Montagu Thumbs Circuit

Tuesday 22 January 2013

The option we chose to visit some caches Top of Wellington Fallsalong the ridges and peaks overlooking the North West Bay River was by riding our bikes along the Pipeline Track then walking circuit via Wellington Falls, Montagu Thumbs and Cathedral Rock. After parking the bikes the three of us, Barad Bunch, Dave a non geocacher and Peter set off on the well-built track to the falls, after that the rough track to the old Montagu fire trail was used. The last part of this is getting overgrown by Bauera as was parts of the old fire trail. There had been some overnight rain and the bushes were quite wet to push through. It was good going along the Thumbs cathedral ridge, Mouint Montagu from the Falls trackalthough parts are starting to degrade from use, then down the zig zags to North West Bay River in the rain. After crossing we then struggled up the Siphon track, which is an almost unrelenting grunt for nearly 800 metres at a 1:3 gradient. No wonder we were tired by the time we got on our bikes for the return ride to Neika.

 

Norris Hut

It was quite a wetting eNorris Hutxperience getting through the foliage to the hut as many wet head high bushes had to pushed past. Barad read out the description and Dave soon spotted the suspicious spot.

 

 

 

 

 

Montagu Thumbs

It was very fortunate that Barad was along on the walk View back to the high point on Montagu Thumbs. Adrian Blackman in foregroundas Peter forgot to download the cache details to his GPS. We tried the wireless transfer between GPS’s but for some reason the data failed part way through and from then on both GPS’s refused to communicate. Nevertheless we had to resort to verbal transfer of cords. If it wasn’t for Barad, Peter would have been searching fruitlessly on the big flat summit area 200 metres to the west of the actual cache hide.

 

Wellington Peaks F - Groovy Church Music

It was raining by the time we reached Cathedral and as Barad had already found this one he waited while peter went up the last few metres to search. However as Peter went to the wrong side of the location, Barad gave some advice, perhaps to hasten our departure, and the cache box was soon out. Care had to be taken to protect the contents from the rain and Peter managed to drop a couple of items from box which was crammed full; one of these was a trackable so that didn’t go back in.,

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Off to the Thumbs

Image
Wednesday 27 June 2012 Well the weather was just ideal for a bushwalk to the Three Thumbs and to collect a few geocaches during the trip. However, the geocaching part looked a bit shaky as Peter’s GPS did not display any in the area. A later check at home showed the records were on the GPS and when overwritten with a new copy they displayed OK; puzzling! All was not lost because Barad Bunch had notes on the caches and the grid on his GPS. This enabled us to locate the one near the cars. After morning tea at the lookout over Maria Island we commenced the walk to the Three Thumbs. Shady spots had plenty of frost but a fair bit of the way was along the tops of the main ridge and in the sun. Eventually we w ere on the highest peak, presumably the third Thumb and also what we presumed would be the hiding placed of the “ Three Thumbs Up ” geocache. But when Barad checked his GPS it indicated it was over 400 metres away on the peak previous climbed and descended from. Oh well that would have
Read more

Frogs and Water

We knew that " Swimming Hole " was a cache not far from home and finally decided to seek it. Earlier in the week we had picked up " Spot the Frog ", a moveable cache found under the Geocache Australia website and needed to deposit the little fellow somewhere. As frogs like water and this one had spent a few months on a dry hillside it seemed appropriate to lodge near a creek, so finding "Swimming Hole" was combined with the task. We could work out the starting spot even without a GPS and soon had the next stage entered in the GPS. Much to Peter's surprise it led us back down rather than up the creek and we ended beside a fence. A bit of searching and head scratching saw us give up for now and head off to lodge our little froggy. On return home Sue scanned through past logs and discovered several people also ended up where we did and then found this was several metres out. This has encouraged us to head back to the GZ soon and to ignore the GPS for on
Read more

Freycinet Bushwalk

Image
3 – 5 October 2012 As we were going on a bushwalk to Freycinet Peninsula the potential geocache finds in the area were checked and several were close to our route. We went for three days, camping at Cooks Beach for both nights and heading down to a rocky peak beyond Passage Beach. Graham (Graham51) was with us although he took the longer return option over Mount Graham where he also managed to locate a cache on his journey. On the way back in the car we picked up a couple in the region. Top of the Pass Our first for the day, located by Graham, and although a few muggles were about none took much notice of us,   Half empty or half full ? We dropped our packs and with two people holding GPS’s and three heading to GZ it was surprising how little attention the muggles paid to our activity. One looked up for a while but soon turned back to look at the scenery elsewhere.   Blue Champagne Our objective for the days bushwalk was the southern peak on the Freycinet Peninsula above point Geo
Read more