What the bloody hell are we doing! – Jon’s twin
turbos weren’t helping us as we crawled tortuously through Henderson in
the Audi on our way to our first training gig at Karekare – I was
starting to feel ill.
Once we glimpsed Karekare down below us
however it all felt pretty good. We arrived at Alan and Julia’s bush
haven at 4‘ish ready to go. Imagine a very comfortable hideaway family
home surrounded by Kauri trees, a stream running
past, gigantic tree ferns all around and bugger all neighbours –
idyllic to the max! – and 5 minutes from the beach.
The team that day for our first adventure
training was Alan Moore, me(PC), Dave Mason and Jon Wardrop – Julia
being on parent duty.
Alan provided us all with tiddly little maps in
water proof plastic covers – that should have been a warning. I
thought Julia was joking when she asked us if we had waterproof bags
and made comments about “swimming”.
The plan was to try and track down as many of the
checkpoints marked on the map as we could and to be home at Alan and
Julia’s place before dark. The checkpoints were from a local rogaine
Alan had organised the year before.
Off we set, straight across the road and into the
bush, up a steep hill and over on the ridge looking out the Karekare
beach. We each had turns navigating the team to the next location –
although when Alan said ”I ‘m following Paul”
on the first one that was a definite clue. The first few checkpoints
were along the beach heading around towards Whatipu and we were all
feeling pretty damn good. Alan was giving us the local history as well
as distilling and dispensing his years of rogaining
experience in map reading and the pitfalls thereof. Keep your map
oriented to the direction you are travelling and keep your thumb on your
current location and keep checking where you “think you are” is where
you “actually are”.
After about an hour we came to the Pararaha
Stream (try saying that 3 times in a row quickly – or once if you’re
DaveM!) and the start of what we now know is the “aquatic” section. We
had a brief stop for refreshments and said good
bye to the sand dunes. We had done pretty well so far and had ticked
off the various checkpoints without too much difficulty or back tracking
– but not without some effort.
It is worth noting that in rogaining you not only
have to find the checkpoint, you often have to do something mentally
challenging when you get there – not just blob out and have a rest. No
we didn’t have to play wizard chess or anything
dangerous like that but we did have to count the 25th
letter of the doc sign at the Pararaha stream checkpoint, ignoring
numbers – it was ‘n’. At another checkpoint we had to count the number
of times the letter ‘a’ occurred in the inscription
on a bench looking out over the sea. Alan reckons that last year one
team decided to be smarter and they each counted – unfortunately they
all got different answers. We managed that task well – You have to
remember to include capitals Dave.
The Pararaha valley started pretty flat and Jon
was navigating – the checkpoint was marked in the middle of the stream
about a kilometre up. By the time we got there we were well into a steep
sided gorge that was looking a lot steeper
upstream.
We hadn’t got our feet wet at that point. The
next checkpoint was further upstream and we all noted the waterfall
marked on the map. We bounded on up , sometimes on the rocks and
sometimes on the river bank. I spotted the waterfall
ahead and called out “There’s the waterfall”. Alan just gave us one of
his little smiles! In fact it was the first of a series of waterfalls
which became successively steeper, gnarlier and more amazing. Boulders
the size of trucks and deep pools. We hauled
ourselves up each one. The first couple were dry climbs. Finally
however we had no choice but to swim - a number of times. Somehow it
didn’t seem too cold and we pressed on in good spirits marvelling at the
scenery – paradise I reckon. One notable waterfall
had two gigantic logs wedged tightly in the middle of the channel that
we had to clamber over. Googled pararaha on the weekend and found a
number of photos of the various waterfalls going back many years. The
two trees in the 1931 photo surely are the same
ones we had climbed over that day.
We all felt pretty pleased with ourselves when we
go through the waterfall canyon unscathed and it was good to know that
we were all capable of doing whatever we would need to do in a race.
Since Julia had already done the Pararaha stream
on more than one occasion we had actually joined their club that day
you might say. Apparently athletes use the Pararaha stream run as
training for the Deception river run in the Coast to Coast – not hard to
see why.
From then on we still had few river obstacles
(think more swimming and more rock climbing) as we made our way back up
onto Lone Kauri road temporarily before plunging back into the bush to
find a few more checkpoints on our way back
up, over and down to Karekare beach. Dave Mason was the supreme
down-hill runner - Jon reckons he hasn’t had enough knee injuries to
be cautious yet.
At the beach and because we had a bit of light
left and because Alan hates running on the road and because he knew it
was going to be fun and would just about finish us off, we quickly
plunged off the road that winds up the hill to his
place and dropped down to the stream that adjoins it. The next 45
minutes was truly amazing – smaller and tighter than the Pararaha the
stream climbed very steeply and we found ourselves back into swimming
through the pools and then climbing up the waterfalls
– a bit of our edge had been rubbed off by this stage but we soldiered
on. No one actually said “are we there yet” – but we were thinking
it.
Alan, Jon and I took of our packs at one point
and jumped off the 3 metre cliff into one of the pools – the local
swimming hole. That was exhilarating and Alan reckoned he had always
wanted to do it. I made sure he went in first and
Jon and I jumped in on exactly the same spot to be on the safe side.
The stream levelled out and we splashed our way
up, including a notable traverse of 10 metre long culvert and I mean
through it not over it. A couple of more bends and suddenly we were at
Alan’s back door – that was after we meet Neil
the eel, as named by young Ryan Moore ; Neil being the resident
native eel that hangs out in the stream below the house. 3.5 hours all
up.
The towels Alan had encouraged us to bring along
were put to good use while Julia cranked up the barbie. We had a great
feast – thanks Julia – the salads were superb and Alan managed to rescue
the steak and chicken before I burnt the
lot.
What a day and what a great way to get started on
our adventure training. A-MA-ZING. Next week – Riverhead forest for a
spot of Mountain biking adventure.
PC
