Update from Mt Mulligan

We're waiting here at CP18 at the base of Mt Mulligan (10am). No internet coverage, so no updates lately sorry.
Five teams have been and gone, with the sixth about to leave.

Orion in Sun 17:24 out 18:31
Blackheart in Sun 17:29 out 18:17
Merrell in Mon 00:55 out 02:57
McCain in Mon 02:30 out 06:55
www.alpineepic.co.nz in Mon 05:57
City Bike Depot in Mon 08:37 out 09:16

Orion and Blackheart arrived within 5 minutes of each other last night. Orion looked pretty wasted, they'd pretty much run out of food, and despite two sleeps along the way, Brent in particular was pretty tired. He grabbed a 10 minute powernap while the rest of the team finished the packing up. It was super hot out there yesterday, averaged around 30 degrees where we are at the TA, probably more out on the course.

Blackheart all looked pretty good. Their feet were all fine, and they did a pretty sharp transition to be out 15 minutes ahead of Orion.

Merrell came and went in the early hours of the morning. McCain arrived then slept, they were tired and had also run out of food before the end of the trek.

alpineepic came in and slept. Shane has a nasty little rash on the top of his feet. The medics patched them up before the team took a couple of hours sleep, they look a smidgeon better now, and those guys are packing up and nearly ready to leave.

CBD arrived an hour ago, all looking good, and they've headed off on the MTB.

Our fears about Nga Rakau being stopped at TA7 were allayed when they finally got going at around 8am yesterday morning (apparently they just overslept their alarm slightly!) We heard they'd had a slight sense of humour failure when they arrived at the end of the kayak, but were all in good spirits again after a sleep when they headed off on the trek.

Our fears about securify.co.nz were confirmed, apparently they were stopped on the side of the river for so long because one (and quite possibly two) of the team had bad dehydration. I heard two of the team pulled out of the race when they made it to the end of the kayak, and the other two were considering their options.

Based on the departures from TA7, SCAR then Nga Rakau should be the next to arrive, but there's no guarantee of that, and you'll know better than us from the Spot tracking on the web site.

Apparently SOAR (who left TA7 a little after Nga Rakau) activated their emergency transmitter somewhere out from CP16 (mid trek), and a helicopter is being sent in to retrieve them.

Of the other two all Kiwi teams, hopefully Osprey are still going as a 3-person team, and Aotearoa Crocodile Hunters are pretty much out of the race, with Mark out of the race, Shane was heading off to paddle the Walsh river with a media person and pick up the controls for the officials.