Paradise Cave (Christchurch) Heathcote Valley, South Island, New Zealand
By Tazzie&lizzie on 25-Jan-03. Waypoint GCC9C4

There must be a bug in GSAK as it didn't tell me that this was archived. Spent half an hour rooting around the pile of rocks to the amusement of a climber who was there, even though we told him what we were doing. No cellphone coverage at the site or I would have seen it was archived.
Still an interesting place to visit.

Hi Tazzie & Lizzie,

It has been a while since I first looked at this cache. I can't find any recent responses about maintaining this cache so it will be archived and removed from the active cache listings.

When you have repaired this cache, drop me a line and I can review it again for listing on the geocaching.com site.

If you decide not to continue on with this particular cache, please remove any remaining cache bits from the area.

Thanks for your understanding

Regards,
Zero Gravitas
Geocaching.com Volunteer reviewer
NOTE: please do not select reply in your e-mail program if you wish to respond to this message from the geocaching.com mail bot. Go to your cache page and post a Reviewer Note, e-mail Zero Gravitas from the log there, or email me directly at [email protected] or [email protected] Please send me a link to the cache in question, or at least provide its GC number, so I will know which cache you are writing about.

Please disable the cache till you get time to maintain it!
Thanks!

We went for a walk about Barnett Park in the weekend and stopped by this cache on the way but where unable to find. As we have found in the past I am resonably sure I was looking in the right place. If it is there then I have egg on face

We search for over 40 minutes trying to find this cache. We found several hidey holes that would have accomodated a cache all of which were empty.

Hope its still there.

Thanks

Ryrager & Amethyst

I searched for over 1/2 hour, using the clue, but to no avail. I'm guessing it's not here

Tried searching the area for about an hour with climber helping occasionally. No luck May try again if I can convince the other half. Too many cube rocks (both mathematics/physics teachers).

Very sad morning - tried to get his one and the Barnett one and found neither - my GPS had 5 satellites view and told me it was 25 metres away from where I was looking

I had looked for this previously but with so many muggles around it was very difficult to do a good search. Con came with me this time and wouldn't you believe it after listening to her complain about how unfit she was and we should have started with something more gentle she swooped on it when we got there.
Would suggest moving away a little from its current location as it is quite a walk in there and its hard to get the cache when rock climbers are sitting on the actual rock. The contaimer is also cracked. Decided to carry on to Barnetts
TNLN

Scrambled up here after finding Barnett BUT cave was full of rock climbers who stopped doing their thing and stared at us, obviously waiting for us to leave. Lots of their gear was piled on top of the most obvious location so we had to give this one a miss until another day.

We went walking on the Barnett Park Cave circuit late afternoon, heading up to this cache on the way to the big cave cache. Scrambled up the steep sidetrack into the cave - to find six rock climbers hanging about (literally hanging on their ropes). Tried to look unobtrusive while hunting for the cache - but the climbers seemed to know all about geocachers. They said they see lots of us looking - but not many who find it. Well, we looked for about 20 minutes before locating it. Nice one, Tazzie and Lizzie. This one was a bit difficult, as the GPS simply doesn't work in caves - but your hints are quite accurate. There would be rare times when all the satellites were over in the eastern sky, but not today. Went back down the track - and here is a warning: we know the cache notes warn of nettles (Maori: Ongaonga or Latin: Urtica ferox), and we certainly saw some. But one of us was focusing so carefully on footing and handholds that she didn't notice that she was caressing her wrist with a nettle bush - until 30 seconds later. So beware of nettles close to handholds!!
Cheers, Grandalf

And so it was found! Even with rock climbers present, we scouraged around - this time in broad daylight, and found the cache . The climbers were extremely friendly, and didn't really seem to care as we snooped around - they were all too busy doing drilling holes and screwing in new ties.
The cache was in a spot we had already checked - just needed some decent sunlight to be able to spot it. I had one of those "Hey wait a minute - that rock just doesn't look right" moment's and then the search was over.
Thanks for all the hints guys - we got there in the end

Couldn't find it again. Grumble grumble - does the cache owner know that gps reception will ALWAYS be very innacurate around cliffs and overhangs?
At least there were no climbers around - but that was probably because it was raining. Followed the GPS up a dodgy, slippery, steep track above the cave with cliffs down below - decided this can't be the area due to the reference to the cave in the hint.
Eventually left after nearly an hour of searching - mainly under the lip of the cave. Daylight was running low towards the end and we only had one torch between us.
Won't be going back up there until I have a giveaway description. It's going to take a while for my enthusiasm for this cache to build up again ...

Were 5 or so climbers there, all sitting on the rocks I wanted to search under when I got there. Had a brief conversation with them, but chose not to mention geocaching and left reasonably quickly. I don't know why people call this a cave - it's just an overhang! (Or maybe I was in the wrong spot?) GPS went AWOL as soon as I got close to the cliffs. I wonder if this would be better done at night time? Not really looking forward to going up that track again (I thought I was done with this track when I did Barnett many moons ago!).

What a beautiful day, very hot and sunny. Lovely walk up to GZ. No climbers today. Hard to find the cache, especially when we didn't have a pen and had to scratch the hint in the dirt! TNLN.

Took us awhile to find this one, a nice place. Watch out for the stinging nettle along the track coming in tho.. [B)]
No swaps made, thanks for the cache!

Went out on a family picnic/cache hunt to Redcliffs. The aim was to complete the two caches near the picnic site we had chosen. On a very humid night, the valley can get pretty misty and hot, but what a spot this is!!!
We arrived to see a guy reattaching climbing hooks etc to the cave wall/ceiling/overhangs etc and had a nice chat to him. He had been there the whole day.
Found the cache after about 15 minutes and added a glow in the dark star and signed the log.
Thanks for sharing such a cool place with us.

BTW - the banana passionfruit just below the cache site are beautiful. The young buckoboys enjoyed the treat - as did both buckomama and biggest buckoboy!!!

A popular spot with some young climbers, as well as the man hanging up high and attaching new carabinas. Took a long while to find, as we were trying to be inconspicuous, wasn't sure where the hint refered to (it's a big rockpile), and wasn't getting any GPS reception at GZ. It may help to know it's not in general view of someone in the cave, so you can search a little easier. TNLN, thanks.

What a lovely spot! Powered up the hill with Super-J and, after avoiding some rock climbers who didn't seem to care, managed to find the cache.
+ $1 Australian coin
- Dinosaur

We were visiting family in NZ (from Adelaide) and decided to introduce other family members to the sport. We enjoyed the walk but despite there being 7 of us we could not find the cache.

Easy walk in relative to the cache hunt Ended up taking a wee while to find it but happy to have found it at last. Cheers Gav [270]

Philippe and me find this hiding-place 30 minutes after we arrived. Not so difficult. The walk until here is easy. This is my second hiding place since I'm in New Zealand. I'm French and Philippe Swiss.
Out : 1 cent
In : a Swiss flag fridge magnet.
Berthe.

Took a bit of time to find but we found it ok.
- bottle key ring
+ 20 cent coin.

Great spot would never looked for the cave if it hadn't been for the cache. Showed Daniel how it was done and he was impressed.

Not a place that you'd casually stumble across, is it?

We found a Japanese couple and their toddler there, making use of all the climbing pitons and such around the cave area, and they were probably wondering what these four strange people were looking for amongst the rocks!

Papa Bear looked in the right place eventually, and we filled in the log and made our way back to the track, to continue up (always (*^&$%(&^$ up!) to Barrett.
No swaps (that we can remember!)

Walked up to Paradise Cave on the way back from Barnett. Watched the rock climbers till we could discretly look for the cache without being seen. An easy find.
+bottle keyring
-man toy
Thanks Tazzie&Lizzie

Found this one with Trinitty on the way back from Barnett
Great overhang climbing site
Thanks Tazzie and lizzie

Took me about 30 mins to find the cache.
Great spot, though the walk suggested that I need to get fit. Didn't have the instruction sheet for the other cache with me, so will have to return for it some time when I'm feeling fitter.

Cheers, Moneydork.


[This entry was edited by Moneydork on Tuesday, November 25, 2003 at 1:30:21 AM.]

Not the best day for a hunt(rain all day) but got there in the end..found without to much trouble which was a plus..never even knew that the caves where up there.
+toy man (giants bath)
-key ring

Thanks for the great cache

Finally got back to do it. Certainly was well hidden- took 4 of us a good 30mins to find it. Pretty satisfying to find it at last. I still reckon the coords are off

Thanks guys - are you still around?
Gary.Liz,Oli,Chris,Hg.

Good place to break in some new tramping boots . I was about ready to give up on this one, it's always the last place you look (I wasn't keen to do that walk again ). Very well hidden. I had to take the dog clip because the cache lid didn't fit on properly. Thanks for a challenging hunt.

Success at last at my 2nd attempt. I used the third version of the spoiler only and found the cache within 30 seconds. My gps, when held steady for 5 minutes 500mm east of the cache and about 1m above ground level, was at variance with the above coords. I was able to receive 5-6 satellites with an average EPE of 13m. My averaged position was S43 34.583 E172 44.030.
+ smile in the dark smilie from L cache.
+ belt clip from O' Tannenbaum cache.
- man looking backwards.
- NOMAD travel bug, who will shortly reappear somewhere else but with a personality this time.
Thanks Tazzie and Lizzie for a reason to get out from under the fog at Kaiapoi this morning.

Nice place for a walk, the kids loved it but we couldn't find the cache, we were also running short on time so could not keep searching, gave up on the gps anywhere near the cave as it was fluctuating between 45m and 110 metres away.
It was great to watch a climber on the roof show off his incredible strength and fitness, he said that cave is known as one of the best climbs in the country.

We will return!

Thanks

[last edit: 4/29/2003 2:15:39 PM PST]

Well ....! I must get into the practice of downloading the latest version of a cache report before I attempt to locate a cache. I now see that there have been changes from the one I printed on 27/1/03 and took up there today.

I managed to get the lat but could not get within .013 min of the lon before I lost signal (directly under the cave lip). There was a pile of stacked rocks in the middle of the floor of the cave, adjacent to a fire pit, at about what I would have estimated to have been at the 44.002 position. There was one really big rock on the top which I was not prepared to strain my dickey back lifting. I did manage to shift or remove most of the other rocks below this one, but there was no cache visible.

From the latest cache page spoiler it now seems that I was too far into the cave. May try again later.

After A nice walk up [|)] the GPS got to about 25m
there were 5 rock climbers there one new what we were up to, I explained to the other's they through that was cool, and gave ua a hand to look but no luck... We will RETURN...

Robert & Tracy (Bitsprayer)

Great place for a cache. Took us about 15Mins to find,but needed the clue since there was no GPS coverage under the ledge. You have to watch the stinging nettle, Josh (7) grabbed a piece and was not happy [v].
- key ring clip
+ Man looking backwards
Thanks guys
Greg

We were just about to give up when Rodney called out 'Found it!' We had shared the cave with 2 rock climbers and a photographer for some of our hunt - they thought we were crazy and we looked at what they were doing and thought it looked plain dangerous!!
Treat the rocks with caution - even some of the very big ones are loose and would be quite easy to crush a hand or send a rock spinning out of control.
It was a long hunt but we felt good when we had the cache in our hands.
Thanks Tazzie and Lizzie.
Iris & Rodney

Well that was a hunt that was doomed for failure right from the start. Note to self, don't go caching at 9:00pm at night, without a torch, especially if the cache has 'Cave in the title
Etrex flipped out just about as soon as we left the main track, coupled with the fact that it was getting rather dark ment that even with the clues it was a lost cause!
Will return at a more approprate time
Cheers
Nick and Bernadette
(P.S Nettles are even harder to see at night [xx(]

When I saw ''It is within a meter of the coordinates.'' I thought- this person is not too up on the technicalities of GPS. If you have a clear view of the sky you can get 5m accuracy if you are lucky. Under an overhanging cliff - you have got to be kidding... There are lots of piles of rocks, and large rocks doesn't help much either. Large as in breadbin size, or coffin size? After trying to triangulate by going out to the edge of the underhang, I realised that the coordinates were showing that it was further away than I thought. So at great risk to life and limb I climbed up on top of the cliff, and my GPS finally zeroed. There were a few big rocks up there, but no piles of rocks that I could see. I'll need a few more clues or a lot of time and luck to find this one. Beware of the Onga onga ( Stinging nettle ) too. There should be a warning for that.


[last edit: 1/30/2003 10:58:15 PM PST]