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Return to the Forbidden Planet
Showing 22nd-25th May at Ryder Hall
Al students should have already chosen an option for UP which starts Period 5 Thursday 22nd March.
Congratulations to Julian Weir on setting 6 new records at swimming sports today. Amazing!
Go412
This is a twelve hour, four person, team event held in April each year and is suitable for both the recreational team and the serious competitor. It is the official NZ Secondary Schools’ Adventure Racing Championship. Since the event started in 2004 NPBHS have been the National Champions eight times.
If interested in being part of one of our teams please contact Mr Hewlett or Ms Scott.
Go 4 12 Adventure Race – Hawkes Bay 2011
On Friday April 8 ten teams and 40 students from New Plymouth Boys’ and Girls’ High Schools headed east to compete in the annual New Zealand Secondary Schools’ Adventure Racing Championships, known as the Go 4 12. Hopes were high as we were the defending champions in the junior, senior girls’ and senior boys’ divisions. In fact since the race’s inception 6 years ago NPBHS has won the senior boys’ title every year.
The race start was Glenfalls campsite on the picturesque Mohaka river, halfway between Napier and Taupo. We arrived mid afternoon, set up tents, checked rafts and gear, had our race gear inspected by the organisers, and loaded up on plenty of food in preparation for the 12 hour race the following day. At 7 pm we attended a race briefing, and plenty of time was then spent studying maps and planning the strategies for the following day. A clear starlit night and southerly wind signalled a likely frost overnight.
Four o’clock in the morning and the teams started to stir, eat breakfast, do the final gear sort and line up amid a mass of headlamps for the 5.30 start. Chaos emerged as over 200 racers sprinted to get their maps then continued on to do a foot rogaine in the dark, at times wading chest deep water to get checkpoints. This took most teams between 1 and 2 hours.
From this leg the teams transitioned to the rafting, a 6 km stretch of the Mohaka river involving grade 2 white water, on tube rafts the teams had designed and built themselves. Our ‘A’ boys team of Edward Lawley, Darren Alexander, Billy Rodenburg, and Liam Paterson were first on the river in just under 1 hour, followed by Opunake 8 minutes later.
The rafting took between 1 and 2 hours and cold and wet paddlers then transitioned to a gruelling mountain bike leg. This involved 25 km of track and gravel road, climbing 1000metres of height (the equivalent of New Plymouth to the North Egmont Visitors’ centre). Here our Boys ‘A’ team increased their 30 minute lead coming off the rafting to over an hour into the next transition. Our ‘B’ team of Mitchell Holyoake, Mark Houwers, Josh Girvan, and Thomas Burrell having overtaken over a dozen teams in the rafting and the bike leg came into this transition in second place.
The next stage involved a huge rogaine, a possible 30km of travel on foot on very steep terrain. Teams tried to reach as many checkpoints as possible in the time they had left before the final leg, a 1 hour downhill bike ride to the finish. Thrown in for bonus points were a caving activity, a sheep drafting challenge, and a rock jump off a cliff into a stream. This stage proved the winning or losing of the race for a number of teams and tested navigation skills to the full.
The final leg was a steep climb followed by 13 km of downhill to the finish, with teams reaching up to 55km/h at some points. Dinner and camping that night were followed by a prize giving brunch the following day. Our boys’ A team were the winners and had the highest score overall. Our junior team of Matt Furze, Hamish Sturmer, Tom Spencer, and Orin Burmester were fourth overall and won the junior section. Close behind were Jack Anderson, Liam Jansen, Dean Lobb, and Ieuan McCleod. All teams performed credibly and represented their schools with pride.