How to suck at mountain-climbing
like to think, fashionable) footwear and went downstairs to meet up with my walking companions. They were not impressed.
Like the concerned citizen I am, I eventually conceded because I didn’t want my work boots being lined with mud, and borrowed a pair of trainers off my housemate. It was magical.
Even though The Ned’s track was covered in mud and water, the shoes kept me clean, blisterfree and upright. But that wouldn’t have been the case had I stuck to my guns. What a close brush with death. of the word, I sure felt compelled to keep up with my mates.
It was the most pathetic thing you’ve ever seen in your life. While they were chatting away with other trampers and at a tempered pace, I looked like a grotesque demon from one of Dante’s Inferno painings. My nose was running, my hair was a nest and I had a permanent pained expression on my face.
Internally, things felt much worse. Muscles were screaming and organs were struggling. But I kept up with my friends. And, naturally, that was all that mattered. weather, I was down to my thermal shirt in 30 minutes.
I was hot, hot, hot. I was tramping The Ned while dreaming of water. Thankfully, my wonderful walking companions offered me a sip or two of their water. I was also able to drink some more H2O at the saddle, right before clambering up to the peak. The top of The Ned is the perfect place for a lunch stop. It has great views, a well-deserved rest site (in the form of some wellplaced rocks) and, on the occasion I was up there, some good company. Plenty of people thought so too.
And yet, I was missing the key ingredient. Or, rather, any ingredients at all. Food hadn’t even been on my radar that morning, as it often never is after I’ve eaten. It’s like the opposite of the hungry shopper effect, which is where you buy way too much food at the supermarket when you go shopping on an empty stomach.
So, like a fool, I didn’t think to pack food as I didn’t think I’d be hungry. Me. The must-havethree-slices-of-toast-for-brekkie gal. Luckily, parent volunteers from Fairhall School were handing out chocolate fish to trampers.
As it turns out, nothing gets you down a mountain faster than the need to go to the loo coupled with a lack of knee-high shrubbery. In hindsight, it was a bad idea not to dash to the toilet before heading out to tramp The Ned.
The 10km round trip to the summit – a defining feature of Marlborough’s skyline – can take walkers between three to five hours. In other words, that’s three to five hours spent thinking up pictures of deserts, droughts and dust.
Spotting the Portaloo was like spotting a greasy burger after a long night out. I dashed in and did my business. After I was done, I reached over to what I thought was an oddly placed bar of soap in a tiny sink. It wasn’t a tiny sink, it was a urinal, and the soap was a urinal cake.
Be assured I used a bucket of hand sanitiser upon realising.