Scott goes for a TWALK

Scott is one of our Christchurch based team members. On the weekend he took part in the annual TWALK, a 24 hour loops orienteering event organised by the Canturbury University Tramping Club, it is in its 43rd year and Scott's thoughts about the event are below,

I did TWALK on the weekend. It's a 24 hour rogaine held by the uni tramping club except the controls are little bits of plastic (the size of your palm) often hidden and with cryptic clues to make things pretty tricky. I was in a team with Tim Farrant and an ex New Plymouth Boys High adventure racer. They bused all 200-300 people out to the mountains where the event was being held.

Pretty much everyone dresses up in costumes, the best were probably some guys dressed up as giant tin foil and cardboard kegs who would sneak around and then crouch down and disappear into the "keg".

The race was made up 5 legs of 15-20km each based around the "hash house" (a wool shed) which had heaps of food and provided a little relief from the sub-zero temperatures outside when the sun was down. Our team did 4 of the legs and won the student section (about 4-5th overall). Jamie and Matt Scott were in the winning team who we were with for lots of the race and kept catching up to when it came to hunting for controls for like 20mins, which happened quite a few times!

I ended up only doing 14 hours on my feet all up and I was smashed. The worst part was probably spending ages searching for hidden checkpoints in the early hours of Sunday morning when everything around was frozen from the -9 degree temp (so we were told) and I didn't have many layers on (just holey puma tights on my legs) and I was freezing cold! Best parts would have been the mint view of snowy mountains in all directions, running along having sweet yarns with guys like Jamie and Matt all dressed up in their 'Planet of the Apes' costumes and having chocolate pudding for breaky.

Check out Jamie's blog for his take and some photos (pennyandjamie.blogspot.com)
Here is a link to the website if you want to check it out, http://www.cutc.org.nz/twalk/index.php