All night navigation events for Taupō Orienteering club

March has been a busy month so far for the Taupō Orienteering Club. Photo / Supplied

The weather played its part with a mild night for this year's Katoa Po (all night) orienteering relay as well as a newly established event.

Katoa Po and The Explorer night navigation were held on a local farm and small forest area on the weekend of March 12 and 13. Attendance of about 90 was a little down on last year, probably due to the current Omicron situation.

A youthful team from Auckland won the five-person relay in a time of 3h 33m. In a fairly close contest, there were less than 40 minutes separating the first six teams.

The seven-person relay was won by a more experienced team from Taranaki. A number of the teams had competitors as young as four running the first leg of the relay.

For the first time for many years, Taupō O had two five-person teams competing in the event. The legs of the relay for the more experienced orienteers ventured into a piece of forest that proved to be a challenge for even the best to find the control points.

Competitors in action during an orienteering event. Photo / Supplied

The Explorer navigation event is ideal for people who prefer to run as teams and proved so popular, particularly with secondary school adventure racing teams after it was run for the first time last year, that it is now a regular part of the annual Katoa Po weekend.

The Explorer is made up of a three-hour night rogaine followed by a 90-minute rogaine the following morning and provides plenty of challenge for adventure racers keen to improve their navigational skills.

The fastest two-person team and overall winner of the Explorer was team Better Late Than Never from Tauranga (Tom Hambrook and Chris Morrissey), who got 3020 points out of a possible 3700.

Second was Lost in the Dark from Hawke's Bay, and a very creditable third was the Taupō-nui-a-Tia school team Taupō Green (Kaspar Lenoir and Fletcher Norris).

The winner of the three or four-person teams was another Taupo-nui-a-Tia team, Taupō Red (Julia Leusink, Izaak Manders and Ethan Staddon), who won the big prize of a weekend training session that goes to the best mixed school team. It was only during the final Sunday morning rogaine that they overtook family team Urgent Request (Fenella, Lilja and Luca Tinworth), who came second in this category.

The event centre relay handover station. Photo / Supplied

The last month or so has been busy for orienteering in the area with a series of three Wednesday evening town events, the last held on March 16.

There was a farm night and day orienteering training session on February 26/27. There will be another training session on March 27 at Crown Park and Tauhara College. The next event is on April 3, on a farm map close to Taupō which will have a number of courses to suit all levels of skill and fitness.

For further information visit taupoorienteering.nz