St James Rogaine

For my third weekend based in Nelson I was keen to get out a bit further afield, beyond the bordering Richmond Ranges. Also, this weekend was rearing all over the country with mountain events – from the south, the glamorous Kepler Challenge 60km run in Te Anau. To the north, the infamous GOAT 21km around Ruapehu guaranteed to chew up your shoes, if not your soul. I had been looking forward to the Goat all year, but the Cook Strait proved too much of a logistical challenge. Plus, I was in the South Island already…

No Goat this year

I found my revenge in the form of the St James “Office Hours” 7-hour Rogaine held in the ranges beyond Hanmer Springs. Although I couldn’t find a team mate in Nelson, I didn’t give up. I took a gamble, and made the 300km journey to registration at St James Homestead hopeful, and nervous, to find a team… Success! The gamble paid off, I joined up with Elisha Nuttall and Joel Smith from Canterbury and Otago, and we made the ultimate team.

Elisha & Joel rearing to go at briefing

THE MAP

High above the steamy Hanmer Springs, we were now in real Canterbury high-country, and the most incredible terrain for a rogaine I’d ever seen. Take a patch of North Island farmland, add some towering 1800m mountain ranges and braided river valleys, and you get the idea. A nor-westerly was threatening us with rain so we packed for the conditions, carrying a stash of Gore-tex and merino. Joel scoffed at the briefing and repped a cotton tee-shirt, the whole day.

First up the first hill, foolish but necessary

9:30AM: The horn sounded. We darted up the nearest knoll-top for our first 10 points of the day. We were in the lead. Our strategy was to start out with some flat controls to start the day at a good pace, we headed north and pick up up 7 more controls without much trouble. The second most-valuable control in the far north had a pot of jelly-beans at the flag, we were delighted. To be my downfall or not, this lead to me ditching my salami sandwiches, chasing a sweet-toothed sugar craving all day. Only one hour had passed, how long would I last?

Jelly Beans. Yummy

Rugged high-country terrain

We had a horrible time finding #60 perched on a saddle above Horrible stream – I was convinced we were at the right saddle and high point combination, but there was good reason why the compass didn’t agree… Determined to make up time, we raced on to catch up the school team who had ashamedly crept past us.

Cresting the rocky spur to #70

After following the easy ridge up to Samoa Mound, we crashed down a scree slope into the valley heading west. We cruised through 5 easy controls, before filling up water in the DW stream. The terrain was extremely rough and made running hard at the best of times. We pushed straight up the hillside to collect #62, and while sidling round to the next stream gulley we met eventual winners Chris Forne and Nathan Fa’ave climbing in the opposite direction – clearing finding it hard work too!

Marshy, wide valleys to the west

Big scree covered slopes

With time ticking rapidly towards 7 hours, we had to start lowering our expectations, and we dropped four controls high on the St James range. We were saving our climbing energy for the big 100 pointer atop Peter’s Hill – number-one priority in our race plan. We cleared the swampy Peters Valley of the low controls and made a late dash for the summit! 1 hour 20 to go…

Battling the weather to summit Peter’s Hill

The rain that had held off all day finally made its presence known, and at 1100m above the valley plains we felt its full force. Joel, still hugging his cotton t-shirt and not much else, didn’t complain, all eyes were focussed on avoiding the prickly matagouri scrub and searching through the mist for the orange-white control flag. Boom – there it is: we punched our wrist bands and scrambled into the final stream gorge to find #72. The clue seemed straightforward: “Base of rocky outcrop/spur”.

Only a few obstacles before us to conquer

We spent 20 minutes of precious time searching the steep stream banks to find no said rocky outcrop – the 7-hour countdown was racing, find it or flee! One last desperate attempt for a valuable 70 points, we charged down the gorge to try and find it en-route to the finish checkpoint. There it was! For once it was the map who was wrong! By now we didn’t care, and battled through the shrub up & over the spur to descend to the road – five minutes to go – three of us ran the final kilometre towards the finish, with a generous helping of seconds left in reserve.

FINISH. 6:58:34

We almost cramped stiff after stopping in the rain. Back to St James homestead for a few moist sausages cake and tea – no better way to finish an awesome day in the hills. Even better was the luck of finding such mint team-mates – Joel & Elisha were solid all day – even though we’re spread across the country we’ll definitely meet up for some adventures in the future…

Nathan Fa’ave and Chris Forne powered their way through the course to pick up 1620pts from a pot of 1710. Impressive stuff from the adventure racing & orienteering champs. We were happy with our collection of 1200pts, and picked up an iced Christmas cake for our efforts. Thanks to Grant Hunter and the team at NZ Rogaine Association for organising such a sweet event.

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