Hard yakka for little Anna
Most people would stop after
1349 steps.
Not a group of Waikato men, who climbed the Ha¯ karimata summit 110 times in 24 hours.
Their attack on the 335-metre climb – on the outskirts of Nga¯ ruawa¯ hia – started on Saturday afternoon.
By the end, they’d covered enough vertical metres to climb Aoraki Mt Cook almost 10 times.
On the first lap, the mates from the Yak Club carried the subject of their fundraiser,
12-year-old Cambridge girl Anna Prescott.
Anna was born with a brain condition called polymicrogyria and can’t walk or talk. She has outgrown the running wheelchair her dad takes her out in, and the Yak Club 24-Hour Haks Challenge was about getting her a new one – worth about $13,000.
The Yak Club guys are not athletes, organiser Joey Uden said, but set themselves a challenge each year.
This year, Anna’s new chair was their cause. Uden’s son, Lachlan, has cerebral palsy and went to the same conductive education centre as Anna.
‘‘[The Yaks] put in a hell of a lot of effort to get the reward for a family that really deserves it,’’ Uden said.
‘‘A lot of people know the [Hakarimata steps] and they know what it’s like to go up there once.’’
About 40 people showed up at 2pm on Saturday, when Anna was carried to the summit, giggling and smiling.
The Yaks kept going up and down for 24 hours – Uden did 12 summits.
The group tally was 110, or
186 including supporter summits. Passersby donated more than $1000 cash, and local businesses helped with supplies.
Anna’s family had raised
$5000 for a custom-made Hoyts running chair before the fundraiser, but that turned into
$13,000 before her dad got home from it.
‘‘It’s just awesome, incredibly humbling, that people would actually help us out and do that,’’ Brian Prescott said.
He takes Anna out in her chair to motivate him while he trains for ultramarathons.
He did 14 summits during the fundraiser and said the first one, with Anna, went quite fast.
‘‘I’ve never seen her smile so much in my life.’’