A very pleasing end to the 2003 rogaine season - 6th mixed team (out of 21 starters), and just one more 30 point control would have catapulted us into 3rd place.
The day had very heavy low cloud, with teams in the 10hr event finding that visibility was down as low as 10m in places. By the time the 5hr event started at mid-day, the cloud had lifted a little and it was just the hill tops that were affected. Even that had cleared by the time that we got to the hill tops.
There was a tempting collection of points (two 90s and an 80) at the northern end of the map, with a gap of several kilometres between them and the main area of controls. We decided to head north, collecting control 54 at the top end of the main area, and then continuing on to collect the 260 points at the top of the map.
Control 54 was easy to find, and then it was on to control 90 at the head of a stream. An hour after the start and we had a choice to make:
We chose the first option because it looked to be shorter, and it looked on the map like there would be plenty of grassy ridges coming up. We had to travel a substantial distance before finding any grassy ridges, and then made a navigational error so that we ended up taking perhaps 15 minutes longer than we should have to find the control. A costly error, and only a short time into the event! The other two high-scoring controls were easily picked up, and then it was down the road to the beach at Titahi Bay.
From Titahi Bay we climbed up a track that led up the hills at the southern end of the bay. Hoping that we were reading the map correctly we then went cross-country across a horse paddock to pick up the road. A short section on road and soon we were heading south along the private road. From there it was cross-country to pick up control 45, and then follow an easy farm track down to the coast to pick up control 21. Our next target was control 71, and we could either continue on the farm track or head around the coast. There was a very pictureseque beach (with a well-used foot track), so we chose that option. Counting off the streams, we reached the point to turn inland. The scramble up the stream was a little moe difficult than anticipated, but soon we were back on the farm road and kept going upstream until we hit the road/stream junction. From here there was no choice but to walk up the stream itself. The scrubby bush became harder to penetrate, but it was clear that many people had been here before us.
On reaching the control, we now had another decision to make - back down to the farm road, or up the stream and climb out at the top. For some reason that doesn't seem particualrly clear now, we decided to go up the stream. Vegetation became ever thicker and progress ever more difficult. Eventually we decided it was time to cut our losses and just climb up the steep slope out of the gully to the farmland 100 metres above.
In short order we were back in the clear, but time was running short. We no longer had time to go out of our way to collect controls: it was time to head straight for the finish. We crossed the valley and started up the rolling hills on the flanks of Colonial Knob. By this time we were both very tired! We found the bush track and zig zagged for what seemed like an interminable amount of time before we appeared out on the Colonial Knob access road.
By this time there were a large number of teams heading down the road. A few went flying past us, but we also passed a couple as we ran down the road. We picked up the last control (11) and headed down a side track towards the start/finish area. A few brief moments of confusion amongst the teams as the track had an extra branch or two that weren't on the map, but we made it.
| Team | Score |
| Gillian & Malcolm Ingham | 580 |
| Leo & Rita Holmes | 490 |
| Dan Rhodes, Rachel Dawber, Paul Abbott | 470 |
| Gerard Crawford, Brent Burson, Raewyn Peters | 460 |
| Dorothy & Neil Kane | 460 |
| Andrew Shelley & Jan Bliekendaal | 450 |
| Billie Marshall, Sue Lyttle, Eric Barber | 430 |
| Fiona Clendon & Gerard Hoffman | 430 |
| Cathy Worthy & Jonathan Ravens | 410 |
| Graeme Silcock & Sue Eastwood | 360 |
Full results are available here. | |
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