Tararua 24

Control #71 was at the southern edge of this pond.

From the start we set off down the road to quickly pick up control #23 at a stream junction, and then followed the farm track to pick up controls #42 and #94. The course notes indicated that there was a patch of supple jack along the direct SW line between #94 and where we wanted to go, so from the control we went west and crossed over to a small spur with easy travel in the bush. Travel along this section was a little slow but we eventually picked up controls #71 and #20.

Jan heading up Carrington Creek.

From control #20 it was out to the Mangatarere Valley Rd and along to Carrington Creek. The obvious entry to the creek was private land, so we had to use the direct route up the creek. There was supposed to be a track on the back to our left (the true right of the stream), but we couldn't find it and instead followed the stream all the way up to control #90. From there it was up to the stream bend and junction that marked the exit for control #53. The course notes warned of "easy but steep travel up to #53". It was certainly steep, but we somehow missed the easy part and instead found a lot of supplejack. We lost a lot of time on this climb, by the time we had collected control #53 and #93 it was getting dark and we were running low on time.

Although we had entered the 12 hour rogaine it was being run as 2 x 6 hours, and the clock was running down to when we needed to be back. We abandoned our plan of heading down to Totara Flats and instead decided to take the more direct route following the old track along the ridge. As soon as it got dark our travel slowed to a crawl as with our low powered lights we had to be very careful to ensure we picked up the track markers. We eventually picked up control #92, and by some miracle control #89 - we were not at all sure that we would have found #89 coming from the other direction. It was back onto the main track after #89, but we were already overdue.

We had a tired climb up to the Mt Holdsworth / Gentle Annie track and then a fast walk all the way down to the start / finish area. We could have looked for #32 on the way down but instead decided that we shouldn't waste any more time and should get back as soon as possible. When we finally made it back we were 4 hours overdue! We had some hot food from the hash tent then retired to the tent for a few hours sleep.

Sunrise on day 2 as we were on our way to #83.

We were up again at about 5:30am for the 6am start on the second 6 hour rogaine. We were a little slow in starting, and were also feeling quite tired. Note wanting a repeat of the previous day's efforts we adopted a deliberately short route for the morning. Starting out along the Atiwhakatu track we made the strange decision to bypass #55 and #22 and continued along the track to #83 which was in a side stream. From there we climbed the track leading up to Mountain House and picked up #102.

Jan by Mountain House shelter.

Coming back down the Gentle Annie track (again), we took the side track at the top of Carrington Ridge to pick up #82 on Point 801. Back out to the Gentle Annie track and back down again. We were never quite sure where #32 should be, so again bypassed it.

Reaching the bottom of the Gentle Annie track we crossed Donnelly Flat and the Atiwhakatu Stream and picked up #55. Back down the track towards the start/finish area we still had plenty of time so we collected #41 from Gentle Annie Creek. There was only 25 minutes left so rather than risking being late again we went back to the finish.

Total points zero for the first day's debacle, and just 350 for our tired wanderings on the second day.