Adventure Racers Win City Safari

Safari winners Al Cross (left) and Nigel Corry (right) share a joke with course planner Michael Wood at the finish in downtown Lower Hutt.

Adventure racers, an Ultimate Frisbee champion, Mountain-bikers and Off-road runners took the top placings in the 6-hour City Safari in and around Lower Hutt today. Though it was basically long-distance orienteering with the unique addition of public transport, they beat off a field composed largely of orienteers!

The winners were regular competition partners Al Cross and Nigel Corry, with Cross the current winner of the Hutt Valley's Crazyman multisport event. They scored 770 out of 1700 points, concentrating on the Kelson-Dry Creek area and the hills surrounding Stokes Valley. Fraser Clarke (former Ultimate Frisbee champion) and Chris Strange (Mountain-biker turned off-road runner) were 120 points behind on a circuit that included Kelson-Dry Creek and the eastern hills from Naenae to Te Whiti Park.

Just 10 points back and almost diametrically opposed, Mixed winners Rob Harrow and Jo Forbes began with the western hills including Korokoro Dam, then to Petone Wharf and a series of low-down checkpoints on the eastern side of Lower Hutt. Their second climb captured the popular control at the reservoir on the Rata St Loop Walk, on the way over the ridges to Stokes Valley. The pair, who were in the sixth-placed team in the 2002 Southern Traverse, used buses six times in their course.

Behind them came teams including Sue Lyttle, instigator of the Holdsworth-Jumbo Trail Race, and Graeme Silcock, leading light of the Hutt Valley Mountain-bike club. But the first regular orienteering team was Sarah Underwood and William Power from Wellington, in sixth place on 570 points. The honour might have gone to Peter and daughter Emma Watson from Waipukurau, who were heading for a score of 670, but they didn't reckon on the bus down from Kelson having a scheduled driver change and associated bookwork at Waterloo Interchange; the 13 minutes lateness penalty dropped them to 8th place.

Son James Watson and friend Aidan Ellmers had a different misfortune: they lost their question-and-answer sheet (used instead of conventional flags and clippers) on the western hills! By asking other teams they came across they were able to determine what some of the checkpoint questions were, and salvaged 380 points to finish 18th and top college team. But Tony Gazley, 29th in the world rogaine (24-hour orienteering) championship in Arizona in May, lost 30 minutes at Manor Park when he and partner Chris Tait missed the train by 15 seconds. With Dry Creek already covered, they had to cross the river for further checkpoints, and the only alternative to waiting for the next train was a 5km run via the Silverstream bridge!

Winning women Royce Mills and Ngaire Davies, orienteers from Palmerston North, were one of only two teams to reach Belmont Trig, highest point on the course. They also visited checkpoints in the western hills, Petone and Alicetown. Unlike other teams, they made no use of the buses at all. But many teams said how impressed they were with the transport network, and reported great interest from other passengers including the bus and train staff! In particular Cross was excited by the combination of Lower Hutt's bush and hill environs with the innovative bus/train/map-sport, and could see great possibilities elsewhere in the region.

Lower Hutt family Debbie, Claire and Martin Angliss narrowly won the 3-hour section, when a 3-minute lateness left them only 10 points ahead of father-and-son Tony and Jason van Dyk. Ashley Colebrooke and Oliver Tuohy from Hutt Valley HS were the top students and Lucy Gijsbers, Amy Lewis and Mary Meo outscored two other womens teams.

Results including a control visit summary have been loaded.

Winners' Routes are being loaded.

A snippet of the detailed map. Control #91 (90 points) on the reservoir on the Rata St Loop Walk was the most popular, with 19 teams visiting. Control 34 at Taita Cemetery and Trig Point 51 high on the ridge between Naenae and Stokes Valley both had 9 visits. The small red circles are bus stops.