Mokoroa Falls & Goldies Bush

After a hard day’s work studying Thermo-Fluids, Gene Beveridge, Tom Reynolds and I decided to take on some fluids of our own: the Mokoroa stream bash.

Tom approaches Mokoroa Falls

Nestled in the outskirts of Muriwai, the Mokoroa – Goldies Bush route is a solid circuit for an afternoon’s bash in the bush.

The descent from Constable Road to the stream has been upgraded so it is no longer as gnarly as it once was, and is now a sedate gravel bash unfortunately. Confusingly, to head up the Mokoroa stream from the junction, you turn right. The track loops underneath the bridge heading along the Goldie Bush Walkway.

Now the fun begins.

Gene and Tom were both repping the Inov-8 X-talon 212, a sensible choice as the track was greasy from the rain. Meanwhile I was left slipping through their hoofprints in my sleek pair of New Balance Minimus. I really like the Minimus trails, and even in the slippery conditions they forced me to keep my balance by other means; increasing my cadence and using the trail to my advantage. Basically grabbing onto trees and plants to avoid shooting off on a tangent into the stream!

 Along the upstream journey there were about ten crossings of the Mokoroa, some at rocky sections like the one above. The rock was covered in a devious layer of stream-grime. The crossings were OK today but after heavier rain they can quickly become raging torrents and can make the route pretty treacherous. I reminisced about travelling up this stream in the summer of 2010 during a midnight rogaine event; navigating was definitely easier in the day time!

Start and finish at Constable Rd (far left)

Left: Mokoroa Falls from the viewing platform.   Right: Tom charges down the muddy Goldie Bush track

The Goldies Bush Walkway was a mud-fest, luckily it was a downhill so we let gravity take care of business down to the bridge. All that was left to finish is the uphill grind to the car, a humbling experience, I let the stairs finish me off, and felt smashed at the top. A very decent track, and a quality low-key adventure. I especially loved the Mokoroa stream route – high adrenaline stuff when done at race pace, and a lot of tricky terrain to negotiate. Get out there and give it a go! This run would be paradise on a hot summer’s day.

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The entire run took us about 70 minutes. The upcoming Speight’s West Coaster adventure run takes in this section as part of the Marathon event, starting at Bethells Beach on 26th November. Including the Te Henga trail and a lap of Lake Wainamu, this race is a real challenge – good luck to the brave!

Bethells 12-hour Rogaine

7pm, 19th February 2010: I set off in a team from Muriwai Beach one late summer evening, taking part in a very unofficial 12 hour Rogaine which would send us through the night searching for make-shift checkpoints hidden along streams, under viewing platforms, around coastal cliffs… I loved it. This exciting and adventurous idea lay as a seed, dormant in the fertile plains of my mind until [ironically] the winter of this year. Noticing that Auckland was lacking any long distance Rogaine events, I decided to take the initiative and launch my own. A challenge for runners, trampers and orienteers alike; the Bethells 12-Hour Rogaine was born.

The event was advertised through tramping clubs, sports forums and word of mouth, with one team even traveling from Hamilton to take part. While the threatening weather forecast saw many last minute pull-outs, we had almost thirty keen participants lining up at the Surf Club gate rearing to go. This extraordinary challenge was set in the unique surroundings of Te Henga, Bethells Beach – a great location for the event; with access to the extensive Cascades track network, Te Henga trail, rugged beaches, sand dunes, and Lake Wainamu. Thirty controls were spread out across the map, with several interesting route choices to consider. Tide times and darkness hours were also thrown into the churning strategy pot, leaving teams some serious thinking to do in the thirty minutes before midnight.

Walkers would become trampers, trampers would become navigators, and navigators would become endurance athletes, as they were thrown into the dark, and the ugly, for a full twelve hours of glorious adventure. As Charles Dickens famously said, “The men who learn endurance, are they who call the whole world, brother”.

Held in the guts of winter, the wild West Coast lived up to its name. Teams who chose to start along the Te Henga Walkway, a dramatic 9 kilometre section of coastal track, were belted with sou’westerlies in the silhouette-shadow landscape of the early morning. Andrew Turnbull from team “The Camel & the Straw” said, “It was a really awesome event, the Te Henga trail in the wind and the rain was epic.”

At each checkpoint, a short clue narrowed down the likely whereabouts of the treasure, in the form of red & white plastic tape. Each location had a unique two-letter code that teams would write down to prove their conquest. Each code was an acronym describing something about the surroundings, e.g. a tape-wrapped rock hidden in a crevasse around the coast of Erangi point that was only accessible at low tide had the code ‘LT’. The further out they ventured from the base, the more points they could earn. If teams managed to trek out as far as Ongaruanuku Hut, they would be stoked to find some red & white tape hanging in the woodshed. One team decided to treat themselves to a power nap at the hut before the homeward journey, via a waterfall traverse at Pig Wallow, some tree climbing on Chateau-Mosquito, a stream bash down the Wainamu, and finishing with a rock climb and some cave exploring on Bethells Beach, before collapsing at the finish. Elated, and alive.

Substantial calories were replaced at the finish with hearty servings of pumpkin soup, warmed to perfection with the trusty club primus. Matt Lillis, notable gourmet outdoor chef de cuisine found the generously frosted chocolate cake to be “succulent and moist”.

Helen Liley and myself spent two days tramping through the Waitakeres setting up the course the week prior, finding interesting locations and writing clues on the go. We slept at O’nuku Hut and in a spectacular bivvy against the cliffs of Bethells Beach the following night. Luckily it wasn’t tested for water-proofness.

The Bethells 12-Hour Rogaine was a huge success in its first running; all the teams seemed to arrive back at base looking shattered, but exhilarated by the experience of going hard all through the night, and walking into the new day. 


The overall winner was elite women’s adventure racing team, Team Macpac Girls on Top, who managed to cover a 53km loop (with an impressive 2187m vertical gain) around all three sections of bush, picking up all but two checkpoints!

Following this success, we plan to organise more of these longer Rogaines in the future, and also hope that this will inspire others to organise similar events. We have our sights set on running a Hunua 12-Hour Rogaine for November 2011, and a Karekare 12-Hour Rogaine for February 2012. Planning will start soon, so watch this space for more details to come!

Final Results (Maximum score 1840)

1.  Macpac Girls On Top – 1600
	a.  Anne Lowerson, Debbie Chambers, Cath Heppelthwaite
2.  Dash Hounds – 1150
	a.  Mike Judd, Rupert Dash, Steve Pyatt
3. : Hamilton Devilled Eggs – 930
	a.  Elliot O’Brien, Isaac Dempsey, Nick Vignati, Craig Smith
4.  Team Type 1 – 820
	a.  Claire Dobson, Alan Dobson
5.  Tim & Tony – 760
	a.  Timothy Burrell, Tony Hastie
6.  Cool Katz – 550
	a.  Hannah Lockie, Tane Moore, Matt Martin
7.  Matt’s Crew – 380
	a.  Matt Lillis, Laurien Heijs, Georgia Yarrow, Rosanna Walton
8.  Peter & David – Disq
	a.  Peter Guillburt, David Keall
9.  Camel & the Straw – Disq
	a.  Andrew Turnbull, Hannah Lowe
10.  Otago University Tramping Club – Disq
	a.  Edward Colenbrander, James West, Ian Grimson, Malcolm Durling