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The mountain bike stage started with a steep climb traversing the length of the highly exposed Pisa Range, which rises nearly 2000m. Hunt reckoned the stage would take 11 hours to complete, including a couple of hours for sleep. They should finish it before daybreak". By evening, the four leading teams had started the stage, 30 hours into the race; the second group of teams was just a few hours behind. The stragglers, however, had not yet reached the top of Jumbo Ridge.

The support crews drove to catch up with the competitors at the Waiorau Nordic Centre, less than half-way through the mountain bike stage, to prepare hot food for racers who might want it during the night. The wind was so strong, they found it difficult to open the car doors and had to lean into the wind to stay upright. Patches of snow lay on sheltered slopes and a thermometer showed 6degC. There was no sign of the cyclists. Four hours later, as night fell, the crews gave up and drove to the next checkpoint where they waited until dawn. The plan was to catch the racers as they finished the 1000m down­hill section, but as the sun rose there was still no sign of them. Over the next few hours crews became increasingly agitated as they scanned the mountainside for signs of cyclists.

Suddenly, unbelievably, Wet Coast appeared. The other three lead teams followed soon after and the full hor­ror of the night was revealed. They spoke of winds they couldn't ride in; of their relief at finding shelter at the Nordic Centre; their amazement in the morning at find­ing the other teams sheltering in neigh­bouring buildings and of the problems of route finding and punctures.

As Team Cromwell was nearing exhaustion, Bill Godsall had said he knew of a shortcut. "That shortcut added 600m of climbing and cost us at least two hours," said teammate Jim Cotter. "We had the frames on our shoulders, wheels tied to our packs and we still got punctures from the speargrass."

Last Legs

The fierce wind died down a lit­tle in the morning and Team Wet Coast stayed out in front over the next section of the race. After a quick paddle it was back on the bikes and over another mountain pass, most of it too steep to pedal up. But the real drama still lay ahead. Macpac spent the next night struggling over the Nevis Burn, but as dawn broke, they were rewarded with the news that they'd somehow overtaken Wet Coast. Over joyed, they then made a mis­take that nearly cost them their new lead. With the 175m abseil ropes blowing horizontal in a gale, they assumed the rope section had been abandoned. But when they met Hunt at the top of the sec­ond abseil, he sent them back to go through the section again.

That was the low point of the race for us, said Macpac leader Bob Foster. We felt sure Wet Coast would pass us again. But shortly after that, in a sudden anti-climax. Wet Coast were forced to withdraw when a team member developed mild hypother­mia while bivouacked during the night.

In the end, Kiwi team, — Cromwell. Macpac, Wild South and Doyles took the top four places, followed by salomon of Japan, who had benefitted from their experience in the 1996 Southern Traverse and previous Raid Gauloises and EcoChallenge races. Kiwi teams also took the fifth, sixth and seventh places, followed by the leading American team. The booby prize went to the Brazil­ians. Unused to the weather, they resorted to burning their socks and underwear to keep warm and didn't make the first checkpoint until Day Three, long after it had been abandoned.

"It was the hardest Southern "Traverse yet," said Bill Godsall of Team Cromwell who had raced in all five previous Traverses. It was much tougher than this year's EcoChallengc.