GZ Chapter 10 - Team Kumho Vol1
The first 2 stages were just a warmup/prelude for the real race which starts at stage 3. It took us 6 hours all-together for both stages - good catching up with familiar faces from other teams as well as clocking a good time on the bike leg (59min).
We were lucky we could paddle the stage 1 as it is usually quite rough on the west coast.
We started in wave 2, 10 min behind wave 1. I could feel that our self bailing packrafts (AR320) were slower than non bailing ones. No real white water on this GZ instance so ideally need to have another set of faster packraft (Koaro) for flat water paddling.
First stage had only one CP which was a bit tricky - navigating through a creek helped and a lot of teams combined efforts.
It turned out we have a good biking team. The biking stages were really enjoyable and easy.
This stage is the crux of the race - with two main route options available - Coastal vs Cascade riverbed and into the ridges. We estimated the time as 50hours (and had food for this amount and lights for 2 nights) vs it turned out to be 86hours.
The map of the queens stage. Note the route choice from TA2 to CP4.... Big decisions!
we set off to the queen stage of this GZ
Following the cascade riverbed for 20-ish km...We pushed for the first night trying to find a way onto the ridgeline..
After a couple of attempts following steep creeks we found a way to the tops and used this tarn water (filtered with aquatabs).
We did a slight change to our route choice which affected how we spent the next night - trying to shortcut to Pike river through Pike saddle. I think the original plan to stay on the tops for as long as possible was more feasible.
This was probably the first struggle bush bashing to Pike saddle. Especially when the night settled in and and the tall of the previous sleepless night was hit us. We seemed to be going round in circulars and we needed a break for the team and navigator. Decision was to sleep from 11pm to sunrise so we can see where we are going. On hindsight, probably 3 hours should have been enough to recharge ourselves but at that point we were worried that we will need to save on battery life of our lights as well.
In the morning we seemed to find our way back to Pike river and it was a nice change to get paddling on the river. Although the river was not white water at all but we were grateful to have some tailwind on the late sections and catch up on some teams. Once on the Holyford track we felt good and even did some jogging to the Hidden Falls Hut/CP. We passed Richie's team who were already unranked - reshuffled with some other team. This is where the weather started detoriating with some drizzle settling in and it was close to last daylight hours. The challenge was to bush bash parallel to Hidden Falls Creek and onto to Park Pass into another valley. It took most of the night through a technical bush bashing on fallen trees, rocks and holes. Sometimes it felt we were in the middle of nowhere but then we will bump into a random team in a random spot.
Used this cave to to manage our feet. It felt to early for a power nap but in hindsight this would have been better than getting the emergency tent out. Around 5 am we lost our pace with both me and Aaron shivering and struggling to go effectively. Milan called out for emergency camp and getting undressed and going naked into the dry sleeping bag. I don't remember sleeping much as I was shivering all the time but 2 hours of lay down did the trick.
With light we got up 0- getting into the wet clothes was not comfortable but once we got moving we felt better. Surprisingly we were not far away from a wide river bed which was much more walkable and our speed increased.
The challenge now was to find the right valley up to the pass and the hint was to follow pink ribbons. For some weird reason we follow the orange ribbon too high and recognized we were by ourselves in the wrong place. Luckily we met two other team a bit lost as well and their verdict was to go back as we have overshoot it. Following the teams we managed to find the correct semi marked route to the pass.
This is where our team morale went downhill. I was going slowly on the steep uphill as well acknowledging we still have 20+km of track to the last Dart river paddle which puts us way behind the potential cut offs.
It was good to see a volunteer at the pass who cheered us up a little.
Milan's point was we need to push now, whereas Ruth's ankle was sore and I was worried we were low on food and headlamp batteries and we need to survive another night!
The next section was probable the lowest light of the entire race - we just need to walk out on relatively good track but everyone was quiet and struggling their own demons (even Milan lost his motivation - he had to put an extra layer as he was getting cold with our relatively slow pace). From a very blurred memory we had a 15min power nap on the side of the track when we were passed by another team.
The track seemed endless and it was very hard mentally. Finally went we were close to the CP/shelter we seemed puzzled and disorientated - it took us may be 30 min to find the right spot. Luckily it was a manned shelter where we were provide some hot tea, food and recharge. Also we were provided with a paddle from pursuit teams as I managed to loose one part of my freshly new 4split wing paddle (sacrifice somewhere in the bush!)
That was around 2:30am and at 3am we inflated our rafts, didimo'ed them and set of for the last 3hr paddle on the Dart river. The challenge was it was foggy and we couldn't see much - being a braded river - it felt we were going all over the place. We couldn't tell if we were making good progress on the river nor we couldn't see any hazards on the river (like tree branches that could damage the rafts). After hour of this craziness we decided to camp out for two hours until the dawn. Probably not the best decision but it felt right at that time. Milan and Aaron slept in the raft wrapped in emergency bags while Ruth and I were in the tent/sleeping bags. With some daylight finally we could see where we were going and it made much more sense. To our surprise we covered some distance in the night blindly!
Reaching Glenorchy we were blessed with some cool sunrise views on the water.
To our disappointment we were told that we are being short coursed and have a 24hr break before restarting to Stage 6. that means we skip the 70km MTB (boring) and 55km trekking stage in the Eyre mountains (that is a shame!). A bit of mixed feelings there but nothing that we could do at this stage.
Test text here
We were happy to see our support crew after 86hours of being out there in the wild!
We could only accept the new reality and spend the next 24hr it’s recovering and preparing for the rest of the course now…
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