7/2/2020
Party: Ian Gilmour, Tom Hadley
The full traverse of the Tararua Range, also known as the S-K, is a gruelling test-piece of New Zealand mountain running. The history-rich challenge has become established as a challenge by successions of athletes clawing their way across the Tararuas in a bid to knock precious minutes off the hotly contested FKT (fastest known time). The course is somewhere around 80km long and contains a total 6800m vert. There is a fantastic site all about the challenge found here:
https://tararuafkt.wordpress.com/routes/s-k/.
I’d had the SK on my mind for most of 2019, so when I arrived back in Taranaki, my home for the uni holidays, I knew it had to be ticked off before I headed back down to Dunedin. The first struggle turned out to be finding another person who was keen for around 24 hours of punishment in the Tararuas. I was stoked to find that Ian, a friendly guy who I’d met briefly at a race, was keen. In no time at all, we were at Putara getting excited for what we knew would be an epic day. After a fresh 4am start and some great climbing through the peaceful bush section to Herepai we were stuck into the northern Tararuas, immediately getting thrashed by strong winds and rain. The hope that things might warm up when the sun came out was an overly optimistic assumption that led to us both getting pretty cold. Nontheless, the two of us pushed through the stunning ridge travel, minimising any stoppage in order to keep warm. The type 2 fun soon changed to type 1 as the sun came out. Ian and I were yarning, moving at a reasonable clip, and revelling in the stunning undulations of the Tararua ridge lines.
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| Ian surveying a days work (Tom Hadley) |
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| Tom coming over Herepai (Ian Gilmour) |
The Aokaparangi was a big highlight for me, a big hill, testing and rough (sort of like the SK itself). We continued to move consistently with minimal stoppage. I was consistently scoffing down slices of homemade pizza, roasted Kumara and dingle biscuits (Graham Dingle’s original adventure fuel recipe). This kept me feeling really good, however, in similar missions in the future I’d consider lightening my food load to maximise lightness over satiety. As the sun set, our stoke meters were both running high. The scrambly climbs of the Tararua peaks reminded me of climbing in Fiordland more than running in the Tararuas. Epic.
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| Ian crushing it up one of the many tussock covered climbs (Tom Hadley) |
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| Torches going on (Tom Hadley) |
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| Dawn light coming through the trees (Ian Gilmour) |
We had considered splitting up throughout the day as we noticed ourselves slowly dipping behind 24 hour splits. However, both of us were having such an epic adventure together, it would only seem right to finish it that way. Throughout the day, I’d been looking at the long Marchant ridge, quietly dreading the grind it would become. We occupied ourselves through the night with Ian’s jokes and my suffer games. For example: “Hey Ian, let's see how many countries we can name for each letter of the alphabet." Woah where did the time go! As we approached dawn, we were 25 hours deep into this mission, the fatigue and sleep deprivation compounded and we were both seeing a lot of things that weren’t there. Despite the fact that we were deep in the bush at 5am, I kept seeing man made objects: rolled up tents, DOC signs, huts, trampers and bits of clothing everywhere I looked. Despite having done several 24 hour missions before, the illusions were a novel experience, so that was interesting. The second sunrise of the “day” gave us the boost we needed to crush out the final hour to the car-park of glory. Arriving there we were stoked to find Chris and his partner to see the conclusion to a pretty epic day out in the hills.
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| Tom and Ian at the Kaitoke carpark (Chris Martin) |
All in all, the SK was just the adventure I wanted to have, an epic line, committing, rough and full of good old fashioned suffering. Thanks to Chris for all the work you put into developing the route and managing the website. Cheers to Alistair and Matt for all of your beta on the route. Finally thanks to Ian for being a top notch partner for this epic adventure.
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