2024 Get2Go Otago/Southland Regionals

By Jennie Martin - Columba College | Posted: Wednesday September 18, 2024

This one day event was an entry level adventure racing challenge for Year 9/10's, organised by Hillary Outdoors in 11 regions across NZ.

There were only enough entry slots for 24 schools to enter 8 person teams, in a range of single or mixed gender categories. For our Otago event, it combined orienteering, stand-up paddling, mountain biking and a bit of problem solving. 

Otago Boys’ and Columba College had a mixed Year 10 team of Skye Houghton, Ava Wilson, Lydia Hortop-Blair, Amber Nichol, Robert Lloyd, Henry Hodgson, Sam Hobbs and Leo Garden. 

We started with mountain biking based at the Signal Hill MTB carpark.  Competitors biked a short lap, then ran 50m to hand over to their next team mate, with each team trying to complete as many laps as possible within 50 minutes.  

We then drove to Macandrew Bay where they had to SUP around a buoy in the Bay, return to shore, hand over the SUP to the next team member, run across the beach to a board with an 8 x 8 grid of symbols/letters/numbers, memorise as many as possible, run back to their team, and write them down on a team answer sheet. Teams had to complete as many SUP laps and try and complete the 64 box answer sheet within 50 minutes.

Lastly, we drove across town to Forrester Park / Bethunes Gully where teams had to strategically split their teams to optimise collecting checkpoints, navigating and moving across the physical terrain in order to maximise points, within an hour’s timeframe.

Teams needed a wide range of skill sets and aptitudes.  Everyone had an awesome can-do attitude that handled the unexpected nature of the tasks they had to complete. All we knew in advance of the day was that there was MTB, orienteering and water based challenges.

Our team came 3rd place, with a particularly outstanding result for the orienteering phase.  Results are attached below.

Year 10’s can move on next year to the Senior  Year 11-13 level event – the Hillary Challenge. A 6 hour adventure race combining trekking, mountain bike, orienteering and problem solving.  The South Island event takes place in May, usually in South Canterbury.  OBHS has taken part in this competition before, teaming up with St Hildas. 

Thanks to Mr Mouat from Otago Boys’ for driving the team.

An even bigger thank you to the Boarding House staff and parents who had to deal with washing a lot of muddy wet gear, bikes, wetsuits, shoes etc later that night.

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