TWALK 2009

TWALK has become more than just an event for us, it has become the event. An absurd reunion of old friends and rivals doing battle, talking shit and laughing our way through 24 hours of suffering in the great outdoors. One of my team mates this year Joe Jagusch summed it up for me when he said "I never feel so free as when running through the high country!".

Joe and Caspar with the Arrowsmiths behind

TWALK is a 24hr Mountain Marathon held annually by the University of Canterbury Tramping Club. It has five loops of around 20km each between which you return to a woolshed which is the event centre and feast quickly on a variety of hot food, which is generally the likes of lasagne, meat stew and muffins. During the loops teams navigate cross country, up and down hills and through matagouri thickets. It is a true trampers event, roadies stay at home. Checkpoints which are located every kilometre or two are sections of ice cream container lid with a word to record. Asides from the map you also have clues to describe the checkpoint, such as "Matt and Gary ate dinner" which experienced TWALKers would know automatically to be a cabbage tree surrounded by Matagouri:-) One rather facetious clue this year was "the fun stops here jump right in", with the control centred on a vast thicket of matagouri. Despite people crawling and bashing through the shitty scrub in the middle of the night no control was ever found!

So the first thing to decide with TWALK is what costumes to wear. There are generally two costume themes, the absurd and the geeky multisporter. The latter is generally frowned upon. A clear example can be seen here...

Nameless geeky multisporters ;-)

This year I was privileged to do TWALK with Joe Jagusch, Casper Harmer, Greg Thurlow and Matt Scott as Planet of the Apes. It required quite a bit of preparation, namely dealing with drunken shop assistants at op shops and delegating Casper to hire gorilla masks. Some went to more extreme lengths...below is a photo of Matt putting the final touches on his Charlton Heston space pack and Casper getting ready to go with barrier cream, battery fiddling and empty museli bar boxes.

Every year you meet at the University of Canterbury students union, pile onto buses and start to guess at the mysterious place where this years TWALK will be. Out of the carpark we headed south. Awesome it was south of the Waimak in the foothills. Then we went past the turn off to Darfield. Awesome! It must be down south of Mt Hutt somewhere! Sure enough we passed Rakaia and headed up Thomsons Track. Mt Somers passed on our right and we pulled to a halt in paddocks where the Stour emerges from the Ashburton Lakes Basin. This was very similar country to where some friends and I organised a mountain marathon last autumn but it was definitely an area open to more exploration!

Here is our team all ready to go....

Joe Jagusch as devolved human, Matt Scott as astronaut, Casper Harmer, Greg Thurlow and Jamie Stewart as Apes

And here is most of Pennys team...team EPO, getting ready for another Tour.

It was a great year for absurd costumes, which well and truly overshadowed the geeky multisporter efforts. Here is a couple of goodies, the dragon and the sneaky Tui kegs. The latter were trying to sneak away at the start but were having a few troubles staying unnoticed!

The first leg was a little embarassing really, we were all far too maxxed out on joy and ridiculousness to do any serious navigation and ended up wasting a whole lot of time. As a result team EPO kept passing us quietly with little smirks on their faces. At another point the whole field spent 15 minutes searching for a checkpoint in completely the wrong place which was humourous. Eventually Team Planet of the Apes, made a break, surging ahead of "Team little girls in skirts". Tim Farrant, Tom Wilson and Scott McDonald as we passed Lake Emily in the shadow of the Arrowsmiths and headed to the Woolshed at Castle Ridge station. Its accepted that winning the first leg is probably more important than winning overall and here are my magnificent four team members giving every sinew of their being to get there ahead...

I will continue with a further discussion of the rest of the even, and navigation finer points over at the O Squad blog, when I get motivated to talk about more geeky stuff!

Norwegian Woods

Writing now, late at night, from the luxurious home of Ross Wakelin an old friend from NZ now resident in Narvik, Norway. We swam into Norway a few days ago through a mountain tarn (I will for the time spare you the shots of my big white butt glistening in the Arctic Sun).

Matt, La, Penny and I had a fantastic tramp from Abisko in Sweden to Narvik over five days of amazing calm and clear weather. It was the height of Autumn and red and gold forests and fields surrounded us whereever we went, apart from when we ventured up into the land of granite slabs.

The first day was heightened by an encounter with some Sami people. Following a trail of reindeer fat up a rugged ATV track we encountered a man and his son at their secluded cabin...

"does this track continue up the hill"?

"No, you come the wrong way, this track goes to heaven!"

"Well, that sounds about right then"

After some brief and entertaining conversation they got rid of us and went back to whatever on earth they were up to with that reindeer fat, reassured hopefully that we were nearly as crazy as they were. We camped that night on top of a barren hill near a Sami encampment and reindeer corral, empty now for the coming winter. We glimpsed for the first time Storsteinfjellet (the big stone mountain)and the fluffy little flowers that floated on the marshes like cotton wool.

Day 2 we had some serious walking to do to wander through the Swedish tundra to the hills of Norway. We then had our border swim (photos again spared), climbed a snowslope then stalked our first herd of reindeer. We killed an hour or so doing this then had to descend through the heinous sub-alpine belt which consisted almost entirely of blueberries, or other types of berrys. We arrived at our campsite not wet and muddy but with stained fingers and faces from delightful engorgement.

Storsteinfjellet was now at our mercy, and we ascended up its grantite ridges and gentle snow slopes before being pole axed by its chossy summit ridge. The descent past the foot of its glacier was lovely however and we camped in a freaky barrow downs landscape that provided us with pleasant views and mossy beds.

Time had come to get cranking and Day 4 we just walked all day through a few little mountain passes alongside some silted glacial lakes and amongst some more bemused reindeer.

Then we had to get the hell out of there because the aioli in a tube was running out (although we still had plenty of tomato paste) and we wanted to finally see the sea, which was beautiful. Regrettably Norwegians dont pick up groups of four hitchhiking so the 15 or so km from the road end to Ross and Hildas house, despite been alongside a beautiful fiord was testing. We could however always look back and get some satisfaction from how far we had come.

Ross and Hilda have been awesome hosts, providing us great digs, food and conversation. This morning Hilda showed us around the Narvik musueum while this afternoon Ross took us to the top of a massive great big mountain above town. Ill try and write more on this soon. Sweet take care out there!