Every year the Canterbury Uni Tramping club (CUTC) puts on TWALK, a 24 hour orienteering race in the farms outside Christchurch. A whole bunch of us from the OUTC drove up so we could kick CUTC’S butt. My van had planned to camp beside the road but at the last minute Friday night I texted my friend Sam in Christchurch to ask if I could bring 10 random people over to sleep on his floor that night. To which he responded “sweet as”. I love kiwi hospitality 
After a good night’s sleep (much better than if we’d camped between the road and the train tracks) we met up with the 200 or so other TWALKers to be driven by bus out to an undisclosed point where the race would begin. It was a perfect day and the location of the event had gorgeous scenery. The bus dumped us off by the side of the road, we were given topo maps of the area with little circles drawn on them for where the clues were placed and everybody took off running.
Team 'Velociraptor Awareness' with our mascot Albi the Racist Raptor
Costumes are popular at TWALK, our team name was “Velociraptor Awareness” and we carried our mascot, Albi the racist raptor (google Albi + FOTC if you don’t get it), along on the first leg. The best costumes though were 3 people dressed as kegs. 17km, 13 of the 14 clues found, many matagari scratches (a plant I have developed a new hatred for) and 6 hours later my group reached the hash house, a shearing shed at the host farm where we could warm up and get fed before heading out on the next leg of the race. We ate as much as we could and then 4 of our 8 team members took off into the dark for the next leg of the race at about 7pm. The rest of us ate and attempted to sleep for a few hours before they came back at midnight having found several clues, but also having fully drained our super bright flashlights for navigating in the dark.
7am after the sun had just come up and we could see where we were again
Only one person in each group has to go for 24 hours, and ours napped for about 2 hours until we headed back out again at 3am. Navigating in the pitch black, with only a compass and a map, no idea where you are, trying to find clues hidden in the bushes was a new challenge to me. After failing miserably on the first clue and falling into the bog we decided to back track and tackle the 3rd leg from end to beginning because the end of it was along fence lines. This would at least give us an idea of where we were. Following a mantra of “follow the fence lines at all costs” we got only slightly lost and ended up on the wrong side of the field we wanted to be on. Fortunately at that point the sun came up, for which we were all very grateful. We found about half the clues on the 3rd leg and returned to the hash house, wrecked physically due to covering lots of kms in the dark and total lack of sleep. It was an awesome weekend though, something I would definitely do again!
“We’re a pretty odd group of people if our idea of fun is to pay 100 dollars to spend the weekend sleep deprived wandering around farms looking for little pieces of plastic with words written on them.”
- at approximately 1am in the hash house, exhausted and sleep deprived
