GodZone adventure race takes athletes through Kaimanawas, Kawekas

GodZone adventure race winning team Avaya coming down off the top peak of stage seven across the Kaimanawa and Kaweka ranges. Photo / GodZone

Adventure racers taking on a 666km course named the "Rotorua Chapter" found more than half the course was actually in the Taupō district.

GodZone is the ultimate adventure racing event and when the secret course was revealed to the 70 teams on the eve of race day, entrants were gobsmacked to find the course included a 88km trek through the Kaimanawa and Kaweka ranges, a 54km packraft of the Mohaka River, and kayaking the length of Lake Taupō.

Taking place from March 4 to 13, the multisport event had teams on mountain bike, packraft, trek, kayak and rogaine. They took on the backcountry of Te Urewera, Whirinaki, Kaweka and Kaimanawa Forest Parks, the Tongariro River and Lake Taupō in a clockwise loop back to Rotorua.

Marking out the navigation points on the map and going to every single post in the months prior was GodZone creator Warren Bates. Fellow adventurer and keen hunter Neil Jones from Whakatāne was contracted to help design the course. Normally the preserve of deer hunters, at one point the clearing at Clements Mill Rd near Iwitahi was full of athletes, who used the spot as a transition point.

Having competed in more than 30 expedition races covering most continents, Warren said the underlying theme of GodZone was that none of the entrants know where the course is until the day before the race. However, Rotorua Chapter was 18 months in the planning with landowners and stakeholders.

GodZone 2021, Chapter 9 Rotorua, the course. Image / GodZone

To date, all GodZone events have been held in the South Island and Warren said doubters thought the North Island would not be remote enough or wild enough, and gaining permissions would be too hard as there were too many landowners.

"We said, culturally, this is something special. There is tussock, beech forests, podocarp forests, logging trails, lakes, and rivers. We thought it would be challenging, especially the navigation."

He said iwi involvement had been essential to planning.

"We could not have done this route without iwi working with us. They love what we do because it is a way of sharing this amazing countryside that we live in," said Warren.

The coronavirus had been bad and good for the GodZone, he said. Bad because 30 international teams had to stay home.

"But good because in the adventure racing world this is the only thing going on right now. The eyeballs of the world were on us, hundreds of thousands of people watched the Rotorua Chapter online."

Entrants planning to return to the North Island was also a spin-off from Rotorua Chapter, with Warren saying a competitor from Queenstown had told him he intended to come back with his family to do some exploring. And then there are the wannabe retired adventurers.

"We were getting all these messages from people saying 'we are in our sixties and we had kind of given up 'cos we are too old. But b***er it, I am going to get out there and do it."

GodZone team isport at the Kinloch transition. Dougal Allan, Richie McCaw, Simone Maier (head down) and Theo Wordsworth. Photo / Rachel Hume

Two things are factors when choosing a course said Warren. Firstly, they want competitors to tick off a region's iconic adventures.

"So they can say, 'I climbed that, I paddled that'.

"And then we want to give them an amazing experience so they can say 'wow I never would have done that!' No one expected to paddle the Mohaka River or traverse the Kaweka and Kaimanawa ranges."

The weather played its part and Warren says tremendous views were shared as competitors traversed a section of the Kaweka Ranges and the Kaimanawa Ranges.

"What would take a tramping club five days to complete, our athletes were knocking it off in 24 hours."

Taking place over 10 days, Warren said Rotorua Chapter had been "super successful", and GodZone would return to the North Island. As for hints about the next chapter, Warren said he would love to do a mountains-to-sea event, "perhaps heading to the northeast".