TWALK 2010 - 24 hrs of being freezing cold

Ops, long time since last entry. Life is busy trying to plan two wedding parties.

At the end of May it was time for TWALK. This is 24 hr orienteering-type race starting from a surprise location. Most teams dress up in silly costumes. Penny, Lara, Clare and I made up Team Omisstery and themed up with the guys' team, all dressed in Cluedo inspired costumes. I was hoping someone would dress up as a candle stick or lead pipe, but for simplicity (not to save weight), we carried a range of murder weapons with us.

The weather forecast looked pretty bad so we had to try and dress warm as we. I am not sure if Clare looks that warm. Lara as Madame Rose
2 * Miss Scarlett (Nick was loving the wig) The bus took us to a surprise location, which turned out to be Cave Stream in Arthur's Pass. From there we had to find the controls by figuring out their location based on cryptic clues. The first leg finished at the hash house, which is where each team have to rest a compulsory 30 min between each leg. This year, the organisers (university of Canterbury Tramping Club) had chosen a pretty flash hash house, Flockhill Station, where warm food was waiting for us.

This is by the start when the three bus loads of dressed up suckers-for-pain started the race.

The winter came early to Canterbury and the snow levels were unusually low. In TWALK, the controls are typically pretty hard to find, which made this year a real challenge since the controls were often buried in deep snow or the "significant matagouri bush" which we were looking for was not that remarkable below the snow pack.


Mat, Jamie, Greg Thurlow and Hamilton are looking pretty lost. The truth is that they were miles ahead of us and had already found the controls on Helicopter Hill above, where we were going.

Miss Scarlett (I still have the skirt on in the snow) making her way up Helicopter Hill to look for "stupid controls". No, actually I think I had not hit the "stupid" phase yet.

Clare enjoying the snow in her stockings.

Darkness was just falling as we set out on the second leg. As the hash house is already located pretty high up, we hit the snow level almost immediately. This image is the memory I have from almost the whole of the second leg. We spent a lot of time walking back and forth on this snowy road. Sounds like fun, eh?

We did very well during Leg 1, OK during Leg 2 and pretty shockingly bad on Leg 3.

We were wise and decided to not go up to 1400 m to get the last three controls at the end of Leg 2. Michael Smithson's team did and they returned with close to hypothermia.

We returned back to the Hash house about midnight. Lara was pretty cold and together with Clare they decided to skip the next leg. When Penny and I saw the map for the third leg, we thought: Piece of Cake!..the terrain was flat and it didn't look to far to go.

When we struggled to find the first three controls, we got a bit worried. The clues were bloody impossible and didn't make any sense. After searching for 7 controls in total, we managed to only find TWO controls. Penny had a couple of micro naps (sitting on the ground) while I was looking for the controls. We both were losing our will to live and finally decide to walk back to the Hash house. We got back at 6 am after 5 hrs of unsuccessful searching. How depressing!!

I misunderstood which leg Mat had completed when he stuttered "It was awful" when I met him back at the Hash house. I assumed that his speedy team must have completed Leg 4, which sounded just as awful as Leg 3 that we had attempted. With this in mind...I went to bed...and I never got up for any more running around. My TWALK 2010 had finished!

Afterwards, I realised that Mat must have been describing the same leg that we only did half of (leg 3). Lara and Penny did some of the fourth leg and said it was really nice. I must admit that I felt pretty soft..but also very warm and cosy in my sleeping bag. :-)

Mat, Jamie, Greg et al. won of course. We scored a 9th place. Well, well, we had lots of fun..at least for some sections of the race. I can't say I enjoyed the 1-6 am time, but I have to get used to it. Berit and I are now in the Rogaine World Champs - a 24 hr race WITHOUT any Hash house with warm food. Gah! I am a bit scared...