Karamadon - Just reach through Waitakere Ranges, North Island, New Zealand
By paxilein on 16-Oct-22. Waypoint GCA10W4

Headed out here to Whatipu for this Trail, beautiful day for it.I don't normally just reach in, maybe Wetas or !? TFTC

This one was probably the most scary one. The bravest reached through to retrieve the cache (me). Tftc

The bravest one took charge here

Eeek spiders, nice quick find though. TFTC

Great quick find. TFTC

Reach threw and grab a sider, or a weta got both but then found cache. Not for the faint hearted!TFTC

Did the arm extension and was rewarded with the find. Tipped some water out, signed log and continued on our way. TFTC!!

Good find once located tftc

Our plan for today was to walk the track from Karamatura to Mount Donald. There are plenty of muggles here but once we had left the lower track they soon disappeared. Once at GZ we struggled a little with this one, but once we got through the spider webs and spikes from the bushes the cache was in our hands.

I'm in Auckland to spend the weekend with the my grown up kids and their families who live down here. Friday I cached the Mahurangi area and got a nice haul. Today's plan is to join the Auckland Geocachers in the morning for a walk in the Waitakere Ranges. Sunday's plan is to watch my Grandkid play hockey then hang out and relax at their place.

I had a very sucessful caching weekend so I was very pleased to see that my May souvenir is in the bag once I have completed my logs.

Signed as Team FLAG: flossieteacake, Lostcourse, Lis's crew and Gorby. A great group walk after the event. This also took a few minutes to locate as reaching through the obvious yielded no cache. I circled the tree and spotted it but thought it was easier to get to from the track. Reaching through from the left side not through the v was the key. Thanks for all your caches along this track

Team Flag spotted where one of us might have to reach through, so I volunteered to have the first try. Unfortunately my arms aren't that long and I couldn't feel anything, although there was the temptation to scream and pretend to have been bitten by something. Lostcourse also reached through but couldn't feel anything, so Lis's Crew circled the tree and spotted something. We were going to try reaching through again but I thought of circling the other way around and managed to reach the cache.

Team Flag (Flossieteacake, Liz's Crew, Myself and Gorby) did the walk and this series of caches from the Mount Donald McLean car park down to the Karamatura Valley. It took us approximately three hours, cache finding and general chatting time included. As I recall I quickly spotted a potential ground zero that matched the instruction "just reach through". However a couple of us had a go at reaching through but to no avail. Liz took an alternative approach and looked behind instead and soon spied the goods, which were then finally retrieved. Cheers for the cache placement!

Walking along on a fine day, thanks Pax for your caches today, we appreciate your efforts and tramyards too, thanks for placing the series together. No issues with the hide, all caches were in excellent condition btw. This cache was thought to be thru the 'V' of the tree, but it was spotted one way by Lis and I think it was Victoria who retrieved it and signed us in.

A day to myself walking the Donald McLean and Karamatura tracks.

Should I reach through that way or this way? This way works. Gotcha

Thanks _Pax_
#4475

Who wants to reach through????? Not the minicacher or geohound- we sent in Polly2905!!nice hide.

TFTC

The 4 of us scrambled around for a couple of minutes before I found it! TFTC

This one took us a little bit longer than it should as we had lots of options to reach through. Initially not finding it but on a second pass we got there

This one gave me a ton of grief. No luck on my way in along the track but on my return gave it another go. Finally found it. So many places fit the hint, not helped by a jumpy gps under the trees. TFTC

After a DNF by Mr Coblet in November we both returned today to walk this beautiful track and hoped to turn this into a smiley along the way.
We were pleased to see the cache had been found a couple of days ago so knew it was here and took the advice of the previous finder to get on our knees and pray.
This suggestion proved to be very helpful and whether it was the geogods, good luck or the influence of some other divine power our prayers were answered and we reached through (or more around) to salvation.
It was very satisfying to turn this into a smiley, and it also gave us a 100% success rate on all the caches along this trail.
Thanks Pax for this cache and all the others you have placed here and for bringing this trail to our attention.

Seeing two dnf's had us worried and looking a little longer than the first two we visited but all was well. Perhaps the other two dnf'ers should have got on **their knees** and prayed for a find first Tftc

A solo excursion for Mr Coblet
I had the day off work and took the opportunity to head out here for a walk and to look for this new series of caches.
After finding the first two and logging a DNF on the third I continued with another DNF on this one to even the score.
I reached into a few places and felt around but had no luck.
I notice the last finder also couldn't find it so I wonder if it has been dislodged from its hiding spot. Oh well, I'll be back.

I spent a while trying a few different spots, but the cache eluded me here!

Thx to [@@McArgister](http://coord.info/PR80FF7) for the reminder of the typo, that's fixed now

Hint made it obvious where cache was tucked away so quick find.TFTC

Out with Supernannny we were taking our time to enjoy this trail, which has been recently upgraded. There were lots of muggles out on the trail today, but not many had reached this end of the track so we could take our time to find the cache and replace as found. It was S/N that had longer arms to reach this one. TFTC

Easy " reach though " was soon accomplished here!

Great that we started at the top end...very easy terrain!

Lovely day for an adventure....Enjoyed chatting with other friendly walkers...some were training for major events or Great Walks!

Glad I wasnt carrying a 15kg pack!
Just my lunch!

Enjoying this lovely bush walk.Needed to send Merlot58 in for this one. ( She has the longer arms).

Net and I left a car at each end, and started from the top for an easier walk. Certainly had to reeeeeaach for this one

In the absence of a MEGA event this Labour Weekend, Keylev had spent some time planning a Mega Mysterious Weekend for members of Team SEAC (a group of cachers from south and east Auckland who often cache together). Today's plan was to head north, but as we left home the notifications of new caches on this trail came through and we made a quick change of plans. In the group today is HeMaLuDy, Stik-a-Crane, NurseDr, Keylev, UncleSamNZ, Cragger, BrowneHornet, Liverkiwi, B4Dawn, @McArgister.Thanks for the cache. Another blank log for the day.

Out with Team SEAC for the day looking for caches. Got the message from NZTravellers for a sudden place change as his these FTFs turned up. Made our way out here to begin the trail.Thanks for the cache(FTF)

A slight typo in the cache heading had us wondering what to expect at GZ but after applying go-go-gadget arms, NurseDr had cache and blank log in hand. Getting close to the end now. Thanks for the hidden h cache!(FTF) #346

A long weekend and the usual Team SEAC adventure had been planned by Keylev starting to day. The idea was for a convoy of cars to head up north walk a reginal park while grabbing some caches.On my way to Keylev's place this group of FTF's were released NOT where we were going. When I arrived at Keylev's immediately muted the idea of changing plans and heading for these FTFs. Knowing Keylev had spent a lot of time organising todays adventures I didn't want to appear to bossy HOWEVER with the number of FTFs going we just had to. Trouble was people were already in cars heading to the organised walk. A quick video chat with all participants and everyone agreed FTFs were the way to go.So we all changed direction and headed to the start for an eventual day. The logs were signed as Team SEAC including HeMaLuDy, Stik-a-Crane, NurseDr, Keylev, UncleSamNZ, Cragger, BrowneHornet, Liverkiwi, @McArgister and B4Dawn meaning a huge group FTF list for these caches!Another successful FTF!TFTC{FTF} 290 for Team NZTravellers

Was just about to set off for an adventure up North with Team SEAC when a flurry of publications flooded the in box....within minutes chatter spiked up, and a video chat started about attempting the FTF's on this group of caches, and with a few of us keen on this option the plan changed, and we headed over to our new destination, which was also 10mins closer....
Arriving at the designated parking spot, we decided to drop a car at the end to enable us to carry on caching the area after the trail completion, but as we drove we noted the increase in elevation....discussed changing our starting point, enabling the trail to be more down hill, but decided that we might loose the FTF potential......

Once back to the starting point, and all participants had arrived, we set out on the trail....and to a blank log book....yahhh....

{FTF} #220 joint with KeyLev, HeMaLuDy, UncleSamNZ, NZTravellers, LiverKiwi, NurseDr, B4Dawn, @McArgister, and possibly a few more...

TFTC.

Labour Weekend has historically been a minimum 3 day Team SEAC all out adventure so a little while ago I started planning some fun for us. Today was all set for a walking day up north but as we were leaving the house the notifications started coming through....quick team lets head in an alternative direction....its a Mega Mysterious Weekend after all!!

After some video calls to ensure everyone knew the correct meeting spot, a quick car shuffle, an additional team member joining at last minute - it was an impressive pull into the carpark for McArgister, we were hot on the trail.

So at first NurseDr reached in and said nope but then she spied it and then said nope arm not long enough but you know what....it only took a couple of moments later and surprise her arm was long enough after all!!

Thanks for the cache and for adding to our weekend adventure.

(FTF) #167

Published

Out with Team Seac for another day of adventures. We weren’t planning on coming this way, we had another full day planned elsewhere, but while enroute we got the alerts of some new caches, and we couldn’t take the opportunity to miss these….so we changed our google maps while driving and found our new destination.

Sorry for the generic logs. Thank you for taking the time to place this cache.

{FTF} joint with KeyLev, HeMaLuDy, Stik-a-crane, NZTravellers, LiverKiwi, NurseDr, B4Dawn, @McArgister. All logs signed “Team Seac” or similar to save log paper.

FTF with Team SEAC while out on a long weekend mega adventure. TFTC Reeeeaaach.

I was there with CO when cache was placed
Thanks for a fun Pax
Where we will go next ?

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