Westport, New Zealand
November 2005
After months of preparation we finally made it to the start line with 45 other teams ready for the ‘sprint’ start out of Westport to the beach. The line up included the world’s leading professional international teams and a good contingent of amateur New Zealand teams. Team Orion Adventure included Stuart Lynch, Sonya Clarke, Wayne Hodgetts and myself. Our marvellous support crew were Fiona McBryde, Marcus Diprose and Lynne Oxenham. We were also lucky to have Marilyn Oxenham and Tristan Bower along for morale support.
After the opening three km run through the town of Westport just about everyone arrived at the beach at the same time. Unlike a number of teams who struggled to negotiate the surf and came out of their boats, we paddled our way out through the breaking waves and found ourselves not far from the leaders.
We had a relatively uneventful 20km paddle down the coast, spotting a few pods of dolphins along the way before we tackled the challenge of a building surf back into the beach. We waited for a big set of waves to go by and then paddled for all we were worth to keep up with a small wave which assisted us to rapidly come into the beach.
Coming into transition in 5th we were blissfully unaware of the carnage that followed us. Many teams struggled to come in through the surf safely, some being upended and pounded by the waves. A number of boats came off second best and the media loved it. Some of the photos taken of boats being launched into the air by the might of the ocean were spectacular.
Onto our mountain bikes for a big climb away from the beach up to the majestic Denniston Plataeu. We struggled a bit with the pace some of the other teams set, and wondered if we had forgotten to pump our tyres up. The navigation was on the button and we entered transition still in contact with the top teams. I was struggling with a tight and congested chest, and as a result didn’t race as well as I had hoped to, however the transition went smoothly and we quickly headed out onto what was to be a very influential trekking leg.
We headed up the Lyell Valley on a well defined trampers track, one of only two that we’d experience during the trekking sections of the race. Some teams went past us running, that’s correct, running on a 20 hour trek in a five day race. Due to my weak breathing we decided to walk steadily up the valley. A slip which had wiped out the track made us climb onto a ridge, which we followed for some time before dropping back onto the track, which slowly petered out. As darkness fell we bush crashed up to another ridge and found a sparsely marked ridge (not really a track), which lead us onto the next checkpoint (CP). We spent some time at this CP waiting for instructions from the race organisers regarding the next CP which was not located where the co-ordinates indicated. (The helicopter pilot who dropped the CP marshals off had struggled to identify where it was meant to be and had gotten it horribly wrong, adding up to 3 hours onto an already long trek.)
The next section of this trek proved to be one of the most crucial route choices in the whole race. Four out of 46 teams elected to follow the river for some time before heading up a spur (1000+ meter ascent) to CP7, while the rest of the field headed straight out of CP6 and onto the main ridge and along it to CP7. The ridge proved to be very slow, with a lot of rock climbing, bluffs, difficult navigation in the dark and fog, unsure footing and freezing conditions. We interpreted the race director, Geoff Hunt’s, advice that “many of the ridges have tracks” to mean it would be the best route to travel along. I think many other had also. The four teams that made the good route choice made up to four hours on the rest of the field.
Like many others we spent so long on that ridge that it affected our motivation and physically weakened us significantly. My tight chest had worsened and I was coughing up large amounts of phlegm. In the cold air I could not alleviate my asthma despite heavy use of a ventolin inhaler. At 4:30am we decided to huddle down together in a bushed section of the ridge and get 20 minutes sleep before we headed on to CP7 in the early morning light.
With some good navigation we kept the momentum up and moved onto CP8 and out to the rafting transition. The trek had taken us 24 • hours, had weakened us considerably, and put us back in 18th position. 17 teams never made it past this trek, the race was over for them before day two finished.
We had lost the spark we normally have when racing and we found the raft difficult to paddle and we all felt frustrated. Navigating a few challenging rapids brought us back to life, and we steadily made our way to the next transition, where a hot shower awaited. It was heaven! We were asked to leave the showers as we were using so much of the hot water and detergent soap. This is likely the only benefit associated with Didymo infecting our South Island rivers.
We had been looking forward to the welcome faces of our support crew, and the wonderful food and support that they’d provide for many hours towards the end of that first trek. And they did not disappoint! Thanks guys – you rock! We agreed to sleep for 2 hours at this transition.
Unfortunately my tight chest had become a chest infection and the race medics consumed a good hour of my precious sleep time assessing me and prescribing some ‘good drugs’ to alleviate my breathing problems and fight the infection.
One thing you really begin to understand when racing an expedition race and missing sleep, “when you sleep your body heals, when you do not sleep it does not heal”. Small cuts on hands and legs were not healing, they were steadily becoming larger wounds.
The raft had broken up two major treks, offering approximately 2 hours of relief off our feet in what turned out to be almost 58 hours of trekking.
We headed off on this next trek in good spirits after we had spent a good amount of time with our support crew. We moved steadily through the first 4-5 hours of this trek in the bush before we popped out onto a freezing cold ridge above the tree line. We were joined by our friends Pro-4 at the first checkpoint on this trek and merrily trekked on towards the next one. Unfortunately we lost focus on the navigation and went with the flow before we realised we’d gone off down the wrong ridge line. Pro-4 continued on this ‘wrong’ heading, while we made our way around and back up to relocate ourselves before trying to get the right ridge again. Note to self: “Don’t rely on other teams, concentrate on your own navigation”!
We carefully selected the right ridge this time, having lost a couple of hours. Pro-4 took a riskier option and traversed their way around to the next CP, and managed to get there some time ahead of us.
My breathing had improved due to the drugs I’d been prescribed, however they were wearing off and I began struggling again. Day broke to the worst weather we’d experience in the race, and unfortunately we were on a very exposed ridge. The wind picked up, the rain turned to sleet and combined with the wind was ‘falling’ horizontally, the clouds closed in and the chill factor was high. Stu did a marvelous job of navigating in the gloom. The next CP was at a beaten up old hut, but it had a fire and it was very hard to leave and go back into the ‘storm’.
Aberdeen Asset Management (UK team) caught us up at the end of a very technical ridge section which saw us clinging to rocks on the edge of steep cliffs in high winds and rain, edging our way around, praying we’d get by them before darkness fell again. We picked our pace up and stayed with Aberdeen until they dithered at a critical navigation decision and we sped off towards the promise of a warmer climate, off the ridge and in amongst the trees. Some tricky navigation which Stu excelled at once again got us to the next CP and a crackling fire.
Again the fire was hard to leave. Wayne H was suffering from a relentless attack from the sleep monster so we persuaded him to have a lie down in the very small hut. Salomon UK passed us while we rested. We learnt from the check point marshal that the route to the next transition was well marked and we found it to be very good going and easy to follow. Unfortunately we didn’t pay enough attention to the map while following the markers and when the markers stopped short of the transition we failed to pinpoint our exact whereabouts on the map.
Salomon UK also failed to follow their map to this point and we spent some time together contemplating our predicament. We had a good idea of which direction we needed to head, so we dragged our exhausted bodies along the valley until we met a river. We followed the river until it met another, larger river. It was 1am on the morning of day three when we decided we weren’t where we thought we were since we had not come across the transition. Everyone was exhausted and our communications were not without strain. We decided to camp down in a cold and wet river bed until day break where we could see the major features of the surrounding landscape and figure out where we were. It was a terrible 4 hours in the river bed, and although we slept fitfully we didn’t recover much.
As the sun came up we packed up the tent, and within 10 minutes of easy walking were in transition. We had been in the right place, but hadn’t gone quite far enough. Very frustrating! Our support crew were very happy to see us, as we were them.
Another eight teams didn’t make it beyond this second trek, leaving only 21 teams remaining in the race. Our position remained 18th.
We had a quick bite to eat and mounted our trusty bikes eager to take a bit of pressure off our weary feet and spend some time in the saddle. We did a fair amount of riding, but also spent a lot of time on our feet, hauling our bikes though untracked bush and along unridable mountain trails. We rode strongly whenever we could and kept moving, either pushing or carrying when we couldn’t ride. We enjoyed a couple of very long downhills and one of the most memorable moments of the ride was when I did a superman launch over the handlebars into a muddy puddle after jumping off the end of a boardwalk and having my front wheel stop dead in a hole hidden by a puddle.
At one point we had quite a major river crossing to negotiate in the dark with our bikes. As we approached the river we saw another team walking up and down trying to find the best way across. Before we even had a chance to take a look up or down the river to try to identify the best place to cross, without loosing a second Stu strode into the swift moving freezing cold water. 20 meters into it he stopped, with the water up around his waist, bike swept out horizontal down river, and simply said ‘help’. I quickly dropped my bike on the bank and helped Stu across with his bike to the other side. We went across and back in pairs a number of times until we had all the bikes and ourselves safely across to the far bank, having only had one tyre and a pump ripped off our bikes by the force of the river.
Course notes indicated an 89km mountain bike leg. My cycle computer reported 140km, and a lot more kilometers had been done with our bikes on our shoulders. We clocked the fastest time for this leg, which may be misleading due to the effects of traveling in the dark and taking time to sleep, but we were happy that we’d made good time and kept up some good momentum.
I had twisted my ankle towards the end of this bike leg, and so I had it strapped in the transition before we headed on to yet another trekking leg. Our spirits had returned, the drugs had kicked in and my chest had recovered significantly and we finally moved at a pace we were proud of. We passed our friends Pro-4 and a couple of other teams on this trek. And by the end of it were in 10th place, and not that far behind 9th. Like all the other treks, we had to gain significant elevation before loosing it again before the end. As we followed a river towards the end of the leg, we came across a bluff that didn’t look very easy to climb out of, so we took some gear off sealed important things away in our dry bags and jumped out into the freezing cold waters. We all made it safely to the other side and continued on our merry way, running the last 5km to transition.
Our support crew were very excited to see us moving so quickly and making up places at this stage in the race. They helped us onto our bikes and shooed us off onto the small bike leg which took us to our kayaks. We were grateful to be off our feet and paddling happily down the river on this spectacular kayak leg down the Buller. Not long into the leg Sonya and Wayne H reported serious cases of the sleep monster, and since they were in the same boat and nearly falling asleep as they negotiated some rapids we decided to change the paddling combinations. So we paddled over to the riverbank and changed boat setups and partners.
We soon paddled past another team who were taking a break on the river bank, as they had also suffered from an attack from the nasty sleep monster. We followed the Buller river for some time before reaching the transition, and almost all the way along the road also followed the river. So we had some other teams and friends cheering us as we made our way down towards the sea.
The next transition welcomed us with another hot shower, bliss! We’d been going for around 30 hours now without sleep so we were well due for another rest. However, since the race cut off (6pm on Sat night) was approaching we decided that we’d risk not sleeping so as to have a chance of completing the course. If we’d slept we felt we would let that chance slip by. So we headed off on another mountainous trekking leg, the last one in the race. This was meant to be the leg with the ‘sting in the tail’ as Jeoff the race director had said. However, since everyone was falling behind his time estimates he made a change to the course taking the sting out of the tail.
We were all very exhausted for this leg of the race and our progress was slowing, some minor navigation errors were creeping in and our ability to make good strategic decisions was also dropping. The team we had passed on the river passed us on an exposed ridge, and then we caught up with them again at the next CP, a hut on the ridge. They’d slept for an hour. We didn’t think to sleep for an hour but rested a little, wasted some time chatting and eating and then carried on. From here on we made a few more major mistakes, dropping off the main ridge and heading off on a spur. We knew our mistake but continued on thinking there was another way to the transition once we got down to the river. The river proved too dangerous to follow due to some steep waterfalls, and as night fell for the 5th time we were getting into more and more difficulty in the steep terrain. Despite a number of attempts to reach the transition we kept being cut off by steep cliffs or banks. We decided for safety reasons to sleep and make it out in the light of a new day.
And this is where our race finished – only two legs short of the finish.
Why? Because we love it!