An attempted murder, a hypothermic friend and a gratuitous amount of carbs:

This Is Fastpacking.

“Can you take your bag off?”

“I can’t use my hands.”

My friend shivered uncontrollably, soaked through and covered in snowdrift.

We were still a 500m drop from the valley floor and I knew if she didn’t start running that she would be in trouble.

At 7am on a wet Saturday morning, five very excited runners crammed into the Adventure Prius and drove to Windy Point. One of these runners had no idea what she was in for – Jen was on a surprise birthday trip and wouldn’t find out the group route intel until 7pm that day.

Getting out of the car we were stoked to find that while it was a bit wet around, it wasn’t raining anymore!

We shoved on our fastpacks and delighted in the smallness of them.

“Tramping is dead to us”, we proclaimed,

“for we are now fast packers.”

Gone are the days of 20kg canvas packs – a new horizon has dawned of ultra-light sack-bags filled with sugar-based snacks and just enough clothes to get us through a wintery overnighter.

Jogging off up the Hope-Kiwi track, I had the vague feeling that Jen-the-Topo-Queen had already guessed most of our route. Our destination for the first day was Top Hope hut, some 25kms up the Hope River. The track starts with a windy, open route through farmland, manuka and bracken fields. After a few kms we entered a lovely rolling terrace covered in beech forest. The bellbirds were singing, the rain was still holding off and our group was frothing. Cue the first incident: an attempted murder.

The comrades regrouped and stopped for a quick snack as it had been a few hours of running now and I’m quite anal about getting food intake in. Liam turned to Alastair, a generous glint in his eye and offered him an entire row of his peanut chocolate block.

Stoked at the free carb-replenishment opportunity, Al took a massive bite into it. He paused. Al looked at Liam. Liam looked at Al. Al’s eyes bulged, and his mouth heaved. “PEANUTS?”

He squawked. Liam gulped and said weakly “yeah..?”. Al bent over double, dry retching and cleaning his mouth out with his fingers. “SOMEONE GRAB THE PLB” Al exclaimed dramatically before cackling and continuing to heave in the bushes.

The group started, but immediately stopped when they realised Al was just practicing his dramatical flair. It’s just Liam’s generous carb-giving nature to share his peanut chocolate, but unbeknownst to Liam, Al happens to have an allergy. Luckily Al managed to not ingest the peanuts and wash his mouth out, phew!

Hope Halfway Hut swam into view as we bobbed our way to our lunchtime stop. It’s a cute wee hut and a great stop in winter, as there were minimal sandflies. We crammed in some real food and fit our names in the hut book amongst the NOBO/SOBO constituents.

The track continued through beech trees as we bantered our way further into the Hope Valley. At some point, we were spat out into the braided riverbed. We reached Top Hope Hut a few hours before nightfall and shared a solid night of laughs, fires and dehys. We hit the hay early to prepare for the next day of tops running – our plan was to head out via the Doubtful Range and drop down to Windy Point via Mt Garfield.

6 am and a cacophony of alarms rung around the six-bunk tin-covered hut. Luckily the two hunters sharing the abode were also planning on leaving early. The five adventurers drank their coffee, ate their porridge and put their slightly lighter ultra-light bags on as they headed out into the dark morning drizzle.

The sun didn’t really rise that morning, instead the sky slowly lightened and revealed fresh snowfall below the bushline and menacing grey/white clouds hanging low along the tops. I knew then that there was no way we’d be doing any tops running today; plan B was to head up past Lake Man Biv and drop into the Doubtful, then slog it out to Windy Point.

As we meandered up the concerningly named ‘Pussy Stream’ bed, the rain set in earnestly. We were already soaked, and we hadn’t even hit the snow yet – a vague sense of unease hit me, but I knew we all had more than enough layers to deal with this weather.

A few hundred metres below the bushline the rain turned suspiciously thick and white; Snooooooooowwwwwwwww! Is there anything better than running through a beech forest caked in fresh snowflakes?! The answer is yes there is, and it is emerging out of said forest into a wide-open saddle slathered in the pow.

We all regrouped together at the bush edge and took some snaps before plunging into deep tussock/snow/scrub combos up the slope. This moment, this is where things started to unravel. I had no idea at the time, all I felt was an insane sense of joy whilst dragging my body through the snow.

As we cleared the steep hill and headed towards more open travel across the saddle, I looked back and realised that Jen and Michelle were lagging a bit. The wind had picked up now and it was thickly snowing; a combination that was not conducive to feeling particularly warm considering our pre-soaked selves had endured a good few hours of travelling in the rain already.

Liam, Al and I waited while jumping on the spot. I knew that I could not really wait around that long, or I’d start to get dangerously cold with the layers I had on. I started to grow concerned when I noticed that Jen and Michelle still only had shorts on and there was no real option to stop anymore – the only option was to keep moving.

We managed to stay somewhat together as we fought our way across the saddle and down to Lake Man Biv. It was an absolutely chaotic time running with our eyes almost shut against the thick sideways snow, but I was frothing at the mouth. Sometimes these things bring out the gremlin in me.

Liam, Al and I burst into Lake Man Biv. For reference, this is a two bunk biv and has standing room for perhaps one adult. We quickly began layering up as we shivered. After a few minutes, Jen and Michelle arrived and were quite worse for wear. My worry turned into legitimate concern as I watched them shiver uncontrollably.

Al, the absolute MVP, heated us up some electrolytes as we encouraged Jen and Michelle to layer up and eat as quickly as possible. At one point I forced Michelle to shove her hands in my armpits (sorry Michelle). Jen was having a lot of trouble getting food in and was visibly shaking – she hadn’t eaten anything for 1.5hours. After 15min or so of accidentally hotboxing the Biv with our electrolyte steam, we decided to go down. We knew that at some point we’d reach the ‘rain-line’ again and it’d warm up, but for now we had to just keep moving.

A few minutes after we started heading down the track it dawned on me that Jen was going downhill (literally and figuratively, yes). She could barely run, and she wasn’t talking at all. Jen not talking? Not good.

“Can I take your bag Jen?” I asked nicely.

“No it’s okay” Jen mumbled to me.

I watched her for a few more minutes and something in me snapped – I wasn’t about to watch my friend become hypothermic. I ripped the bag off her, attached it to my front, and then Al found us and shoved her into his giant synthetic down jacket.

We forced her to keep running as the snow fell heavily around us. A few hundred metres of elevation drop later, and I turned a corner to find Jen and Michelle laughing! Hoorah! The relief at seeing their smiling faces was unreal. They were back to their warm(ish), fun and happy fastpacking selves. We dropped to the valley floor of the Doubtful and set off for the car at Windy Point. We were rejuvenated by our teamwork and feeling very lucky to have all made it down in one piece.

So what could we have done differently? The following points we discussed as a team and decided we could improve on in the future:

Allowing all members time to layer and eat when we regroup:

There’s the tendency for faster runners to stop, wait for the rest of the group to catch up, and then leave after a short period of time. If we had all communicated that these regrouping sessions were important for layering and eating, things might have been different.
Having someone in the group allocated to enforcing an eating regiment:

Just having someone who calls out ‘food’ every 40 minutes is so useful. It’s easy to forget to feed yourself when you’re freezing and wet.
Identifying the fact that while this was a fun social weekend, it’s still a hard endurance activity and should be treated with respect in regard to safety:

It’s easy to fall into the trap of dismissing safety when you’re ‘just out for a laugh’ or similar. As we discovered, things can very quickly turn from a bit grim to dangerous.
Having one emergency shelter in the group like a bothy bag(no affiliate):

Even though we had enough clothes, if we had needed a rescue, it would have been a long wait in very cold conditions with no shelter.

Whilst we all individually had enough gear and food to survive those conditions, we just needed to use this more effectively and communicate better amongst ourselves. It was a good wake-up call to all of us that a fun social run in the hills is still a run in the hills and deserves to be treated with respect.

Trip members: Jennifer Tregurtha, Michelle Kwan, Liam Davidge, Alastair McDowell and Kate Morrison

Thanks for the trip report, Kate. You’ve certainly set a new standard for surprise parties🤣.

You can follow Kate on Da Gram and find out more about what makes her tick below.

An attempted murder, a hypothermic friend and a gratuitous amount of carbs: