Feeling fat and unfit didn’t deter 62-year-old Kevin Bardsley from tackling one of the world’s classic treks, writes Lorna Thornber.
Sixty-two-year-old Kevin Bardsley says he didn’t think too deeply about taking on Nepal’s 200-kilometre Annapurna Circuit Trek until the day he was set to leave New Zealand. ‘‘I did not get nervous,’’ the Waikato grandfather of three says, ‘‘because I did not know what to be nervous about.’’
When his youngest son asked whether he knew that dozens of people had died on the circuit in October 2014, Bardsley said he did.
‘‘But even that didn’t make me nervous ’cause we were doing it mid-winter. Logical. Not!’’
At 100 kilograms, Bardsley, who is 1.9 metres tall, says he was about 10kg overweight and ‘‘couldn’t and wouldn’t’’ shift the extra bulk.
Looking back, he admits he’d become lazy. While he had excelled at multiple sports at school and later ‘‘dabbled’’ in marathons and multi-day triathlons, he’d become much less active since his three children, now in their 30s, were born.
He’d done three three-day tramps – Lake Waikaremoana, Queen Charlotte, and the Northern Circuit – and numerous one-dayers, but had become a bit blase about the New Zealand bush, saying ‘‘it’s all the same’’.
Each birthday, he likes to take time out for himself and, last year, he got it into his head to climb the Waikato’s highest peak, 959-metre Mt Pirongia.
‘‘Near the summit, I met a kindred spirit, George, and we struck up an [instant friendship] on the final climb.’’
Heading back down together, they had chatted about everything from tramps around New Zealand to their hopes and dreams.
Traversing Mt Karioi together a fortnight later, George told Bardsley that the adventure group he was a part of, Got to Get Out, planned to walk the Annapurna Circuit, one of Nepal’s classic longdistance treks, three months later.
When George asked whether he’d be keen to join them, it took him just half a second to answer ‘‘hell, yes’’.
Bardsley, who designs operating theatres, specialist procedure rooms, and major infrastructure for the Waikato District Health Board, says that until that moment he thought his days of overseas travel were behind him.
The following day, he put his money where is mouth was and signed up for the trip, having no idea he would be around twice the age of most other group members.
With the trip just two-and-a-half months away, Bardsley embarked on an emergency training regime, climbing to the summit of the 952m
Mt Te Aroha, the highest peak in the Kaimai-Mamaku range, three times; walking for up to five hours at a stretch along the Karamu Walkway; and climbing the Hakarimata Summit’s 1349 steps, as a practice with walking poles.