Date: 2/5/2026
Trip leader: Elias Dunstone
Party: Seb, Wei-Chie, Zhan, Abhiraj Ashutosh, Georgia, Navya, Haydar, Liam, Alex
For those who don’t know, Rogaining is an adventure sport similar to orienteering, where teams of 2-5 people navigate over a course to reach as many checkpoints as possible in a set timeframe, using a map and compass. Checkpoints are worth different amounts of points depending on how difficult they are to reach, so a lot of strategy is involved in planning an achievable and efficient route to get as many points as possible. Adding to the challenge, we were in the dark for almost the entirety of this Rogaine.
Having found my first Rogaining trips around Adelaide very enjoyable, after moving to Sydney, I was keen to try Rogaining in some new areas. After seeing the Mt Victoria Rogaining trip, I decided to organise some SUBW teams for the 2026 Nightgaine at Cherrybrook. As this was my second time as trip leader, I received some helpful advice from Sean on leading a Rogaining trip. Getting everyone’s registration payments and registering the teams went smoothly, and I ended up registering Lost with intent (3 people, 3hr event), Bush Phantoms (3 people, 5hr event) and Ghost Division (4 people, 5hr event).
On the afternoon of the event, I arrived at Central for the metro and fairly quickly found 2 other members of Ghost Division. Although I was slightly concerned to see only 3 of us there, I confirmed just before boarding the train that everyone else was driving. After an hour on the metro and bus (featuring a headtorch unboxing) we arrived at the Hash House (starting location of the Rogaine). All the very serious map planning setups and trail running gear were a bit intimidating, particularly for the other two who hadn’t Rogained before, but we quickly got ourselves registered and sat down with the two others from Bush Phantoms, lay out our maps on some logs, and started planning, about 1:15 before the event started.
The start of planning is always a bit overwhelming, seeing all the checkpoints dispersed across the map, with no idea of where to go. We did manage to fairly quickly figure out a general idea of a route, heading down Berowra Valley and hitting some of the highest scoring checkpoints, before looping back around and zig-zagging between some more on the way back. After finetuning the intricacies of our route with Zhan and measuring out the distance with a piece of string, we filled out our flight plan (with what we would later see to be a VERY ambitious route), used by the organisers in case we fell down a cliff and never came back. With only a few minutes left before the event started at 4:30 (and a few very annoying false starts from people synchronising watches), we rushed to get out flight plan handed in, our gear sorted, and say goodbye to the 3hr team (who started an hour later and finished an hour earlier).
With everything prepared, we grouped up in the massive starting crowd (a few hundred people), and as it hit 4:30, started running down the street in a horde of rogainers towards the first checkpoint (the peer pressure incentive to run didn’t last very long). After queueing for the first checkpoint, everyone started to spread out, and our next few checkpoints, down in the gully, were less crowded. We soon gave up running on the uneven trails through Berowra Valley, but continued at a good pace, quickly racking up a few hundred points. We arrived at our first 100 point checkpoint with very little light left, and then headed down through a mix of roads and tracks to the next. Stopping infrequently for short food and water breaks, and leaving our packs for short side trips to high scoring checkpoints, we kept up a sub 12:00 kilometre pace, on track for our goal of 25km.
Navigation throughout the night was mostly done by me and Zhan, with Wei helping out as well, and we refined our route plan as we went, making only a few minor wrong turns. We had a great time, consistently hitting plenty of checkpoints, discussing different hikes (and attempting to recruit people for the upcoming 24hr rogaine…), and gradually feeling our legs get more tired. By the last hour, we started to realise that we had a fair distance left, and needed to speed up accordingly, culminating in a final dash, with 10 minutes left, towards the Hash House. Unfortunately, we missed the 9:30 finish time, and were penalised 50 points for arriving at 9:34 (despite the warnings of the Bush Phantoms on the GC, who arrived 20 minutes early).
We walked in to see stacks of Dominoes boxes, a very welcome sight after the struggle of the final leg of the Rogaine. After having a great dinner of pizza, soup, anzac biscuits and fruit, we joined the crowd outside to hear the final results presentation. Ghost Division managed to come 2nd in mixed under-23s, and we each received a Rogaining NSW mug! Overall, Ghost Division scored 1650 points (30th place), Bush Phantoms scored 1410 points (42nd place) and Lost with intent scored 640 points (45th place), great results especially considering most people were new to Rogaining. Overall, everyone really enjoyed this event, and it was quite a unique trip compared to an average daytime hike.
Here’s Haydar’s account of his team’s (Bush Phantoms) experience of the event:
“We started to follow the plan to the first point and then when we got to 101 the plan took a 180 spin , the original plan was changed from a big loop to focusing on collecting as much point as possible as we felt confident in our ability and fitness levels to go for further and higher points that required a bit of risk. There was a-lot of stopping at every check point to check the time and deciding on what was worth it to get or if it was to risky based on time availability. Some parts of the trail to involve a light run just to make it time efficient We made it 20 minutes early before the finishing time. We were very tired and sweaty towards the end of the 5 hours and the food was a good treat towards the end”
For the three of us who came by metro, it was a tired, hour long journey back to Central, arriving around 11pm. I really enjoyed leading this trip, getting to introduce people to Rogaining, and having a great team to compete with. I’ll definitely be leading more Rogaining trips in the future (although the next one is mid-exams, so probably not for a while), and I’d especially like to try and get a team together for a 24hr Rogaine, which I have never done before. Thanks everyone for coming along!
