.

This was the most intrepid cache I did today as after a couple of previous visits I am well aware of just how well earned the terrain ratings are for high T caches on the island. As it was, a bit of up and down clambering was required and took care not to hurt my hands but got there in the end. Bit of a frustration as didn't spot the cache straight away but stuck at it and then saw it after a bit (phew).

Thanks for the doable high terrain cache here. All good and thanks for the cache.

I nominated Mr TW do be the sacrificial mountain goat for Team Welsh as he has nice long legs, a great sense of balance and we wanted to make the ferry back to Akl so he would make much quicker time without me. First one as the group headed further into the lava fields. Nice and easy to start with. Thanks

Arrived at Rangitoto with Team Welsh, kiwicouple and tuolei to make an assault on all the new caches that had been placed since our last visit to the island. The lava flow caches were our main targets for the day and indeed they did take most of the day, with quite a bit of time to navigate our way along between them and a few places where we needed to retrace our steps to pick our way through the maze of the flows.

As the first one this was relatively straight forward from the track, we did start searching from the wrong side we approached from but spotted it soon after we moved to the right place, all good here. TFTC.

Well this one provides a taste of what's to come if your keen to cross the lava field
I'm on my own and my PLB is at home in Dunedin so doing anything too extreme can wait another day. Also I want to get the one beyond the lighthouse as well as catching the earlier ferry so there is no time. Once I managed to get to GZ it didn't take too long to find. Thanks for placing.

Our first time caching out on the lava and boy was it a tough getting to it. Found this one just were the hint said and with good coordinates. Would not like to have to look around the area to find it as it's hard walking. Thanks _Pax_ .

I "survived" the lava flow - Rangitoto

We had not been on the lava long, this cache had been found, and whilst the others raced to "Lunchbox that rocked" (found on 13/10/18) I was making my way over to the next cache "Smurf Holiday Hideout on Rangi"

As I made my way, a rock that "rocked" took me down, I found myself falling slow motion, and with the weight of my pack, I got pulled down into a hole.

Whilst I lay there in the lava, confirming nothing broken, just superficial injuries, I was thankful only light grazes, a bruised knee and hip, a cracked screen protector and gouged cellphone cover.

Funnily I was unable to get up, I had to wriggle free from my backpack, with my geocaching buddies documenting this historic event

From a distance I think I was resting Ninja Turtle style, but then again I could have been checking my emails for a new cache and a FTF chase!

A reminder as to why we have terrain levels on caches (but I knew what I was in for, as I had been here before!)

Thanks for the hide _Pax_ a fun find today with FMZ, alunb, cyclicalcacher, rustynz and merlot58

“Let’s go over to Rangitoto and play in lava field.” Someone said. “It’ll be fun!”

Well, yes it was loads of fun, but man oh man those lava stones are an experience!

Out with the group to Rangitoto today, for me it will all new for caches, so I had lots to collect, other less so, surprisingly didn’t have a single DNF on the island!

Good day, good company! Thanks to all the COs who placed caches here, especially the ones in all the sharp jagged scoria stones!

Specifics on this cache :

This is where it all began, the journey north, little did I know how this mission would go!

A nice place to pause briefly, before our crazy mission up through the lava fields, TFTC

A group of 6 headed over to Rangitoto today in drizzly weather to collect the new caches here. I wasn't originally going to do these higher terrain caches, but then decided maybe the first couple...... so the adventure began with this one

yes I liked idea of another cache on the way up the lava field. Thanks for placing. Out walking with Kiscardi as it was her idea to come and find these cache today.
Visiting from Dunedin.

Traveling around the North Island with NZ Bozzy mainly to find TMGT caches and some oldies as well as filling in some DT blanks.
The main reason for visiting Rangitoto was to grab the higher DT caches on the lava but decided to grab a few on our walk around there.
Thanks for bringing us to this lovely place
Apologies for all the copy and pastes

Out and about with FMZ trying to locate some newly published caches on Ranigtoto Island. It was an impromptu decision and I had to rush to get ready in time but we made it to the Island. Time to cross the lava fields. FMZ had already found this one but we made sure to stop along the way so I could too. This one was soon located after a brief search. Cheers for the cache placement!

It's still there

Found this one with jag50, tramyard and the CO _Pax_ at the start of a massive lava field. TFTC.

MrsJAG joined up with CO Agazo and Tramyard to target a few of the higher terrain caches on Rangitoto. This was the first find on the lava field today, and with the CO watching on it wasn't long before the camo'd cache was spotted.

Had to do a lot of talking to get supernannny to do this one. Slowly but steady she followed me to gz. Smile on her face when we had it in hand.

Against my better judgement I followed nette1234 up the lave flow of wobbly rocks....
Wow the tree has so many branches where a cache could be hanging.....
Nearly started to despair when Jan spotted it!

Will not be attempting the next ones......
Thanks.

It's a Thursday, I was home in the afternoon, I get a call from someone who loves lava, wanting to know if I love lava too and do we want to head to Rangitoto to get this C.O's 2 new caches and get a possible {FTF}. Well I had nothing planned, so today we hopped on the first ferry which, during the week is 9:30 from Devonport. FMZ drove us to Devonport to save the atrocious $40 parking rip-off at Downtown Carpark! We had no problem parking there, it was free.

The weather was damn cold, but we expected it to be not too bad once on the island. Sure enough we were on the sheltered side and off came our jerseys and onto a long walk to this cache. We placed several caches before coming here, so it took us quite some time before getting near this cache.

Along the way, me and FMZ spotted a large piece of wood debris, we thought at the time it it would make an excellent seat for a cache past The Lunchbox That Rocked. So I volunteered to carry the damn thing about 5-600 meters and FMZ tried to carry it across the lava, but it was going to be far too hard work, if we could have carried it along just the road, we would have succeeded, so I suggested he drop the wood, I'll carry it back to the road, and he carry on without me (I was far too slow anyway).

So we got this cache which FMZ found before I even got to GZ, signed in as ftf and I was thankful the C.O's cache wasn't too far off the main road!!

In the end, though the seat split in two pieces, so it became useless, so I made a temporary seat at the side of the road and sat on it until Chris returned. By then it was too late to do maintenance on his Rock n' Roll cache, so we headed back placing more caches.

Thanks Pax for this cache, it was fun to return to Rangitoto. FTF#647

Having worked my butt off this week, all hours of the days, I decided enough was enough and Friday was going to be my day... so planned with Gorby to come over to Rangi and tackle these 2 new caches, and also perhaps place a few new ones. There was an area I had been eyeing up for a while and this was at the start of it, so after clambering over the rocks to this one, and making a nice quick find here for the [FTF] (with Gorby), I headed further up the rocks to place a few more... TFTC!!!

Published

I was here with CO when cache was placed on Rangi that day!
【T】【F】【T】【C】