Two Great Walks in 24 hours

Let’s start at the end – 21 hours start to finish (8pm Friday - 5pm Saturday)…huge effort through the night when ordinarily we would have been tucked up in bed or on the side-lines of the weekend sport. Under the gallery tab you will even find a few photos.

Big THANK YOU to everyone who has supported our challenge and in turn supported the Himalayan Trust and Nepal!

Back to our 21 hours….With a mix of people returning for other adventures and some new members on the team it was fair to say that there was both a mix of giddy excitement and nerves at the airport.

Upon arriving in Queenstown the Jucy van was jammed with bodies and bags and then the compulsory Fergburger, before driving alongside the lake to get to our base at The Kinloch Lodge. Along the way we had beautiful views of the mountains we were about to disappear into, primarily the start of the Caples walk.

Pulling in at Kinloch was amazing and the first major test was to not cancel the walk and just kick it right there for the weekend…which we thankfully just passed …..

At 8pm with bags packed, bodies strapped and ‘quiet moments’ had we set off up the Caples valley. We couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful night – amazing sunset that turned on the colour, a moon that set just after midnight to then give us a spectacular star show and plenty of superb banter to keep the spirits up when the bodies were trying to tell us to go to bed.

We hit the end of the Caples and the start of the Routeburn at 5.30am, which gave us to chance to change our clothes, fill up water bottles and for a few of the team grab 10 minutes kip.

By that stage we were in Fiordland with the fog giving us an eerie start to the day. As it pealed back we were greeted by stunning waterfalls, beautiful azul lakes, and amazing vistas. Albeit we also had the steep grunt up and over the Harris saddle to tackle before we knew that it was essentially all downhill from there (well 4 hours of it).

The Routeburn is a special place and while the bodies were starting to tire the natural beauty and the others on the trail helped take your mind off of the fact that we were getting close but still not home.

At 5pm we hit the end of the trail and it’s fair to say that if we could have jumped then we would have, but there was plenty of joy nonetheless and handshakes aplenty with everyone knowing that we had got the job done.

Then it was back to the Kinloch Lodge for an awesome feed, with three hours of guitar playing and singing to celebrate what was a truly amazing and special memory for us all.

Thanks again to everyone for supporting us – the Trust is over the moon!