Southern Traverse
Weather the Winner
Derek Paterson / 13.11.2003
The 35km paddle at the end of Day 2 provided no problems, nor the following mountain bike leg up through the Berwick Forest to Lake Mahinerangi. Then came the crux of the 2003 Southern Traverse – if a 70km trek through snow tussock on rolling, featureless up-lands can be called a crux. This was always destined to be the high point (pardon the pun) of the Traverse – six CPs to be passed in any order and back to the kayaks that had been used for access. It was going to be a formidable task in fine weather, a real test of navigational skills.
But on Tuesday night, a cold front swept across the bottom half of New Zealand, bringing with it strong winds, low clouds and light rain.
“This is the first sunshine we’ve seen,� said Jim Cotter (Omni Graphics) as they reached CP32, Mountain Hut, roughly halfway through the circuit, in the middle of Wednesday afternoon. They were tired, their feet were wet from constantly walking through marshes and bogs and Cotter was feeling nauseous, unable to keep food down. And they were well off the pace suggested by Race Director Geoff Hunt.
Cycle Surgery/Scott USA had started the trek comfortably in the lead but navigator Richard Anderson began to feel the pressure of constant concentration and passed on the orienteering duties to a team mate. “By the next CP we’d lost an hour and a half,� he said. “ And we lost another hour to the next one.�
Kathmandu was worse off. They’d been making good time, even making up a few places, when, an hour or so out of CP32, Andy McBeth suffered a severe asthma attack. His inhaler didn’t help and he began to cough up blood. He tried resting but to no avail and that evening his support crew drove in to haul the whole team out.
As night fell, the weather took a turn for the worse. Snow fell to below 700 metres and what should have been a simple walk out became another challenge. “ We took a lot longer than we should have,� said Murray Thomas (Icebreaker/Bridgedale), “ we couldn’t see a thing.�
To a large degree, weather dictated progress for all of Thursday. Aberdeen Asset Management (UK) and Nomad (USA), among others, struggled to find their way off the tussock tops, through snow up to ankle deep in places.
When they all made it back to Lake Mahinerangi, they found white caps, a fierce, almost tail-wind and a constant succession of hail storms, interspersed with sunshine. Until late afternoon when another snowstorm swept through, adding to the difficulties on the next bike ride, back down through the Berwick Forest.
Other teams were doing shortened courses, according to certain pre-determined cut-off times – the Adventure Course included three CPs up in the tussocks, the Experience course meant missing that section entirely.
Just before midnight on Day 4, roughly 12 hours after the expected finish time, Civic Corp, on the experience course, was a couple of hours away from being first across the line.
Icebreaker/Bridgedale had a lead of more than three hours over Team Ruahine and was still a good six or seven hours from the finish.
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