Mont-Aux Sources & Tugela Falls

This past weekend a friend and I went hiking in the Drakensberg Mountains. Although we had planned to hike in another section up to a cave, we opted for a two-day hike in the Mont-Aux-Source area, the tallest section of the range.  It’s called this because it is the source of Tugela River and was discovered by French Missionaries.  It was a short hike to the top, only taking about 2 hours, mostly because we had driven to a good portion of the elevation. 

Wasn't expecting to see this in Africa

Leaving Pretoria at 5am, we reached the car park high in the mountains at about 1030.  The fence next to where we parked was coated in ice, as were the bushes nearby, foreshadowing the cold night to come.  All morning an eerie fog creep through the mountains, though actually just clouds because of the elevation, it hugged the southern ridges like a wall of smoke. As we climbed higher we could more easily view Sentential Peak. The whole area was once formed by volcanic activity and thus the Afrikaans name for Sentential Peak (which now I can’t recall) means “God of Fire”.

The misty mountains in the clouds

Frost in the morning

Although we had parked in South Africa, in order to continue the hike we had to cross into the country Lesotho. The border was a broken wire fence that probably couldn’t even keep cows out, a very different border than many I’ve seen.

The Lesotho-SA border; have your papers ready please!

Taking a very steep gully we got on top of the escarpment we were rewarded by amazing views from dizzying heights.  The whole plateau is on a massive escarpment with extremely dramatic cliffs.  Thus there is no easy up or down and almost every edge is a several thousand-foot drop, making walking around in high winds a bit precarious. Looking down into the river valleys was similar to looking out of an airplane, peeping though gaps in the clouds below to barely see anything below us.

I took this one laying on the edge of one of the cliffs with a smaller valley

We camped on the open grassland plateau very close to the Tugela Waterfall.  This is the second highest waterfall in the world with a 3110’ (948m) plummet into the river valley below. This is less than 100 feet shorter than Angel Falls; it’s only competition.

Quickly we became the only group of people on top of the mountain, as all the day hikers had left not willing to bear a cold winter’s night.  As the sun set we stood near the edge of the escarpment taking photos and listening to the echoing baboon calls throughout the valley below. Within minutes of the sun setting the temperature dipped below freezing and our water bottles quickly turned to ice.

Getting some shots of the cliffs (Photo credit: J.D. Welman)

Tugela Falls is where the snow is and the flat peak to the right is Sentinel Peak (Photo by: J.D. Welman)

With a stomach of hot food, Jo and I stood in the middle of the plateau and watched as the stars came out.  I have been to many remote places where light pollution is nonexistent, but this had to be one of the most spectacular displays of stars I had ever seen.  It was as if the entire sky was a thick cloud of star shine, as if the Milkway was zoomed in on.  

 

Cooking dinner and playing around with the camera (Photo credit: J.D. Welman)

The next morning the wind was whipping again, but with a long drive ahead of us and holiday traffic in our minds, we couldn’t hang around.  On our way down we decided to take the “chain ladders” instead of the gully.  I’m not a huge fan of heights, but this was just creepy.  With the entire plateau surrounded by massive cliffs the only other way on and off the escarpment was to go down two long sections of ladders.  Made of thick chains, the ladders huge the steep cliffs and are probably 25-30m high (80-90’). Without a harness and with a heavy bag on your back, the best thing to do is just talk nonsense to yourself and don’t look down.

The valleys in the bottom left are probably as high as the ones I climbed in Namibia, so this is pretty high up

Jo coming down the second ladder 

Me heading over the edge of the first ladder 

This was my first hike in the Drakensbergs and I hope to do many more. The mountains are absolutely breathtaking and the shear cliffs were quite unbelievable to stand on.  As I like to say, I don’t climb mountains for the world to see me, but rather for me to see the world; this was definitely a new view of the world!

More photos: http://imgur.com/a/Gyg2N#0

The Jakkalstrou

Something amazing happened today that would probably seem mundane to most of you. I could give you a list of people, food, and even toiletries that I miss from the U.S., but everyday that passes the thing I miss more and more is RAIN.  Yes this morning for the first time in almost 5 months it rained.  Back in the U.S. we are pretty fortunate to live with a high degree of seasonality where it usually doesn’t go more than a week or two without raining or at least being cloudy.

In South Africa there are really only two seasons: summer and winter.  Summer is also the rainy season, where almost every night earth-rumbling thunderstorms drench the dry African red earth only to be gone by the time the sun comes up without any evidence that flooding had occurred.  But winter, winter is cold and dry.  Basically from May to October it never rains, it never feels like it’s going to rain, it never looks like it’s going to rain…it’s just pristine blue skies everyday.  You might be thinking that sounds great, but after a few months of that it’s like the overly fake happy person that never stops smiling…you just want them to stop.

This morning I woke up to a completely different ambiance, the sun wasn’t shinning on my face; thunder shook my bed, and for the first time in almost 5 months I was watching it rain.

Now this isn’t supposed to happen, according to my friends it usually doesn’t rain until early October when summer returns.  Last year they said this happened the same time last August only it snowed...unheard of.

 

Jakkalstrou - Also the masked weaver birds have returned and rebuilt their nests

The best part was that it happened again this afternoon and it was a sun-shower. In Afrikaans a sun-shower is known as a Jakkalstrou or a “Jackal’s Weeding”.  This is because of an Afrikaans saying “Jakkals trou met wolf se vrou as dit reën en die son skyn flou” which comes from a tale about how “Jackal is going to marry Wolf’s wife when it rains and the sun is shining faintly”.

Tomorrow I’m off to the Drankensberg Mountains to hike through the freshly fallen snow that might be up there and be in my natural element.