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Course changes in a cold climate

Susan McKenzie / 15.11.2004

It was a rough first night on the ridge for many teams. Snow, hail and driving cold rain forced many to hunker down in shelter along the first trek, some to skip checkpoints and others still to double back to previous checkpoints. Those that made it down off the ridge didn’t fare much better, and the first team to leave TA2, New Zealand’s Kathmandu, only left around 4:30 or so.

They never made it to TA3, the put-in for the river kayak section that was supposed to begin on Haupiri Lake. After a pre-dawn scout of the lake, race director Geoff Hunt made a course change, diverting teams to the calmer waters of Lake Brunner. This course change condenses the mountain bike section and the river kayak section into a shorter bike-paddle-bike section, removing a 67-kilometre river paddle along the Haupiri, Ahaura and Grey Rivers. Instead, teams will put in on Lake Brunner at Mitchells, switch to their bikes at Moana and then cycle to the start of the Lower Paparoas trek. This new section is 35-kilometres.

Kathmandu had already left TA2 and had almost reached Haupiri Lake before it was intercepted. The Kiwis were then transferred into the support crew camper van and shuttled to Brunner Lake.

“It was awful, getting off our bikes and having to get in the van,� says a shivering Kate Callaghan, who is battling a lung infection. “It may be warm and dry in there, but your body cools down. I wish we had known about the change before we’d gotten on our bikes. It’s a drag, because we were hoping to be well ahead of the other teams, and now because of this they’ll be closer than we’d hoped.�

Kathmandu will get a time credit for the extra cycling they had to do, but it won’t be clear until the end of the day what kind of credit that will be.

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