Mike Sheridan, a HVOC member, recently took part in the Canterbury Heights of Winter Rogaine with his wife Fiona Clendon in the Open Mixed category. They travelled to the event with another HVOC member Dave King who had partnered up with Greg Thurlow in the Open Men's category.

Luckily the two other Wellington teams travelling to the event decided to not take up Mike's offer of combining transport, and made their own way to the event. The hapless HVOC contingent were struck by engine problems on the ferry cancelling their 2pm Friday sailing. The 5.30pm sailing was fully booked -Tranzrail finally coming to the rescue by putting on an extra sailing at 10pm. Instead of the anticipated relaxed trip - it turned into a drawn out affair - Finally getting to bed at the bach they booked at Leithfield Beach at 4am. Two and a half valuable hours sleep were squeezed in before heading up to the event centre and begin some planning at 7.45am.

A combination of the terrain and the course setting made it look like a lot of up and down into the far corners of the map would score well - Very similar to North Island conditions. The weather on the day had also dawned fine and crisp…lots of snow on the Alps in the distance.

94 other teams lined up on the start line - a very impressive field for a 12-hour event - We need to encourage some of these teams into the North!

The terrain varied between 200m and 800m…..with a few scattered patches of snow still hanging about from the previous weekend's "weather bomb". Also lots of farm tracks - about half of them marked on the map. However Mike and Fiona were quick to discover one big difference from the North Island - Matagori! Mike wore shorts and quickly regretted leaving his puttees behind. Fiona, in orienteering gaiters faired better.

The control setting was pretty good with many options available. Fiona and Mike scored steadily throughout the day, although Mike suffering from a cold found the wind on the tops very chilling. This was Fiona's longest event - her fitness level holding out very well until the early evening. Visiting 27 controls, climbing 2100m over 50km they scored 1480 points. They adopted a strategy of seeking out all the high pointers……Teams similarly placed to them visited 30-32 controls. Alas a slow finish meant they scored no points in the last two hours on the way back home. Timing was perfect however finishing with 1 second to spare at 8.59.59. Mike and Fiona finished 6th Open Mixed and 12th overall.

Dave and Greg did not fare quite so well with their timing, finishing 25 minutes late, but still ended up with 1515 points for 4th mens and 9th overall.

Interestingly there were a far larger number of teams late in than would be "normal." 25 teams in total were late and 6 of these were so late they were disqualified.

The overall winners on the day were Keith and Andrea Murray scoring a very impressive 1850 points.

In spite of the travel difficulties the HVOC contingent were happy with their performance. Thanks to the team in Canterbury for putting together a great event.

This article was written by Mike Sheridan of HVOC and was installed 4 July 2002