Slippery Elm (on the way to Penny Stove)(Manawatu) Traditional Cache
Slippery Elm (on the way to Penny Stove)(Manawatu)
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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A cache hide in the Ruahine ranges that offers some incentive to "off-roader" cachers to make the trip into the area and venture further to the Penny Stove cache (GC1AYE2).
Heading out from the Kumeti Road end is the recommended most direct route to this cache. But it can be done in conjunction with the Maharahara crossing, or the loop approach mentioned in the Penny Stove description, i.e. from the Oruakiritaki Stream, up to the Penny Stove cache location and down to Kumeti Rd end.
If you come in from the Kumeti Road end then near where the track transitions from its steep, heartpumping, grunting ascent out of the Mangapuaka Stream to the far more appreciated undulating contours of the ridgeline, there is a significant sized tree lying across your path. We nicknamed it the Slippery Elm. Note: it is definitely not an elm tree, but slippery it is!
From here you are encouraged to venture on to the Penny Stove cache. You'll encounter some typical Ruahine terrain - great patches of giant snowgrass, toetoe and eerily dead kaikawaka stumps - before hitting the leatherwood zone and its snaking leatherwood corridors.
From Kumeti Road end it is around 20-25 minutes up the stream bed to the track start (on the true right of the stream - look for the signpost and the pink ribbon marker). From here it is a further 35-45 minutes grunt up the hillside to the cache. You'll be rewarded with some great views which get better the further you go.
The cache is a 1 litre screw top camo container. Room for small trades and trackables. It is hidden near the uphill end of fallen "elm" trunk.
The usual cautions apply - you are entering a wilderness environment where the weather is king. Please go suitably equipped and prepared. A special warning applies to the Mangapuaka Stream access. If it is raining heavily, or forecasted to, avoid the area. Go and do something else!
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Oruvaq gur ynqqre srea
Treasures
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