Plumber's Crack Traditional Cache

jrandombob: It is with heavy hearts we must archive this cache.

At the time this cache was originally placed the Northern Ranges Trail was relatively unknown in the park. We stumbled across it largely by accident, and thereafter regularly walked it, but very rarely did we see another person on it. The first time we saw this spot we immediately thought that it was a great place for a cache, and might help some people find the beautiful area we'd discovered (as many of the caches we've found have lead us to other beautiful places we would have never otherwise known existed). Over the years it's become a much more well known and popular trail, and it's been quite some time since we've seen less than three or four (sometimes many more) groups of other people on it when we've gone out.

We first fell in love with the trail for its serenity and rugged beauty (not so enamoured with that hard slog up from Branding Yard Track but hey, it's good exercise and I only did an ankle once going down it ;) ). With its growing popularity that serenity is now (to a degree) lost, but there is still plenty of time and space for quiet contemplation while walking the trail. On the other hand, we hope the increasing awareness of the trail will lead to more people being willing to work to preserve and protect it (We'd love to see some Boneseed management operations out on this side of the park, it was rather sad to see how badly it had spread last time we were there), so this is something of a bittersweet development for us.

This was originally intended to be one of a number of placements along the Northern Ranges Trail but sadly the Coronavirus Pandemic and some personal health issues prevented us from getting out there to get solid coords for the new hides and place them (though the containers which were painted for them look pretty damn good if I say so myself ;) ).

We hope one (or more) of the many wonderful cachers in the local area will consider new placements along this trail.

Thanks to all who took the time to explore this wonderful corner of the You Yangs Regional Park, we hope it bought you as much enjoyment as it did us in the years we spent in Geelong.