Sarah's '9 hour' Spring Challenge - Te Anau

Spring Challenge was awesome - hard yakka - but worth it!

Sarah O’Connell, The AgriBusiness Group (Left), Louise O’Connell (Centre), Megan Fitzgerald (Right)

We started in -3 conditions at 6.50am on Saturday, biking 4km in our wetsuits (which was good because it was so cold but I could not feel my hands!) to the start of the raft at the control gates out of Lake Te Anau onto the Waiau River. Then we rafted 11km along some beautiful river lost in fog for parts of it & just mystical like bush surroundings! Onto a 13km hike in some steep Fiordland bush over Harts Hill. We basically hiked back to where we got in the rafts. We had the option to go up & over the top – a shorter but steeper route, or around the back, a longer route but no climbing. We opted for over the top which was the better option in the end. We had trap line markers for following our way along where as along the bottom there was nothing to follow other than a creek & the water down there is not warm!

After our hike we hopped on our bikes, this is about 4.5 hours in - we biked from Te Anau to Manapouri along a really nice trail. It was up & down all the way along, about 25km. It is at this stage that the 6hour teams finish and those of us in the 9hr carry on to our kayak/hike stage. We kayaked out into the lake, portaged our kayaks across a bit of land, got back in our kayaks then paddled around a bit further where we had another 2 options to pick from, (1) either paddle further to Hope Arm Hut and hike back on a formed trail all the way back which was a longer hike but easy going or, (2) bush bash your way through Fiordland bush just using a compass which was shorter distance but tested your navigation. We had initially planned to paddle to hope arm hut (the longer option) but despite all our kayak training the boat we were in was not playing ball, it was very hard work and given it was a beautiful day (it was a bluebird perfectly sunny day) we decided to go bush instead!

This hike was certainly a challenge being the navigator and being in thick bush where you have absolutely no visual aids/handles to work out where you are and it’s your job to get the team through there without getting lost! It wasn’t hard going but it was slow, there were times where the undergrowth ferns were over our heads but you could move through everything ok. We managed to land almost exactly where we wanted to come out, I have never been more relieved to see a river followed by a track & then a bridge! We Got Out ! Then we followed a track back to where the Waiau river continues its journey out of lake Manapouri and we had a very short paddle across the river followed by a 1-2km run to the finish line.