Battling rotting feet during GODzone
Trench foot, hallucinations, sleep deprivation and broken limbs - it was all part of completing the annual GODZone expedition event held in Fiordland.
Four teams with Taranaki competitors featured in the gruelling race, which started and finished at Te Anau in early March.
Best of the finishers among the quartet were the Greenhorns who finished first in the colts category, and 10th overall from 80 teams entered, in the Pure GODZone pool.
Only 25 teams from the 80 that started at Te Anau town centre completed the distance.
Greenhorns team member Tom Spencer, of New Plymouth, said he and team mates Levi Hibbert, Glen StricotTarboton, and Rachel Baker, ‘‘really stoked’ with their placing.
‘‘Our first goal was to complete the course but to win our category was great,’’ she said.
‘‘It was a big challenge this year with the extra length involved and it made it more challenging,’’ Spencer said.
The team took seven days to cover 540 kilometres trekking, abseiling, kayaking, rafting, caving and mountain biking. Sometimes they were surviving on as little as 3-4 hours sleep a day, Spencer said.
‘‘It was incredibly hard, the hardest thing I have ever done in my life,’’ he said.
During trekking stages the team made as little as 1km progress an hour as they navigated through dense bush.
A second Taranaki team - Naki Bits suffered misfortune when team member, were Jordyn Copplestone, fell and broke her elbow in remote Fiordland forcing a helicopter rescue.
The team of Copplestone, Shaun Palmer, Grant Hildred and Kevin Hosking, lost 12 hours as they waited for the helicopter to arrive and winch Copplestone to safety from an isolated ridge top.
The remaining team members continued the race on a modified short course.
The majority of competitors suffered from trench foot from the wet conditions, Palmer said.
‘‘They just started the rot basically and the skin peeled off, it was pretty painful.’’
Taranaki competitors Will Jones (UC Engineering), and Team Macpac (Nev Wells, Matt Lash, Paul Rust and Leah Barnfield) also featured in the event.