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Team Nokia of Finland, dubbed the "terminators" by Steve Gurney, arrived at the finish line at 2:31pm. Showing obvious signs of exhaustion, the team literally crawled from its kayaks and stumbled the short distance to the finish line. Several team members were shivering uncontrollably and seemed extremely disorientated.

...Team Cromwell crossed the line at 7:15pm, close to hypothermic...

Throughout the event, this team had shown very little emotion and this remained true at the finish line. After congratulations from officials, the team raced to the waiting support crew transport and were gone. Officials requested the team be checked by medics who reported members to be well but in dire need of warm food and lots of sleep.

Team Propeller-heads spoke of its respect for this team, which arrived six hours behind them. Racing hard while suffering obvious injury, Team Nokia was a great competitor that kept Gurney and company on their toes.

The Science Team arrived just before 5pm after battling a bitterly cold headwind for 34km.

At 10am a cut-off was instituted, disallowing teams from entering the final trekking leg. The remaining teams were instead re-routed to a shortened course and a mountain biking leg to the finish in Tekapo where they would be unranked.

Meanwhile, the teams who got through the cut-off at Fox Peak are very close and are pushing each other hard to reach the finish line before tomorrow morning. The weather is about to turn very nasty with high winds and a forecast of low level snow — predictions are that very few teams will be able to make it through the mountains, leaving perhaps as few as eight teams able to finish the race.

As the freezing rain started to fall, Team Cromwell crossed the line at 7:15pm, close to hypothermic. I escorted them to MountainZone.com HQ, but that's another story...

– Chris Vile, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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