rogaining 12:00:00 [3]
shoes: Asics Gel 2140
Where to start? We were a pretty unenthused carload driving up from ChCh yesterday (Steve, Kay, Zara and myself) and when Z & I picked up the map it became a choice between the flatter farmland to the west of Cheviot (LOTS of fences) and the steeper coastal hills in the east. The course notes implied that the NE section of the map was slower going, so of course that's where we went. The plan was to do this first in daylight then head south along the coast with lots of farmland options for the morning but it didn't quite pan out that way. Within a couple of hours I had dropped one of my water bottles from a side pocket and Z had broken her compass. We had also been up and down a lot of contours which weren't obvious on the map (you can hide a lot of detail in 20m, and there were some pretty steep creeks and gullies).
Still, in the daylight hours we were pretty steady and saw some amazing views of the Waiau river mouth. At about 7pm we finally put on our raincoats, it having been raining all afternoon but only now getting cold on the coast. Also, the sea fog was starting to blow in, and we spent 90 min on a 40 point control, by which time it was dark. We then proceeded down into and up out of 70 from the southeast, which direction wasn't recommended in the course notes because of the scrub being truly horrible, the sort which involved crawling on hands & knees under prickle bushes. Also, it was really slippery and the rain was getting heavier.
I was starting to worry about making it as far down the coast as we had planned and Z was starting to worry about hypothermia because she was wearing my old Goretex which turned out to be 100% non-waterproof, more like a sponge, and on the ridgelines with rain blowing sideways into our faces through the fog, it was seriously cold. We were overshooting controls because of missing fences in the fog and I was reading the map pretty poorly without my glasses.