Fifty-six teams from around the world gathered this afternoon at the Queenstown Events Centre to receive their course booklets and instructions on the six-day adventure race from race directors Geoff Hunt and Pascale Lorre. The race which gets underway Sunday morning at 9am, from downtown Queenstown, will first take competitors on a furiously fast mountain bike stage out to Frankton Beach.

From there it will be a 14-kilometer kayak paddle down the Kawarau River before teams experience their first bush section, 34 kilometers of trekking through the Arrow Gorge to Arrowtown. Millbrook Resort will operate as a transition area where teams will once again pick up their bikes and head back out towards the Kawarau river on a 34-kilometer ride which will have them finish on the shores of Lake Wakatipu near the Kelvin Heights golf course.

Tuesday morning should see the first teams complete the mountain trek section, pick up their bikes at the Nevis Road transition area and travel on a 53-kilometer ride along the tops of the the Garvie Mountain Range and down a spectacular 1174-meter downhill ride to the valley floor below. Then it's a 24-kilometer trek over the Eyre mountains to Kingston beach and the next paddle section.

The course then heads out on Lake Wakatipu on a 25-kilometer paddle across to the famous Cecil Peak station. Once there, teams will trek up over Cecil Peak to Walter Peak where they will cross a tyrolean traverse and descend a 110-meter abseil. The entire trekking stage is 22 kilometers long and is expected to take between 12 and 20 hours to complete. Teams will then traverse back to their kayaks at Cecil Station and then paddle 24 kilometers across the Lake to 12 mile Delta, just a 10-minute drive from Queenstown.

Stage 11 is a 17-kilometer mountain trek over Mt. Creighton and down to Moke Lake where teams will transition to bikes for a 21-kilometerm bike ride through the Shotover catchment area which finishes in the famous Skippers Canyon.

To finish, teams will then travel the last 17 kilometers on foot around the back of Coronet Peak to end at Millbrook Golf Resort. In total , the race has 143 kilometers of trekking, 115 kilometers of mountain biking, 63 kilometers of paddling and 110 meters of abseiling.

Hunt expects the first teams across the finish line by Thursday with the rest of the field home by 5pm Saturday.

"I expect some teams, especially the local teams, to move quite quickly over the first half of the course and then it will depend on their team unity, individual sleep and eat strategies and fitness to see just who can pull off the second leg with pace. There will be a split in the field once we get the first teams on the Lake and across to Cecil Peak station and if the weather holds, we should be in for a spectacular week of racing."

—Courtesy, Southern Traverse Ltd.