Fountains Falls – our first FTF

To some people geocaching is about the numbers, to some it’s a casual hobby, a sport, a game, or even a lifestyle. Geocaching can be anything you make it, but it cannot be disputed there are certain milestones and achievements that can make the geocacher feel good about the activity – “First to Finds” (FTF) are one such milestone.

The probability of you getting an FTF depends on a number of factors – such as the geocache density in your area, number of active geocachers, whether you’re regularly checking email alerts from geocaching.com, time of day, or just plain luck. I listen to a few geocaching podcasts where they talk about “First to Find Hounds” (people who put a lot of their geocaching energy into being the first to find a newly listed cache), and “First to Find Parties” (where one may go to seek out a FTF and come across other cachers in there area with the same intention).

So when I noticed an email from geocaching.com about a newly-listed cache only 4km from my home co-ordinates, I did get a little bit excited. The new cache was a medium-sized hide by local cacher Shifter Brains, called Fountains Falls (GC1KPMX). The alert came in very early in the morning as I was getting ready for work.  I figured we’d be out of luck… surely somebody else would beat us to the cache. It was frustrating knowing there was a brand new cache so close to home, yet I couldn’t get a chance to seek it out for another 12 hours. The odds of getting a FTF on this one now seemed slim.

At work I thought about the cache some more. Using my iPhone I checked out the route to the cache on google maps, even looked at the street view so I could be familiar with parking, and location of the track. The day passed slowly, and finally at about 4pm TeamWolfie made their way up to the location for a possible FTF. The online log was still empty, so we were hopeful.

There were two ways to access this cache. We chose the “short” option – about a 600m walk down a fairly well formed fire trail. GZ was close to a beautiful stream running through the bushland. Our iPhones guided us up another track running parallel to the stream as we closed in on GZ. 

Wolfie Enjoying the Creek Nearby

Hoping to get a better fix I punched in the numbers on our Mio DigiWalker – which is designed really as an in-car navigator but we find it quite accurate on the track. The Mio and the iPhones seemed to be matching up and indicating a location just off the track. Time to put the GPSRs away now and rely on the TeamWolfie geosenses… tried one minor trail or animal-track first with no luck, then tried another one and quickly noticed something that didn’t look quite right. Yes – it was the cache. Woo Hoo !

Now the anguish and excitement builds to see if we are indeed the FTF. We carefully remove the cache, and open it. So clean, so new, so very well stocked with nice things. Wow. I’d never seen a cache so new and full of nice new things before. Time to open the log book. YES – It’s Empty!  We are FTF!!

Travel Bug going into new home

We do our caching deeds: signed the log book (and gloated about our first FTF), we took a Bottle Opener and left a Travel Bug, then carefully resealed the cache and placed it back in it’s hiding spot – leaving it exactly how we’d found it.

Wolfie under the Waterfall

After this we did a spot of exploring on the opposite side of the track and found a really nice little waterfall where the stream was running through. Being a hot day, TeamWolfie took the opportunity to cool down and enjoy our moment of satisfaction, knowing we now have a FTF under our belt.

Proud to be the FTF Fountains Falls

Thanks to Shifter Brains for another awesome cache in a great location. You’ve really been giving TeamWolfie a lot of caching to do and we appreciate it.

Bucket O’ Fun

It’s a new year, and this set to be TeamWolfie’s biggest year to-date – what better way to start it than a run of geocaching on the first day of 2009. We started out back in the Ourimbah State Forest to finish off a few geocaches that we hadn’t got around to on our last visit. The first, being a large cache by Bucket O’ Fun (GC19GG2) by basscadetz.

Our trusty Mio Digiwalker guided us directly to GZ, which turned out to be on a minor subsidiary dirt track, running off a main dirt track through the forest. It was drivable in our AWD vehicle almost all but the last 50m or so which was an easy walk.

The name of this cache is a big clue as to what to look for!  It was, the largest geocache TeamWolfie has discovered so far, and it was pretty easy to find if you have an idea what you are looking for.

Big enough for a Wolfie

It’s a nice change to see a large cache like this, with quality contents. If Wolfie were a travel bug, this is the type of cache he’ would have to sleep in – and as most of us know, there just aren’t enough caches of this size around to accommodate our Wolfie as an official travel bug, so for now he’s stuck traveling around with the rest of the team, going from cache to cache and having his picture taken.

We had no swaps  on us that were worthy of this cache, so we signed the log and moved on after placing the geocache back in it’s resting place.  Thanks for the cache – this being a milestone as our first find for 2009.

Whitehall

Whitehall (GCYBT5) is another in cphoenix‘s series of Monopoly-themed geocaches – each cache find representing a square on a standard Monopoly game board. Whitehall is one of the Purple squares on the English version of the game.

It’s located in the Kincumber Recreation Reserve – along with several other caches, so we decided to spend a morning there finding as many of these as we could. Turned out to be a great morning where TeamWolfie got some much needed exercise after two days of Christmas feasting.

The search for Whitehall takes you about 600m in a southerly direction from the main picnic areas at the Kincumber reserve, to a pleasant rocky outlook with sweeping views across the village of Kincumber below, and far beyond.

Wolfie lands on Whitehall. $10 Rent owed!

We found this cache fairly quickly – making it our official 50th cache find, and puts yet another of the Monopoly series under our belt!  We left behind a Soldier and took a Sheeps Head (not a real one).

This was a great little small sized cache in a very pleasant location, with lots of unusual trees and great views. Thanks for giving us an excuse to come here. Another great find.