Unfortunately the weather in the Alpine region where we were training turned bad about the day I arrived, and continued that way until I left. I was able to get the two paddles in, but we weren’t able to do the full river and we had to miss the gorge rapid section both days as the wind was gusting 100 kilometres per hour through the gorge, and the river was very high due to rain. For those familiar with river flows it went from 70 cumecs (cubic metres per second) in the gorge to about 280 on the days we were paddling, between the Friday and the Saturday.
We did the river in two stages both days, the first 15 kilometres, and the last 20 kilometres, transporting the kayaks by car in between. Where we put in on the last section is close to the end of the 25 kilometre gorge section, and the kayaks were almost blowing away when we put them on the river bank. I recall at one stage I was doing around 3 minute kilometres on this section.
And for much the same reasons we had to cancel the run as it was raining / snowing at the top of the mountain run section and the river was impossible to cross in the lower sections. In fact on Friday two separate groups were evacuated out by helicopter, but mind you they shouldn’t have even attempted the run in the conditions that were present and were suffering advanced stages of hyperthermia when rescued.... Welcome to New Zealand!
It wasn’t a total loss as I learnt a lot. For someone who grew up in North Queensland where it never snows (30 degrees everyday), it was a real pointer that Alpine regions deserve a great deal of respect. Fortunately the people I was training with have safety and risk assessment at forefront of mind. I’m sure most of my North American friends will be familiar with weather vagrancies like this...
It was good to see sections of the bike ride I will be doing, the transition for the run, and the kayaking that we did was a lot of fun, even managed to stay dry in the rapid sections that we did.
And apologies if you tried to follow on Spot tracking, I forgot to take it!!
We also had two reasonable sized earth tremors while I was there. For those who aren''t familiar tragically around 181 people died in Christchurch in February last year due to a large quake.
And on the challenge rowing, still catching up, but from what I can see it has been a great effort by all! I’ll get a few days of rowing in, then the family is off for a week camping in the Australian Alps region (nothing like New Zealand!)
Cheers, BBB
m 
million team meter milestone...before I could even get the posting finished! And the Luna-Tics challenge team is closing in on lucky 13 million team meters...don't be fooled.....LOTS of good things can and will still happen in this challenge. Keep steady on the erg!
Didn't get to row yesterday, but planning to do a 10k tonight (right after dinner... oops).
