Live the track, breath the track, eat the track for breakfast. A sub-30 PK.

By Richard, 19 February 2009

What better way to spend Valentines day than with a couple of good mates thrashing yourself half to death along the Tararua tops.  That’s what Kieran, Ben and I thought anyway.

After 4hrs sleep at Putara (thanks to Guy for camping with us and taking that gear back to Wellington!) we were away.  Having done a previous PK with Ben Clendon in 2004 where we slept at both Herepai and Maungahuka, it was important to me that this one be a non-stop affair from carpark to carpark.  Being a buearucrat by trade I like terms like benchmarking so had prepared a table of the three best PKs I am aware of, so I was monitoring progress against my previous effort and the "guns".  Other than that my strategy was just to disengage the brain, 107 trips to this range over the last 10 years gives you nothing if not a comfortable familiarity in the travel.  Once on the tops a fairly fresh sou' easter was buffeting us, and dawn was a smudged affair with plenty of clag in the vicinity.  However, we knew that a high was moving over the lower north island at some point in the day, we also knew that once past Arete the Eastern Range would block the wind and make things more tolerable; still that knowledge doesn't really help the frustration at getting blasted by wind in the long, lank wet tussock and scrub on the Northern Range.  We were in balaclavas, gloves, tights and jackets and trotting along briskly without raising a sweat to give a sense of the temperature.

It was nice doing it in a team of three, and without the need for any discussion everyone took turns at getting out in front and setting/maintaining a good pace, while the other two would just try and hang on behind.  The tops dipped and dived, as they do, all day long with just the short sorties into the Goblin forest that make for good landmarks.  The main range is in exceptional condition these days, and we got to Maungahuka in 14hr31, where the weather was probably at its worst.  Had a longish stop here and changed my socks and put on some warmer dry clothes.  In planning our start time we had wanted to best utilise daylight and figured if we could get past the steep bits around the Tararua peaks before dark that would do us.  As it was we didn't need the torches until the lower part of the grunt up Bridge Peak.  Up in the clag and the potentially confusing gullies around Bridge Peak the high finally arrived, the clag disappeared and we were under a clear bright sky while a yellowy moon rose over the Wairarapa which was completely smothered under an inversion layer.  It was pretty special.  Also pretty exciting was being at Kime in a touch under 18hrs. We all knew that without needing to do anything different to what we had been doing a sub-24 or close to it was definitely on.  We had been comfortably exceeding my 2004 times and I knew that we had not pushed that hard across the Southern in 04 and we only needed to match that to achieve something quite special.  Only one person has gone sub-24, and that is the legendary Colin Rolfe.

Of course if it was that easy everyone would do it!  Up till now we had all been having our bad patches at different times, so there had always been someone pushing hard, but up on the moonlit southern our downtimes synchronised!  I was out of it, it was the least i could do to follow the torch lights of the others.  Heading over Atkinson a stag barked a challenge at us from the shadows but we couldn't move fast enough for his, or our liking and the last bit from Aston to Alpha dragged badly.  This blew the chance for a sub-24 but it was still well within our grasp to beat the Gary Goldsworthy second fastest PK.  I think my sleep walk across the tops had revived me a bit so I got out in front and tried to push the pace a bit, but Ben’s knee was playing up, Kieran seemed to have entered some personal nightmare world, and the Marchant was just starting to eat us alive.  I toyed with the idea of leaving the others and going for it, but out ahead on the burn I think I may have been sleepwalking again, i couldn't find the link between my brain and my movements and the discussions going on in my head didn't seem to involve me.  Stumbling down to Dobsons i realised I didn't have anything left anyway but the sky was light at Dobsons, and I'd had enough, I broke into a fast shuffle/waddle and stumbled into the carpark 26hr54m after starting.  The other two arrived 15min later.  We lay down on a piece of plastic on the hard cold gravel of the carpark and didn't wake up until our ride arrived (thanks Annabelle!).

I'm pretty happy with the time, a bit gutting to blow up so badly on the easiest ground but when you look at the top efforts the one thing in common is that the Marchant just seems to break everyone.  Makes our 6hr47 out from Kime on our 04 PK look quite good - but that’s what a nights sleep at Maungahuka will do.

Richard Davies - scribe

Kieran Paton

Ben Clark

4.14am Leave Putara

5.26am Arrive Herepai

5.32am Dep Herepai

6.43am East Peak

9.00am Dundas trig

9.53am Arete

11.27am Arrive Drac biv

11.47am dep Drac

1.34pm Nichols

3.22pm arrive Andersons Hut

3.38pm dep Andersons

6.45pm arrive Maungahuka

7.07 dep Maungahuka

10.09pm arrive Kime

10.23 dep Kime

1.11am arrive Alpha hut

1.23am dep Alpha

3.18am Block 16

7.08am Richard arrive Kaitoke

7.22am Kieran and Ben arrive Kaitoke.