The Kaweka Challenge (2024)

Today was a tough day.

From the very beginning, I was already out of steam, motivation in the negatives.

But at least for our second time, we were greeted with bluebird weather all the way through.

Starting off in a car park full of New Year's hangeronners, we gradually made our way up the first incline, taking around one and a half hours to reach 1000m.

Now, this is when the birthday boy suggested we go up the guts through the clearly unmarked trailhead, which ended up with us battling through ridiculously thick growth just to crest the top of the first hill and realise that there was a clear trail on the other side.

Quite ominous that this happened at the very beginning on a seemingly "casual" day out.

We continued the descent off the hill and up the other side until being greeted by none other than the central North Island classic landmarks of Mount Ruapehu and Ngauruhoe.

Two other lasses were on the trail, heading out for another four-hour walk. Which came as a surprise as we’ rarely chose to leave overnight, preferring a darty than a camp hoon.

Sometimes I question our choices, especially the fact that this was the second time we had underprepared, and overchallenged the Kawekas. It was just one of those days.

The Kawekas involve an incredible amount of up-and-down, false peaks, and all sorts of challenges. But as fate would have it, we reached the summits, had our lunch, and continued onwards towards the twin lakes.

Around this high-water mark, both our legs started to give out, and by golly, it was not a sensible downhill, with jagged outcroppings and different forestry conditions.

The final “shortcut” past the lakes, ended up adding a considerable distance and just when we thought things couldn’t get any better…

I lost my cellphone. It had popped out of my bag at the very beginning of the forestry road, not realising I had lost it until 3 kilometres on and halfway up the highway hill when I went to record our final descent.

Sitting down in defeat, I left Jim to finish the end of the road all the way to 30km, where he was remiss to find his watch only said 29. And he was not a happy chappy.

Missing out on his river wash, which, off-camera, he completed.

Fetching the car, we hooned up the forestry road scanning for any sign of my phone, having seen a few cars exit, the assumption was a ran over iPhone, but just as we were getting ready to turn around, miraculously, there she was, sitting right in the middle of the lane with only a slightly cracked screen protector.

The Mountain Dew never tasted so good.