ARC Journey to the End of the World

I had been tossing up between the NZ Rogaine Champs and the ARC adventure race (both were on the same weekend) but Michael pretty much refused to do a 24 hour rogaine so the ARC it was. We had really wanted to do the 12-hr but getting a double racing kayak is pretty hard and I was pretty disorganised in getting on to it so we settled on the 8-hr with the intention of racing it as hard as we could. But as the day was approaching I was feeling less and less keen...not helped by the fact I'd been sick for 2 weeks and had a lot of other things on my mind. It felt like deja vu from last year.


Michael working on the raft
We had race briefing the night before and I have to admit, I started to feel quite excited, although pretty apprehensive, especially about the final mountain bike stage which had the potential to be the make or break section of the race and we all know how anxious I feel about mountain biking (well, you might not but basically it scares me half to death no matter how much of it I do). Then the morning of the race we had to get there early to build our raft...we were able to use 2 inner tubes, 2 lengths of wood and some rope and were supplied with wooden paddles.


The 12-hr and 24-hr teams set off on their first kayak leg
We finished our raft in time to see the 12-hr and 24-hr teams set off for their first kayaking leg and I really started to get excited, anxious and a bit jealous that we weren't out there kayaking (although also secretly relieved as the thought of a surf landing sounded pretty scary).

Our first stage was the rafting. We were starting in the second wave of 8-hr teams at 8:20am and had to paddle our rafts across the estuary to the other side and pick up a couple of checkpoints then paddle back.


Stage 1: Rafting
Let's just say that our raft was, um, not so good. I think we needed the tubes further apart as it would tip over when Michael would try and get on so he basically swum the whole way while I swam most of the way. There was a bit of a current on the way over but on the way back it had got pretty strong and I got tangled up in some boats! The checkpoints were also a bit mysterious as the checkpoints ended up being round the wrong way which caused a bit of confusion. I was pretty relieved to get out of the water 'cause I was knackered! Swimming in shoes is tough work.


The first 8-hr teams set off on the rafting section
After a fairly quick transition and a change of clothes and shoes we set off on the second stage which involved a mountain bike ride to the rifle shoot then on to the transition area at Wentworth Valley.


Stage 2: Mtb and rifle shoot
It was a pretty easy ride along the main highway then on to some gravel roads. At the rifle shoot we each had 5 shots at the "ducks". Last year I'd got 5 out of 5 but clearly I was feeling a bit cocky this year because I stuffed up the first two shots which really frustrated me. Fortunately I managed to pull it together for the final 3 shots. Then it was a fairly short ride to the transition area where we dropped the bikes, grabbed quick bite to eat and a swig of water and then changed shoes for the trek stage.

Stage 3 was a trek through the Wentworth Valley and up through the bush as well as an abseil down the Wentworth Falls (you can see a picture of the falls here). We caught up to a few teams on our way up the gravel road to the first checkpoint and raced onto the mining track we figured CP0 would be on. Found a mine (it said Danger Do Not Enter) but couldn't find the checkpoint. A few other teams turned up and also went in and had a look but we were racing off to see if there was another one by then. Success. So then we were off as fast as we could to keep ahead. CP1 was pretty simple. But then we made our mistake...although we didn't realise it until much later.


Stage 3: Trek and Abseil
From CP1 we bashed up a very indistinct trail through the thick native bush to CP2 and then bashed even further up (scaling some cliff at one point and passing some teams who started in the first 8-hr group - one of the guys we passed called me a 'bloody machine'!) to CP3 where there was the most incredible view down to the coast at Whangamata and beyond. I wish we'd had time to take a picture really. Then it was down through the bush (trying not to slide over although I did have a couple of falls) to try and find CP4. This was when Michael started to question what was going on. For some reason he'd thought the abseil was at CP4 but we were no where near water. We both started to freak out until I had a look at the checkpoint descriptions and realised we were supposed to have gone to the abseil from CP1 then start up through the bush. Bugger.

Instead, we raced on to CP5 then down to the transition and raced back up the way we'd already come at the beginning of the trek to get to the abseil. It felt like a hell of a distance going back and we were going pretty fast to try and make up time so by the time I got to the waterfall I was knackered. I was in such a hurry I wasn't really thinking about how cool it was that we were abseiling down a 25 metre waterfall. Would so have loved to have done it again!

We made it back to the transition again in record time and got back on our bikes for Stage 4 which was a ride back to base. Pretty easy and so nice to be cruising on the bikes again after a pretty intense trek stage. I was definitely starting to feel weary by then too as I don't normally race longer events like this so hard!

We got back to base pretty quick and I attempted to get some more food down before we were off again for the final stage, a 2-hour mountain bike rogaine on the local tracks. It was pretty confusing as we were given 2 maps - a topo map and a trails map that you had to try and merge together to try and work out what was going on!


Stage 5: Mtb Rogaine
Fortunately Michael was doing the navigating while I was just attempting to keep up! But that got a bit tough so we loaded most of my gear into his pack which helped quite a lot on the hills. The route he'd planned out took us up to the highest point of the map before we slowly weaved our way down (with the odd steep uphill thrown in for good measure). The single track was pretty awesome riding (fortunately the rain the night before hadn't been too bad so the trails weren't too wet which was good 'cause they appeared to be clay based) but you had to be on your toes in case you missed the track you wanted or rode right past a checkpoint! We didn't see that many teams out there which I thought was a little weird but probably good as it's a bit frightening to be riding down a trail and meeting a team coming up.


The bike park map for stage 5
We had trouble with a few of the controls mostly due to the mysteriousness of the maps (and the descriptions given for where some of the checkpoints were)!! But we actually managed to find all the checkpoints before we had to race back to the finish as quick as possible as the 2 hours was nearly up (we found out later that we were the only 8 hour team to get all the checkpoints for the mountain bike rogaine stage). Michael was pushing me from behind for parts of the ride along the road at the end to keep me moving fast and we came screaming into the finish but we were still a couple of minutes late. Worth it though for the points we made getting all the checkpoints. I pretty much wanted to lie down on the grass at this point!

Awesome race but probably a bit short as we finished in 6 hours 30 minutes (probably should have been more like 6 hours without the mistake in the trek) but I was dead by the end anyway! 12 hour race next year?


Did I mention we won?

TWALK 2010

TWALK is basically a 24-hour orienteering race split into 5 legs and is held at a mystery location in Canterbury every year by the Canterbury University Tramping Club. Oh, and you get to dress up in ridiculous costumes...at least at the start before they become too annoying and you have to ditch them. This year the race started at the Cave Stream carpark just down from Craigieburn with the Hash House (like base camp I guess) at the Flock Hill Lodge. Basically leg 1 is about getting from the start to the Hash House and all the other legs are based from there. Leg 1 is the only compulsory leg (obviously). Make sense? Good.


At the uni carpark wondering what on earth I'd got myself into but terribly excited all the same.
I was in a team with a couple of Christchurch-based orienteers, Michael and Tane. Tane and I were rocking the Mr and Ms Claus thing and Michael, well he decided to wear a netball skirt and suit jacket...how that fitted with our theme I have no idea but there you go...!


Michael, me and Tane at the start...exciting!
Michael was our trusty team leader having done this race something like 10 times before. Tane had done it about 4 times. I figured that if people had done it that many times and were still keen to come back and do it again the following year then it couldn't be too bad!


A control is somewhere up there amongst good old Matt and Garry (a TWALK term for the thorny matagari bush).
We set off at a fairly reasonable, cruisey pace with the idea that there were many hours ahead of us. It actually wasn't nearly as cold as I had thought and we were all stripping off layers (and bits of our costumes) fairly soon into it. The river crossings were another story though. At least my shoes were super fast draining so the cold water didn't stick around. Navigation wasn't very hard (although Michael will perhaps never live down leading us up the wrong spur to the wrong clearing especially since we all said we trusted he was correct). Once at the control circle though it's a different story.


One of the big elements about TWALK is that the controls are hard to find and the clues are terribly cryptic. They may not even be quite in the control circle on the map let alone in the centre as they are for traditional orienteering. For example, there were clues like 'break me off a piece of that chocolate' which translated as a broken tree branch lying on the ground in a patch of beech trees where there were lots of broken tree branches all over the ground! I was quite proud of finding the control at the top of Helicopter Hill and then fooling other teams around us into looking further down. Brilliant!


This photo reminds me of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe for some reason...all that is required here is a lamppost.
Anyway, we finished Leg 1 in fairly reasonable time (roughly 5 and a half hours - I think we arrived at the Hash House in 4th place which was quite amusing considering we were just cruising compared to a couple of teams who raced past us near the end...clearly speed doesn't necessarily win you the race in TWALK).


Trudging up Helicopter Hill
Leg 2 looked like it was going to be tough...just how tough we were about to find out. It was getting dark by the time we left the hash house (we had a fairly leisurely transition) so we had our headlights on in preparation right from the start. There was a hell of a lot of uphill along a road (looking for controls along the way) and it didn't take long before we were into the snow.

Somewhere along the river I managed to slip over and twist my left index finger back in such a way that it hurt like hell (we now suspect I actually cracked a bone). Luckily it was cold so my hands were feeling a bit numb! Then as we climbed our way out of the river a bit later I managed to stab my left eye (clearly the left side wasn't lucky) with a protruding branch and lost a contact. Guess it didn't matter too much that I was a bit blind after that since it was dark but it did affect my balance!


Yep, it got dark and cold
We could see various trails of lights along the hillside to our right so we figured that was where we were heading. With a bit of luck we managed to find all of the controls up there (turns out that a lot of teams didn't find them...clearly we had the skills or something!).

We had decided fairly early on that we wanted to tackle the controls on the top of Broken Hill which turned out to be a mistake but it certainly led to an adventure. Most teams were turning back by #11 with the idea of trying to get all of leg 3 instead (which looked easy but apparently the clues were ridiculously hard and most teams got very few points despite being out there several hours). Climbing up from #11 we encountered a thick bush of young pine trees we had to bash through for ages which weren't shown on the map before finally getting out into the open and by then we were soaked right through our waterproof gear. Not good.


Somewhere along the ridgeline of Broken Hill before I began to freeze
Once on the top of Broken Hill the snow was getting pretty deep in places (I managed to sink up to my waist once) and the weather felt like it was packing in...rain, sleet, snow and wind were making things very unpleasant. We managed to keep our spirits up for awhile but finding the controls on the ridgeline were proving to be pretty tough and it was too cold to search for long. Somewhere along the ridge I started to get extremely cold and was having trouble moving so the boys pulled out more warm gear from their packs and helped get me into it. They were worried I was getting close to hyperthermic.

But not long after, we all started to freeze. The control on the saddle was nowhere in sight, the weather sucked and our morale was going downhill. Michael made an executive decision that we needed to get off the ridge and down off the mountain as soon as possible. Tane led the way, working out the safest route down through the snow and rocks. I was having trouble even walking as I got colder and colder. Things were not good. And then we hit the scrub. I could see the valley below and it seemed miles away (Michael optimistically reckoned it wasn't too far but then he was saying that the whole time...anything to make sure I kept moving). Tane bashed ahead while Michael helped me down. I spent way too much time on my arse but I couldn't keep myself on my feet...not helped by snow and thick scrub. I've never been so happy to reach the bottom of a hill in my life!

We decided that we were just going to curl up in our sleeping bags once we were back at the Hash House and call it a day. Good move since it was already 4am by then. I would have liked to have been out for the full 24 hours but in reality it wasn't going to happen after Broken Hill. If we hadn't gone over the tops I'm pretty sure we would have been keen for more. It was a bad decision but at least we had quite an adventure and it certainly makes a good story!


Oh dear! What a terrible after photo (and this was the best of the bunch). We are attempting to get warm again in the Hash House.
Once back at the Hash House I was so cold that I couldn't move my limbs enough to get into dry clothes so I had to be helped. Not good. I barely managed any sleep and nothing seemed to warm me up but at least I was beginning to feel a little more defrosted. It wasn't until the trip home on the bus that I finally managed to fall asleep...


Drifting off while waiting for the bus to arrive to take us back home again.
I keep getting asked if I'd do this race again considering the conditions we ended up in. Maybe I'm completely mad but I can't wait until next year. Bring it on!

ARC Operation Blue Moon

Every adventure race is a little bit different which is part of the attraction but they all have the same basic elements - navigation involving trekking, mountain biking and some kind of water activity (normally kayaking but I haven't got that far yet). Then there are normally some kind of twists or mystery activities which will help you get more points. The thing to remember is there is no set course with markers and people telling you where to go...that's half the fun 'cause it's up to you to work out the best way round each section.

After surviving the 15 hours of Calamity and Cambridge together earlier in the year, Owen and I thought we'd have a go at tacking the ARC (Adventure Racing Coromandel) 8-hour (we'd do longer but, as I said before, I'm only starting out on the kayak...next time for sure!) Operation Blue Moon adventure race based out of Whitianga. Unfortunately I'd developed a cold during the week so wasn't exactly feeling crash hot or very fit. Oh well, I'm not one to give up.

The night before the race we had a briefing in the local town hall where they went over the basics and gave us a quick rundown on the activities involved in each section. As an 8-hour team, we were also given 4 long planks of wood, 2 inner tubes, 10 metres of rope and 2 paddles to build a raft by the start the following morning. No maps at this stage. We were informed that you would only receive the maps for each leg once you'd finished the one before. So we stayed up late putting together our rafts and sorting out our gear for our transition boxes.

Start time was 8am. Leg 1 - paddle your raft up the estuary, under the bridge and out into the sea round the marker and back in again. Sounds easy right? Well first we had no idea if our raft was even going to work and secondly, paddling those rafts was a hell of a lot harder than anyone anticipated. I don't think I got my heart rate up anywhere near where it went during this leg! It wasn't long but oh man was it tough!


The start...it was a little crazy with the 24 hour guys setting off in their kayaks and us setting off in our rafts all at the same time.
Leg 2 - mountain bike UP then portage through the jungle then bike DOWN then attempt Operation Blue Moon then bike to the rifle range and fire a few rounds then bike to the transition area for the first dive. I was actually quite relieved to be on my bike after the rafts and the route looked fairly easy (but steep). We biked up through the farmland and bush tracks for quite some distance before finally making it to the forestry road at the top (or at least we thought this was the end of the climb). Coming down the gravel road was a little hair-raising and we nearly missed the narrow track leading into the bush where we had to push our bikes up and up and up and up. At this point I got a bit feverish but there was nothing I could do but keep pressing onwards so it didn't seem much point to stress about it. I was so thankful to get out of that section and the breeze on the way down the hill revitalised me a bit.

So then we came to Operation Blue Moon...paint ball! You had to get your team through the course in 7 minutes without getting hit by a snipper (you got bonus points for taking out a sniper on the way through). Definitely didn't help being a team of 2 and we both got trapped in some of the trenches and eventually taken out by the snipers. Damn, those paintballs leave some wicked bruises!


Operation Blue Moon - Paint ball...we got inilated!
The rifle shooting on the other hand, well I was a natural! Never fired a gun in my life but I was totally buzzing after that (and hitting all my targets bang on). When we finally got to the transition area I was still buzzing! At transition there was a river dive to retrieve a coin inside a basket. Only one of us had to do this and since I was sick Owen offered up his services. Easy as he said. Afterwards we found out there were eels down there and it seemed most people encountered them but Owen said he never saw anything!


Mystery Activity 1 - the eel dive...but Owen didn't encounter any eels when he went down.
At transition we changed shoes, refilled camelbaks, downed some food (we'd been eating something every hour as well) and set off on foot for the next leg.

Leg 3 - trekking, river bashing and a waterfall dive. We set out jogging but it didn't last too long once we got into the first river and then up into the bush in search of an old mine where we had to pull out our headlamps to find the checkpoint. The mine was cool - like a narrow, rocky tunnel under the ground! Then it was back down and up the river on the other side which was a lot wider. It was a pretty long trek up through the river and at one point Owen ended up chest deep. I managed to miss the hole he'd ended up in so only got waist deep. Let's just say the water was very cold. Once we finally found the waterfall Owen dived again (made sense since he was way wetter than me already) but didn't find anything. So after much debate he tried the other pool much higher up (getting up that wet rock was interesting). Still nothing. At this point we were with a couple of other teams and they hadn't found anything either. I'd packed some goggles so Owen gave it another go and finally, success! It was a bit of a drag back down the river to the transition area and I was quite glad to be on dry land again.


River bashing.
Leg 4 - mountain bike to the channel where you swim your bike across the water then bike back to the event centre. So yeah, we had to get back onto our bikes (changing into bike shoes and dry socks as well as packing our rope) and make our way to the channel. Roping the bike (plus my pack and shoes) to the inner tube provided wasn't too hard but actually getting the bike down the ramp into the water was a little trickier! There was quite a current in the channel which made it interesting but it was actually easier than I anticipated. Of course, getting out on the other side was a different story. By then you were cold and there was a bit of a breeze. Once back on the bike it felt like my legs were too frozen to pedal.


The portage across the channel.
We made good time back to the event centre (picking up a few checkpoints along the way). It was almost tempting to finish about now but there was still one more leg to go.

Leg 5 - bike over to the next bay then make your way round the coast (coasteering) and up into the hills then back down. Jump back on the bike and make your way to the finish. The hill over to the next bay wasn't really that bad considering what we'd already encountered but when you're feeling tired you feel every bit of incline there is. Tearing down the other side though is good fun! We had to keep our helmets on for the trekking section as we scrambled round the rock (there was some serious rock climbing and parts where we had to jump into the sea and swim, trying not to let the swell smash you back into the rocks). We couldn't find the first checkpoint but it turned out it had been washed away by the surf. Once off the coast it was up into the hills where Owen and I picked up some speed and got ahead of the teams that had been with us. It felt so good to be running despite the fact I was feeling sick.

Once back on the bikes we just powered our way to the finish as fast as we could...which wasn't very fast! It was a pretty cool feeling to finish and Rob and Marquita were there to cheer us on which was cool. 9 hours. Yay!


Owen and I at the finish...and it's still daylight!
On reflection it was probably the best adventure race I've done so far...heaps of fun with cool activities and none of the legs were too long so you got heaps of variation. Plus the coasteering and rifle shooting were awesome. But we both agreed that the navigation was too easy (we are orienteers after all) and we wanted it to be longer which means I have to get cracking on learning to kayak so we can enter the longer races. We'll be back.