Towering over Taumarunui (Waikato/King Country) Sunshine Settlement, North Island, New Zealand
By evilC on 17-Mar-05. Waypoint GCN4C1

For the record, a full two years after the cache originally "went west" (south actually), I found it again about 20 metres from the original location, moved there by the crew that did the work on the track back then. Much rejoicing to have the logbook (in particular) back in my hands. The missing cache was found while I was looking for a very well hidden new cache in the same area. See log: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LUID=aa96accc-7856-4f1a-9974-76518a8a094d

It seems that not that many geocachers have had the time or opportunity (and perhaps energy and desire!) to find this cache but congratulations to those that did. I know there were several return trips made from far off places by some keen hunters.

I enjoyed creating it and really don't want to archive it but with one tower gone and some quite big changes around ground zero it seems the writing is on the wall.

Apologies to team Geckoh who I believe have done all the necessary preparations but didn't have a chance to visit Taumarunui and complete the final "assault"!

This entry was edited by evilC on Sunday, August 29, 2010 at 3:07:52 AM.

Anything happening here[?] It's been disabled for a couple of months now.

Solved this cache finally last week and was confirmed by owner who conveniently placed a marker at GZ which has how being changed by the construction crew again, thank goodness it wasn't the cache, have sent owner proof of visit. Thanks for the interesting puzzle cache, also bringing me to this newly constructed and forever changing location, it will look good in the end. TFTC (1907)

I visited the cache location a few days ago and was disappointed to find it was completely gone, as well as the hiding place and quite a bit else to boot! This is the result of some "development" in the area which has improved access, but I'm not sure at this stage that I can find a suitable new hide nearby. For now there is only a very small cairn of stones near to the obliterated hide as a "marker", no container, no logbook or anything else of that nature. I plan to visit again and see if I can find a way to resurrect the cache, and if not it will probably be archived in the near future.

Description of cache updated - whether this change is important or not is left for you to decide! The following paragraph was added (in red):

"As of 7 April 2010 one of the towers has been dismantled and removed. This was the radio mast, at 38° 53.161, 175° 15.605. You may wish to pretend there is a large tower in this position when attempting to crack this puzzle!"

(1742)
Planned a special overnight stop-over in Taumarunui, while on our way to the Central Plateau. Wanted to give ourselves a decent crack to solve this puzzle. Identified the location of four likely towers at dawn break, then headed back to lodgings. Stoked up mapsource and plotted all the possible combinations.

Woohoo, Got a likely solution on our third iteration. Time to head off, to see if we got it right. Wow, amazing to see that the owners were only here a few days ago to perform a spot of maintenance. Great to see the old cache in great condition.

Many thanks for the great puzzle. It was destined to be one of our NI unsolved puzzles until now.
TNLNSL, TFTC

Interesting cache, some notes taken, but no time to complete.

I've got to admit, Ryanja did most of the legwork on this one. I was only there for the final part and the actual discovery of the cache. but hey! I'm counting it! TFTC! TNLNSL.

Whoa, a lot of work was involved in this one. It was worth it though! I think that I started this one back in the middle of June. It felt very rewarding to have completed this one.

I spent a lot of time in Taumarunui working on a tunnel job for the railway. I didn't get much free time, but was able to sneak away a couple of times to do some caching.

The day I started this I was able to see 5 towers, and walked to two of them. Another month or so later I was able to drive out to get the other three. Working for the railway gave me an advantage with these.

I wasn't able to triangulate the final before my last trip up to work on the tunnel, so my attempt on the final had to wait until another month or two later.

To work out the final I used a combination of GPS Utility (to convert the points to DXF), AutoCAD (to read the dxf and to triangulate the final), Google Maps (to help me confirm the final location), and then used GPS Utility to convert the point found in AutoCAD back into GPS. I found two spots where the three circles overlapped, but it wasn't too hard to determine where the cache lay.

After a long day of travelling along the Forgotten World Highway, caching along the way, we stopped off and completed this one. The cache was in fine condition. We left it upside down as per instructions.

Afterwards, we were cold and hungry so we dropped into The Flax for an awesome dinner.

Wonderful spot! Very fun and rewarding cache.

Many thanks!

Came to check if it was still in place. It was, but unfortunately also full of water. Probably my own fault for leaving the container with the lid facing up on my last visit. Please leave with the lid facing down! Emptied everything out, restocked, and left a temporary log book so I can dry the wet one.

[This entry was edited by evilC on Monday, January 01, 2007 at 4:20:50 PM.]

Dropped in to see how well the cache had survived the winter. It was sitting almost in plain view, although still in the correct spot. It looked pretty empty though so I sat down and had a read of the logbook. Uh-oh! One "entry" after Pancakes previous one back in January, and this new entry just said something like "Sup Yo, F**k Head"! (The asterisks are mine.) All that was left apart from the logbook and cache note was the dinosaur, another small plastic toy, and some empty Superglue packaging...

I guess it doesn't take much to work out what has happened! But at least someone - maybe even Mr "F**k Head" himeself - put everything back into the container properly, and placed it back in the hiding spot. Thanks for that!

Anyway, for now I've hidden it again (more carefully) in the same spot. I didn't have anything with me to restock the contents but I'll check again soon to see if it is getting any more visits from Mr F.H. and friends. In the meantime you might want to avoid leaving anything "valuable" in it...

Seems I was doing ok right up until the final waypoint. All the clues seemed to make sense except my PDA denied me tbe last one. Maybe I need to try some other combinations, and have another go next time.
Cheers, M@

Hey forgot to log this one. Took a bit of finding but the clues sure helped. Will go back and check the dates and ammend the log. Could have sworn I'd been here before, ha ha. Thanks for the great cache Clive.
TNLNSL

Finally found after picking away at it for months. Would not have found it without the Tumonz mapping program. Interesting bit of history near the bottom of the bush track where a concrete dam is crossed. This water was piped to three large tanks on the bank side of South St where it was then gravity fed to vats in the railway yards for use in the steam engines in the early 1900s. One of these tanks is still visable near the west end of South St.
Please no more of this type of cache Clive -- they are "evil"
In NZ 3d and Aussie 3d
Out LED torch

Well... we had done all the paper work and ended up with three possible locations, but had not done the leg work.
Thought we would seek out the new " Shot over Taumarunui" and lo and behold on looking around there possibly was the answer to one of the clues. Returned home to check out the map and YES this had to be it.. and yes it was. Not sure we would do another like this although it was a challenge. Think we are more of the go, locate and find geocachers.
Took the hanccuffs
Left a pencil sharpener and a dinasaur

Thanks Clive

Found it, Found it. Great spot for a Geo-cache, with the help of the program TUMONZ, I was able to pinpoint the masts and then draw circles to give me the general area, from there it was a matter of making a start. I would then take waypoints and using the Routes function in the GPS to give me the distance from my current position to the masts.The final distances I got were 904, 401 and 302 with the GPS shown an accuracy of 7 metres at the time I took the final waypoint. Thanks evilC for an interesting and challanging site. In- LED Torch, Out - Travel Bug

When you eliminate the probable then only the improbable remains,

The day started early so I could get a good view of the towers being that the fog rolled away by 9am just before the rain squalls due at 10am. ( being from NSW this water falling from on high is a bit disconcerting, and having seen it once this week it was a real surprise to experience yet more and so soon)

Having made my way to the playing field I fully expected to find the reference point would have been the centre circle but as with the rest of the clues a little lee way is required so I found the ref point well off to one side of the field...could be George B mickeying with the GPS system but Evil_C maybe felt that walking to the centre circle was too obvious.

Yup there are plenty of towers to be seen, I chose 5. Then as I am a tourist and not known to the local population I freely jumped fences into rail property and marked my towers with a good look to make sure I would not be hit by the twice daily train.

Then I made friends with the local radio station and gained their permision to mark the position of their mast...

I then had to plot, and as I didn't have a huge scale map, getting the compasses to draw the small circles was a challenge, I had 5 masts with 3 circles per mast my map was cactus before I had them all but the solutions were not too difficult to see. ( is this what Clive meant by brute force, If I had a good mapping program I could perhaps have drawn this all on the PC but being on holiday with time to do it long hand, it was a good low tech solution)

Finding the cache was then a matter of visiting all the probables and eliminating them....so at 6pm victory was moooine.

There was a travel bug in this cache but as I already have one to take back to Australia I decided to leave it for the next visitor. I left a Zen Buddha as this was a rather good meditation spot.

Thanks Evil_C great day out in Taumarunui, as a novice cache finder ( this is my 12th ) it is by far the most challenging.

Oh dear! Well Clive, this is definitly the hardest cache yet!! Have been watching this cache since first listed and today was the day to nail it once and for all, haha and what a long day it was!! Fairly sure we had the right area but to no avail, one of the co-ordinates was not matching up at all. Went home for a coffee break at 6pm and another look at map, sent quick email to a friend for advice and worked out yes we had been in the right place all afternoon, thanks to clue number 3! Had already been halfway there about 5pm but decided something wasnt right and headed back out again. 8pm and getting dark - SUCCESS! And FIRST LOCAL TO FIND!! Will check other co-ordinate through the week, thanks Clive
In - Heart Candle
Out - TB Dr Griz, Salem Middle School

Just for the record, JFBNZ has emailed me to say the distances that he recorded from the key towers were 398, 297 and 899 metres which matches up pretty well with my own measurements and also those reported by Zorgon.

Nailed this great cache on a 2nd visit to this here railway town. Ran out of time to complete this last weekend. Plotting the intersecting points more carefully during the week paid off cause this time I went straight to it and found the container after only a 30 second search. Thanks Evil_C for a challanging and enjoyable cache. My first wrong plot last weekend produced some drama. After visiting the towers late afternoon plotted a point over tea and went back about 10.30pm at night determined to find it...had just been seaching in some gardens near some some business premises and was sitting in the car when zoom around the corner comes the local policemen who proceeded to ask all sorts of sticky questions like..."what are you doing?"...."where are you driving to?" After some lame "tired stopped for a rest" excuses he appeared placaded but still proceeded to follow me back to the Motel but a car speeding down the main drag got his his red lights & siren going and he was off so I escaped unscathed.....Phew..the moral of the story....don't cache around business areas at night...someone must have spotted me and rang the police. We met up with Evil_C himself the next day while doing another enjoyable "multi" just down the line in a nice little settlement called Owhango...Good to meet you Evil_C and chew the fat on geocaching stuff.

On our way home from the mountain today, we decided to attempt the final stage. We got the locations of most of the towers 5 weeks ago on our holiday in Turangi. So last night Mr Beauty & The Beast did the coloured circles on the map thing, and got a fairly good idea of where it would be. Unfortunately we didnt have time to get the precise coordinates for each tower, we just used the coordinates we got from getting as close as we could. But we thought we'd give it a try anyway, and sure enough, the clues all started to fall into place, all except the last one! Turns out the background picture for this listing is seasonal! See the picture attached for the winter/spring version!! (This caused some frustration & lots of blackberry scratches!)
-Pinkwin TB, -Hippopotamus Puzzle, +Supergloo

Turned up to the coordintes and found the tower, but not the cache. It's a bit tough being a tourist with only a GPS with a stack of cache locations on it in this neighbourhood! After not finding anything, returned to the car and looked up the webpage on the laptop. My eyes nearly popped out of their sockets when I realised what was required to complete this cache! That's one mega mission! I only had one day, so decided to go hunt other, more scenic ones in the vicinity! Thanks all the same

Very pleased to report that we got the FTF today. Lots I would like to say about this most enjoyable cache but won't for fear of spoiling the fun for the next person to give it a go.
We were driving along looking for a place for lunch after the find and saw a bloke with a GPSr. Stopped for a chat and found that it was EvilC himself. Nice to meet you - thanks for your company over lunch and thanks for all the time you must have put in coming up with this unique idea for a cache.
And by the way we made it: 303 m, 397 m, 910 m
In: Thumb locks, Out: Aeronautical chart + Vulcan TB

Ref: previous log. Nice to meet you also Zorgon - and your smaller "right-hand man"! Congratulations on getting the FTF.

I had another reason for visiting Taumarunui today - I wasn't just lurking in the area on the off-chance of spotting Zorgon - truly! - even though I'd received early warning via email that he might return to finish the hunt today. Having some time to burn I decided to visit the cache site one more time to double-triple check the coordinates! Before reaching the cache I stopped to take yet another reading from a handy point where a few towers can be conveniently lined up. (Hmmm - better be careful not to "leak" too many hints!) So when a car pulled up beside me, and I spotted the driver waving a small hand-held device towards me I had pretty good idea who it might be!

Anyway, after a pleasant chat over lunch (only the 4th geocacher I've met face to face in (nearly) 4 years of geocaching) I did eventually get back to the cache, and dropped off the Pinkwin TB to fill the hole left by the recently departed Vulcan TB.

I'm also taking Zorgon's suggestion on board to add a final hint that might help in the final stage - once you arrive in the general vicinty of the cache.

I have updated the distances from the key towers to the cache from the old values of 908, 393, and 300, to the new values of 898, 397, 300 metres today.

This change reflects the results of my obsessive and repititive measurement of various waypoints around the town over the last couple of weeks including some different techniques that should fix the positions more precisely. When averaged and plotted this hopefully means more accurate distances for you to use in your quest.

If possible, when you find this cache please also include the distances your GPS reports in your log entry so we can see how much variation there is, and perhaps also get an average of those over time - if there are any finders of course!

Good luck
evilC

Crickey, looks a good concept - wish I'd seen this one sooner! Didn't have time on this trip to suss it out unfortunately.

Well we arrived lateish this afternoon after a rather full on sort of weekend so the family was getting fairy tired. Went to the posted coordinates and only managed to pick out 5 15m+ towers. Visted each of these and got the cordinates then sat down with the equipment I had prepared before leaving home only to find that I had made a fatal mistake which mean't I couldn't solve it. Now I just have the fingers crossed that the sixth tower is one that is not needed! Won't be able to get down again for a while but hopefully will have some coordinates to test next time.
Many thanks for the fun. Most enjoyable cache.

[This entry was edited by Zorgon on Tuesday, March 29, 2005 at 5:15:58 PM.]

You should definitely not expect to be able to gain direct access to the foot of every tower in this cache. I think you'll find the person or organisation that "owns" the relevant land easy enough to identify, but they probably won't always be available, and in any case won't always be able or willing to grant access. The bottom line is you will need (in some cases at least) to fix the position of the tower by indirect means, from some handy nearby spot(s). Think about ways you might be able to do this. You might want to practise first!

I'm looking forward to see how it works out if you get the chance to try it Zorgon.

PS: I've fixed some errors in the hints and tweaked a few other details over the last few days so refresh your copy of the information if required.

[This entry was edited by evilC on Wednesday, March 23, 2005 at 8:13:16 PM.]

I am quite intrigued by this cache. Might be passing through at Easter so will have a crack then.

My only concern is: Is it obvious if a "tower" is on private property? If so, is it obvious who the owner of the property is? How difficult will it be to find the owner at some oddball time?

Initial contents include a 500000:1 scale map of the central parts of the North Island (1977 edition!), a copy of the New Testament, a small dinosaur puzzle, a tin whistle, logbook and pencil, and the Vulcan TB whom I'm sure enjoys the "logic" behind a cache like this!