This article was written for FMC’s BACKCOUNTRY August 2025, If you are not a member I recommend joining or donating at www.fmc.org.nz
I remember lacing up at the Kaitoke Car Park of Glory on my first Tararua Mountain Race (TMR), headlamp cutting through the pre-dawn mist. The race boasted a motto that made us grin with nervous excitement: “20% chance of sun, 10% chance of no wind, 100% chance of blood, sweat and tears.” There was no exaggeration there. Fifteen years ago, I entered that very race as a bright-eyed newcomer. I had to run it with a partner (the rules back then required a buddy for first timers) – I chose my brother-in-law Neill. We did a recce in December, trudging through snow and whip-lashing winds. It was, as my mate Mark still jokes, “the most horrendous day of our lives.” Yet we emerged at the finish battered and beaming: “really hard, but amazing,” I said afterwards. I got the bug right there.
Over the next few years, I became completely hooked on the Tararua Range. Every year, I returned to that Southern Crossing course (36 km with 2,300 m of climb, Kaitoke to Otaki Forks) and felt the brutal beauty of those hills for myself. With each race, I learned more – how seemingly gentle climbs sneak up on you, how the sky can close in with dense clag (fog) in minutes, and how biting southerlies on Hector can numb your hands unless you keep moving. A fellow runner once warned me in a hailstorm, “If we don’t keep moving, we’ll freeze” – and he was right. Those moments bonded me with the range.
Over time, the Tararua became more than a race venue – they became a teacher. I’ve run in blazing sun, hail, and once, through driving rain in March that turned the ridgelines into rivers. There’s something humbling about moving through terrain that doesn’t care who you are or what your pace is. It strips you bare. On adventure trips, I’ve yelled into the wind, lain down to rest in a patch of sun, and felt the strange calm of fog closing around my world like a blanket. These hills have held my best memories and my hardest days.
Grit and Community: Life on the Course
Every Tararua event I’ve ever run or helped organise felt like being part of a rugged family. The race is volunteer-run, driven by a tight-knit team of mountain runners who do it for the love of these hills. As race director now, I still marvel at their dedication. Our crew of ~20 people mark the course, staff checkpoints (even stay in the huts high on the range), and cheerlead every finisher. Safety is a huge concern out here: every runner must carry full emergency kit – layers, first-aid, map, compass, everything. We also partner closely with Land Search and Rescue (LandSAR). They station volunteers in huts and on exposed sections for the race, and in return we donate race proceeds to support their vital work. It’s a fitting partnership: the mountains can turn icy and dangerous in an instant, so we have to respect them together.
On race day at Kaitoke, as dawn breaks behind the ridges, the atmosphere is electric. You see old friends and new alike hugging and joking at the start. “Bumping into some old friends and meeting new ones is a great start to the day,” one runner told me – all while “nerves started to ramp up”. I still feel that mix of excitement and fear. One chap even quipped, when he heard the race was back in 2024 after a short hiatus, “I think I peed a little”! Truth is, we all shiver at the thought — Tararua racing is famously tough. By one finisher’s account, TMR was “beyond anything I’ve done in terms of hardness. I was taken by the Tararua”. Getting to that point – wading through mud, roots and exposed ridgelines – with your mates alongside you is what makes it unforgettable.
And at the other end of the race, there’s no greater feeling than a tired, muddy group of finishers laughing together at the boardwalk near Field Hut, already swapping war stories of cramps and wrong turns. One recent Instagram shout-out summed it up: TMR is “hard yakka, epic scenery, and a community that has your back”. Long after our quads recover, it’s that camaraderie that sticks with you.
In tough moments on the tops, I remind myself of a piece of Tararua wisdom: “you estimate it, then add about half a day,” to account for the deep mud, tangled vegetation and unpredictable weather. That formula has served me well.
Out here, distance means something different. A flat marathon might take three or four hours — but the Tararua Mountain Race, just 36 kilometres long, takes most people around eight hours. And that’s if you stay on course. Roots, knee-deep mud, tussock-cloaked trails, and steep rock scrambles turn every kilometre into a battle. The S-K is even more extreme. At 80 km, you’d expect a quick ultra. But the average finish time is over 35 hours, and many don’t finish at all. There are no markers, no support crews, no smooth trail underfoot. You’re climbing through wind-gnarled forest, descending rough ridges, then scrambling back into the clag. One S-K runner once told me: “It’s not a run, it’s a full-body negotiation with the mountains.”
The S-K Legacy: A Line Through History
The S-K route has a long lineage. In the 1960s, tramping clubs would attempt to traverse the full range in a single weekend — leaving Wellington by train on Friday night, walking into the range, and returning in time for work on Monday. It was a mad, beautiful concept. Over time, the challenge evolved from a weekend and eventually, some began wondering: could it be done in one day?
What began as a club challenge became a personal rite of passage. These were never events, but whispered legends passed down in hut books, shared at outdoor shops and club nights. For years I read those trip reports with awe. They weren’t polished race recaps, just raw accounts of battling clag, running out of food, navigating in the dark. They pulled me in. If the TMR lit the spark, the S-K fanned it into something deeper.
Pushing Limits: The Tararua S-K
I decided to have my go. My first S-K attempt was in December on the longest day. But about eight hours in, I sprained my ankle badly and had to hobble out. The following year, I tried again, with my mate Anthony. We experimented with a night start to beat the weather window, but just over halfway in, I reached my breaking point and couldn’t continue. After that second failure, I did give up on it for a while – physically, I was wrecked, mentally, I thought maybe this was beyond me.
But I wasn’t done. Drawing on some late-night reading (a book by David Goggins helped me reframe that failure), I broke down what went wrong and realised I could try again. Four years after being captured by the S-K, I joined friends and made one last push. At one point, 20 hours in, I was utterly spent and had to stop for a couple of hours just to recover. Later, I fought my way along on Marchant Ridge, seeing strange faces in the tangled trees. I staggered into the Kaitoke Car Park of Glory, exhausted and elated, it was something I’ll never forget.
I had found the edge of my willingness to push through the hardship and fought past it. Leo Houlding says “These days life is so safe, sanitised and boring.” There are people who want more challenge out of life. The Tararua provides me with that challenge.
Telling Our Story: Tararua S-K: 60 Years in the Making
After those adventures, I realised the Tararua story needed to be told. Mountain running had evolved here over decades, from early tramping attempts to tough athletic feats. So, I put on my filmmaker hat and made Tararua S-K: 60 Years in the Making, a 27-minute documentary. It weaves our footage and archival clips with heartfelt interviews to capture the history and spirit of the range. We asked legends about their journeys. It was a labour of love – or as my wife jokes, “A 10-year labour of love” (counting all the racing and random footage I’d already collected).
The film has been well-received. It won awards and – as Sir Graeme Dingle put it – “captures [the Tararua] perfectly.” Indeed, Graeme quipped that the Tararua range is a “priceless asset to Aotearoa,” and those who run its length must have “a touch of Forrest Gump in all of us… Barking!” That playful compliment hits home; to race or traverse these mountains, you’ve got to be a bit crazy. The film’s buzz has helped knit our community even tighter, sharing tales of those who’ve gone before and celebrating those who come after.
Behind the Scenes: Filmmaking in the Clag
We had no cinematographer for our main filming trip – so we strapped GoPros on all three of us and hoped for the best. At Dundas Hut I was up at dawn flying a drone on a windswept ridge, trying to get that perfect sunrise. We had to fly blind at times, hoping it wouldn’t vanish like my first drone — which I lost on its maiden voyage, blown clean off a Tararua ridge.
Editing those hours of footage, I found myself revisiting not just landscapes, but emotions. There were clips I’d forgotten – an off-camera laugh in a hut, a runner sharing their fears by headlamp. I realised we weren’t just chasing speed; we were chasing meaning.
That same weekend we bumped into Megan Sety at Dundas Hut — the editor of the S-K book. Classic Tararua serendipity. We shared stories over dinner as the hut filled up and swapped route tips. Like so many in this community, Megan carries the legacy forward – not with bravado, but by building connection and recording history.
A Tribe on the Track
Even after the cameras turn off, the Tararua bond remains. On race day or in the backcountry, we swap tips: one of my favourite stories is a runner at Alpha Hut laughing, “Thank God we’re at the top!” only to have his mate answer, “Oh mate, we haven’t started going up yet.” We encourage first-timers, reminding them of basics (my tip: eat well, hydrate early, and if you feel cold, put another layer on straight away). I tell racers that true success might be “swimming in the river and having a sausage” after the adventure.
Every year I’m humbled by the volunteers who haul in food to the huts, check runners through in hail or clag, and clean up at the finish line. A father-daughter team volunteered at Field Hut after racing the event for many years. This helped his daughter with her Duke of Ed course.
It’s touching how much ordinary people achieve here. In 2025, for example, a 66-year-old local became one of the oldest ever to finish the full Southern Crossing, grinning ear-to-ear after 10 hours of slog. Two friends crossed the line hand in hand after sharing an afternoon in the wilderness.
We award lots of trophies every year, but in truth everyone is a winner if they end up here at the finish, celebrating together. The Tararua have a funny way of humbling you – as one veteran racer put it, the range “will test your fitness, your navigation, your resilience, and your sense of humour equally”. They break you down and then spit you out, rubber-stamped into this secret club of Tararua alumni.
And it’s a club worth joining. Out here, you find yourself smiling at others’ triumphs: strangers cheer when someone breaks the finish tape, and we all laugh comparing blister stories as blizzards or tropical rain cascade overhead. By nightfall, we’re trading war stories. It’s as one runner described: after the lactic acid fades, what remains are the images of competitors supporting each other, strangers cracking jokes at a windswept hut, and jubilant high-fives as the Tararua Range reluctantly yields to human perseverance.
What’s Next?
So where to from here? The TMR is back on the calendar, and entries for 2026 open soon. We’ve added shorter courses (the 24 km Kelly Glass Kime Climb and 13 km Field Dash) so newcomers can catch a taste of Tararua magic without committing to the full crossing. Every March, we see a new mix of adventurers and weekend warriors lining up. It brings a smile to my face to see young and old set out on these trails, learning just how wild (and wonderful) the outdoors can be.
Above all, I want people to experience it themselves. The mountains are indifferent, but they’ll show you what you’re made of – and they reward every bit of effort with views, stories and friendships you’ll carry for life. Check out our film at TararuaSK.com to see the range on the big screen, and if you dare, sign up at TMR.org.nz for the next race – whether you’re running, walking or just cheering from the sidelines. The Tararua promises one thing for certain: no guarantees of good weather, but an adventure you’ll never forget. I can’t wait to see who joins us next on the ridgelines.
