Day 3

Friday 21st 08:00

Finally, a break in the weather. It’s still really cold, but when this fog at the bottom of the valley lifts, the sun will be a welcome change.

Team blackheart.com.au descended from Mt Bogon and arrived at CP8 (end of leg 3) at 23:30 last night. They then promptly headed across the road to the holiday park – which they’d booked into on Tuesday after seeing the maps – how’s that for planning ..

They arrived at 6:00am for the start of the kayak (leg 4), to find that the increased river levels after the rain had made the top section of the river unsafe, and they had to walk another 8km downstream to the get-in.

Team Blackheart / Salomon arrived at CP8 at around 00:30, and Tangerine around 02:00. Both teams had a cold night’s sleep at the transition. Bull of Africa arrived just before 06:00, and were sleeping in the transition as we headed down to see blackheart.com.au start the kayak.

They paddled off in two of the yellow kayaks – I think the organizers have decided that the teams are sufficiently spread out that they can transport the boats back so that everyone can use the more manouevrable yellow boats in the ‘white water’ (not very grade 3 from what we’ve seen so far ..).

We’ll now go back up to the CP to wait for the next teams – which should be the three kiwi teams – arrive.

The forecast for tomorrow is dismal – a big storm and blizzards. But still today to get through first..