The 5-day Macpac Hillary Challenge Final is held each year at Hillary Outdoors Tongariro, and is only open to a total of 12 teams, each consisting of 8 students from Year 12 or 13. The teams are scored on their skill, speed and endurance during a 5-day series of outdoor adventure challenges.

Over the term 3 holidays, Year 12 students Emily Prout and Caitlin O'Brien joined forces with the Mt. Aspiring College MultiSport team to compete in the amazing Hillary Challenge National Final. This was a 5-day ultimate adventure race, with teams of eight from all over New Zealand competing. The event took place in and around the Tongariro National Park.

The first two days consisted of various team challenges. There were six of these across each day. Challenges included crampon and ice axe climbing, orienteering, duathlon, rafting, bike skills, mud runs, and complicated problem challenge tasks involving parts of the high ropes courses, seesaws and scout belays! The team finished an impressive 2nd over these two days. 

The next two days involved an overnight Rogaine in the Tongariro National Park. Shadowed by a Hillary Outdoors instructor for safety, the team covered approximately 40km of trying, off-track terrain over the two days, with some extremely hard Topographic map navigation. A component of this challenge which proved hard was having to find camp by 5pm on the first day (the penalty for not doing this on time was that 50% of points would be lost for the day). 'Camp' meant an area which was at least 400m from the great walk track (out of sight), and within 5 minutes of running water. Following a Topo map on such a large scale meant it was hard to place where these water sources would be. The team held out well over the two days, only being out of range of 5 of the checkpoints that they marked. 

The Final day of the race involved an approx. 6hr MultiSport race. This consisted of rafting, a 9km trail run, a 30km mountain bike, and an additional 6km run through the national park. In itself, this is a challenging day, but following the previous four days, this section of the race is about endurance and teams holding out together until the end, requiring an incredible amount of teamwork. Our team had a rocky start to this section, with a capsize at the beginning of the hour-long rafting causing some team members to come close to hypothermia. After a 30-minute raft to run transition our team ended up having to drop a member, starting the run with our team of seven in dead last. From there we began to pick teams off one by one, having a stunner of a bike, eventually finishing the day in 7th place from 12 teams! As points were added up, this put the team in 7th place over the week, which is an impressive effort in such a competitive race.

The week was a testing, character-building, and amazing experience, amongst some awesome scenery and people. It would be great to get some Columba teams qualified in the years to come so they too can share in this incredible experience!

Article written by Caitlin O'Brien