TWalk

The week prior, while I was busy leading crazy kids up to Mueller Hut, I was talked into doing some sort of thing called TWalk. All Colorado Chris would tell me is that I had to drink and be able to hike at the same time while wearing a costume and looking for clues... hazing anyone? But yea, I signed up for his team. What else was I going to do?

Turns out TWalk stands for a 24 hour orienteering competition and Canterbury has one of the longest running annual TWalks in the country (this year was year 44). It’s open to anyone, student or not. Costumes and team themes are strongly encouraged. We sat around for a while, what would 13 people dress up as? After much though, Jesus and the 12 disciples of course! All we needed were bed sheets, simple as pie and funny as ... yea.

Group Shot

The night before rolls around and it’s our good friend Nicole’s 20th birthday. What was I thinking?! The next morning I was throwing stuff in a bag and completely forgot a lunch, or food of any sort. But to be honest I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into.

Trudging

To make it as fair as possible, they don’t disclose the location. You just all pile on a bus and they take you and drop you off with a map. I wish I had known this before, but I learned it all on the go. Here’s the deal. The TWalk in its entirety is made up of multiple legs. The first leg is mandatory for the entire team. Every subsequent leg is optional except for the team captain. The legs vary from 15 to 25 kilometres but you don’t know how long the first one is until you get the map. Turns out it was only 18 kilometres... as the crow flies. On a topographic map there are circles that are 10 meters in diameter that mark where the clue is. You get a point for every clue you find. Whoever has the most points wins of course. By the way, we were in Arthur’s Pass in the Castles Hill area (where Damon and I tried to explore a few weeks prior).

Determined Disciple

It was hilarious how it started off. We all gathered for brief formal rules. Then they shouted go and the hillside came alive with Jesus and the 12 disciples, Santa Clauses, Blues Brothers, Convicts, Miners, Presidents, Army Men, Flowers, Smurfettes, Skiers (complete with ski boots from the 70’s) Roman soldiers and many others. Complete mayhem and complete awesomeness.

Clue Found!

We moved quickly and were in the middle of the pack. For some times we walked down the highway and the looks we got were incredible. Quickly the groups spread out and we were by ourselves. It was a bit tedious hunting for clues that were only the size of my hand and usually well hidden. This was different from anything I had ever done also. There was no trail of course, no suggestion of where to walk. So you would just pick what looked easiest and quickest. We were traversing down steep cliffs, through thick fields of gores (bushes with nasty 3 inch long sharp as spines), up hills that led to more hills and all manners of marshes. The best was when Colorado Chris (who was our team leader and Jesus) lead us up over and through a pine mountain just to go down a ¼ mile long skree slope. We were literally surfing/snowboarding on our feet down it. When you have something that long, you jsut kind of run, skip and slide down while dodging larger rocks rolling down, branches and other people. Just like a game. We ended up at the bottom and were emptying out our soggy sneakers of rocks when we were informed we were going straight up the other side. I honestly don’t know if Chris every really knew where we were or where we were going. But somehow we went up the sharp spine of a spur and ended up right where we needed to be!

'Jesus' at the End of the Skree Slope

The rest of the leg wasn’t bad because we now had picked up a trail and there was a service road. But I was really worse for wear. Like I said I forgot a lunch, only had a small breakfast and it was 9pm when we were barely at the end. I thought I would pass out. But I learned an important lesson. NEVER EVER FORGET FOOD. How stupid was I?!

BEFORE! Clean and Happy

AFTER: Dirty still happy?

9 hours later we had finally stumbled in with all of the clues. We certainly weren’t the first, or the last which was awesome. But we definitely needed to work on our orienteering. Shame on us. Between each leg you have to take a 30 minute break where you could go eat all the hot food you wanted. And they had chicken! I had chicken and pumpkin soup and it was amazingly delicious. After that we talked about the other legs. We had run into other people who had given up on latter legs because they were near impossible in the dark and a the topo map was really outdated for one leg. Half of our team (sadly including myself) threw in the towel and opted for cards and sleep in the sheep barn instead.

By the way, sleeping in a shearing shed (where the sheep are sheared) is an awful idea. And unless it was raining and I wasn’t exhausted I would have slept outside because of the smell which stayed in my sleeping bag for 2 washes.

Mmm Sheep Shearing Shed

I woke up the next morning and went for some breakfast. I ran into a French guy who I had hiked with before, he had been hiking for 22 hours and his team had abandoned him. Holy hiking batman. My team had finished their second leg at 5 in the morning and had braved rain, lakes and chest high brush. Good for them, they’re better than I am.

Of course we didn’t win. The winners were the team ‘age is no substitute for experience’ which was SO true considering they were both in their late 60’s early 70’s. I’m not making this up either. They had been doing TWalk since it started and only missed 1 when they were visiting relatives. Dedication? I think so. Fitness? Holy crap yes.

Outside Where We Slept.

TWalk was something that I liked HEAPS more after I was finished. But I’m very glad I did it, and if I did it again, I would be more prepared with sleep, preparation and of course food.

Beautiful Landscape on the Way Home