Training Log Archive: Georgia

Stage 3 - packrafting epic continues

Camp and sleep for maybe 7hrs. Good to have two tents for this camp. Nice and comfy and warm.

Paddled down the Wairaurahiri in the early morning. Dark zone lifted at 6:45am which was way too early. Pitch dark for the first bit of the river. Quite scary starting off onto it out of the forest as it was fair rushing past our camp. Caught Yealands and Tiki in about 30min who had camped just downstream of us. Both had had swims! Uneventful trip down the river for us, self bailer would have been nice.

Started the trek from Waiuta Lodge just in front of Yealands and Tiki, didn't take the best line over to the river and ended up behind both of them I think. We headed up the river getting into some solid bush bashing for the first time, had the usual confusion around the S-bend in the river and eventually found the control. The rest of the treking/lake rafting part of this leg went well and was probably my favourite section ever in a race. Brent was onto it with the nav and route finding and I was backing up nav (but not needing to do much until he lost it a bit finding the one one the high point). Most of the time we were along but near Yealands and we see-sawed the lead several times. We did the hardest of the nav in the dark and probably hit the coast at about 5am.

Stage 2 - Starting mid morning of day 2. Bike and caving.

Easy road ride to the caves then a bizaar 2hr stop at the caving. Maybe 40min in the cave and then sitting around in the sun for the rest eating food, drying feet and talking to other teams. Loads of teams there because of the dark zone in varying states of tiredness. Good heckling and banter.

Second part of the ride was through forestry roads towards Hauroko. A bit chaotic with Yealands, us, T7 and Tiki tour all together and making it harder than it needed to be. Bunch ride to finish which Id been training for so no worries. A bit unnecessary though given the next dark zone looming.


Stage 3 - The pack rafting epic.

First part on Friday afternoon. Paddling Hauroko and the short walk down the river to camp.

Event: GODZone - Chapter 7 Fiordland
 

Godzone 2018

Stage 1 - Packrafting Waiau-Borland

Really three stages pretending to be one.
1a - Paddle Te Anau-Waiau-Manapouri.
Went well. Paddled with Stu and we were the same speed as A and B. Didn't have to try that hard and managed to get a small lead over Yealands.

1b - Trek over Titaroa and abseil
Went into this with a small lead and made good time through the harder controls in the bush then took the high right route over Titaroa. Came out into the Borland and met Yealands there so their way must have been slightly quicker. Probably pushed a bit hard over the hill for no good reason (although we didn't know about the dark zone). Abseil was a bit scary but got down ok. Got the the end of this trek at maybe 10pm in the lead by maybe 10min to find there was now a dark zone on the Waiau. Don't really know what the organisers were thinking. They made it sound like they didnt think we would get there in the dark!

1c - Paddle down the Monowai in the dark then a nice sleep in a carport in Monowai for maybe 5hrs. Lots of teams there by morning, felt like 20, probably less. Paddle down the Waiau with a mass start that quickly turned into the Swordfox, Yealands race again with T7 around for a bit of it this time.

C • Darkzone 2