On the weekend of 22-24 January, Team Cyanosis’ Ryno Griesel and Nicholas Mulder made their first attempt to break the record of the Drakensberg Grand Traverse. Weather conditions were tough, but it was finally the high altitude that was their undoing, halting our attempt after 25 hours, 38 minutes at the 89km mark of the Grand Traverse. This is the story of their adventure, as told by Nicholas.
The Grand Traverse is a 206km route along the top of the High Drakensberg from north to south. Starting at the Sentinal Car Park, challengers must visit 6 of the highest peaks along the way: Mont-Aux-Sources, Cleft Peak, Champagne Castle, Mafadi, Giants Castle and Thabana Ntlenyana, before descending at Bushmens Nek border post. The current record, held by Andrew Porter, is 61 hours and 24 minutes. We were hoping to break this mark through maintaining a consistent pace that we’ve acquired through our broad adventure racing and trail running background.
After bunking down for the night at the Sentinal Car Park chalet, we set off at 4.15am on the Friday morning into the dark. Despite the ominous weather predictions, the rain had halted at 2am, so we set off into cool and overcast, yet high visibility conditions. The ground was still soaked however, and we would have wet feet from within 50m of the fence gate all the way through to Injasuthi camp, where we finally pulled off the course.
By 4.45am, we had enough light to switch off our Petzl Ultra headlamps. The path up to the Chain Ladder is straight forward, so we conserved our batteries for the next night, when they would really be tested. Overall we had planned to be on our feet for 2-3 days, so we each had packed enough food, clothing and emergency gear accordingly. With us not carrying more than a litre or two of water (there would be more than plenty up on top of the Berg), the main weight of the backpacks was food: approximately 1.5kg for each of us. This was made up of a mixture of sandwiches, energy bars, chocolate bars, some dried fruit, sweets and our Form and Fitness carbo drink powders.
Our pacing strategy was simple: hike the ups, run the downs and do a mixture of the two on the flats, depending on how we felt. We thus hiked the path up to the chain ladder and were on top within 45 minutes of the start. Joining Ryno and I for this first section was Gert Foster, our vehicle driver, who was still testing his fitness after a hard landing on his hanglider a couple of months ago. At some stage Gert would peel off the route and return to the car, driving to meet us at the finish or earlier if we bailed out.
Our first peak, Mont-Aux-Sources, was knocked off in 1h50m. The surprise here was that the Trig Beacon that we had been aiming for is not the highest point on the mountain, so we visited this and the other point 100m away just to make sure. After the peak, the standard GT route takes a long decent down the Khubedu River valley. We encountered our first Basutho herders along this track, but encountered no problems. We didn’t even happen across a single instance of begging along our 89km route, which is quite remarkable.
We maintained a good speed to start, averaging almost 5.5km/hr over the mountainous terrain for most of the morning. Weather conditions were turning out to be ideal in a way, with high altitude cloud giving us cool and overcast conditions without rain. We slowly ticked off the kilometres: 20km and Fangs Pass, 30km and the Mweni region, 40km and Ntonjelana Ridge. This was the first ascent of the day where we started feeling the distance and the high altitude atmosphere. Gert decided it was time to cut back home and was soon descending Ntonjelana Pass, just as the weather started to close in with a good KZN thunderstorm. Unknown to us, Gert would have a horrible time descending the pass in the storm, and then battling flooding rivers as he made his way back to the Mweni access roads. Next morning he’d take a taxi back to Royal Natal and then hike back to the car park at Sentinal. We were a bit more lucky, in that we only experienced the side of the storm as the updrafts got sprayed over the top of the Berg as we hiked along the Cathedral Peak region on the way to Cleft Peak. We reached it after 11h27, just as the heavens opened the tap to full. It is in this region, that the GT gets really tough, with numerous steep climbs. There is little time to recover on the descents as they are also very steep, ensuring that we were walking and not running as hoped.
Ryno and I pushed on, although I was starting to feel quite exhausted due to the lack of oxygen at this altitude. Ryno seemed to have no such problems. We got a good respite as we started descending away from the escarpment down the Windsor Valley. We happily greeted the Basuthos going the other direction with mules laden down with big white “maize” bags. Then it was a left turn in the Yodler’s Cascades Valley. What followed was approximately 3km of the most special scenery in Lesotho. With the rivers in full force due to the heavy rain over the last few weeks, the cascades were running at full force, giving us views of incredible waterfalls, potholes and white water rapids. It was amazing to see the difference in all the Lesotho valleys, despite them all having similar geology and water catchment areas.
At the upper end of Yodler’s Cascades, we stopped to put on our night gear using the last available light. We were approximately 75km into the GT, but now 10km behind our expected target pace. On went the thermals, covered of course by our rain jackets, and our headlamps. The headlamps (Petzl Ultras) proved invaluable within minutes, as we were able to use their bright beam (about 100m on the energy conservation setting) to illuminate whole areas around us. Our layering of rain and thermal clothing was also perfect during the long cold night.
After some climbing we soon arrived on top of the ridge approach to Champagne Castle. We found ourselves in thick mist (less than 5m visibility) and were thus very happy to have a GPS, the hiking maps were now useless. We were even happier when we came across a large hiking trail along the ridge. Our eagerness soon proved our downfall as we followed it for too long, hoping despite the early warnings to the contrary that it would take us directly to Champagne Castle. We thus ended up doing extra kilometres in the mist.
The mist cleared just as we finally reached the top of Champagne Castle, although the rain continued at various intensities. It was now 19h58 into the trek, just after midnight. The last 12km of GT terrain had taken us 5 hours! I was starting to suffer badly, particularly on the uphills. This in turn led to more and more frequent route choice mistakes as we plodded through the dark. After almost walking off Champagne Castle in the wrong direction, we soon found ourselves passing the top of Ships Prow Pass and descending into the long valley behind Leslie’s Pass. Despite the flatter and easier terrain, I still found myself unable to pick up my speed. We also stopped twice for two power naps of about 15 minutes each to see if that would help me recover. There is nothing quite like lying down in the cold wet grass in a light drizzle for a bit of sleep!
Dawn broke as we neared the southern end of the Leslie Valley, with the steep climb up to Mafadi looming above us. A tough decision had to be made. Just like the dawn, I was now very broken – we had averaged less than 3 km/hr through the night and there was little hope of an increase in speed during the day. The lack of oxygen in my system had totally drained me on Day 1 and I now found myself totally exhausted with no hope of a quick recovery. Ryno was highly supportive. We recalled that our goal for this first attempt of the Grand Traverse was not to complete it at any cost, and that we would view a failed attempt positively and use the knowledge gained for a better second attempt. The decision was made after 24h38 and 89km of distance to stop and pull out of the Berg, descending Leslie’s Pass to the Injasuthi camp. The real pity was that Day 2 was looking like it would have had glorious blue skies and dry conditions!
It was 3km return back to Leslie’s Pass, then 6km down the pass to the contour path, and then a final 8km into the camp. We gave ourselves a comfortable 6 hours to do this, but even we turned out to be surprised. We alerted all our contacts via cellphone at the top of the pass that we were pulling out and managed to get instructions to Gert to meet us at Injasuthi. Leslie’s seemed to be a nice pass, at least for the first 100 metres. Then it turned menacing. Steep debris slopes, overgrown paths, slippery grassy slopes with fatal drop-offs, numerous river crossings (with rivers in flood!) and lots of bundu-bashing saw us take 4 hours to get the 6km down the pass. It has to be one of the toughest passes in the Berg. We finally turned up at Injasuthi at 1.30pm after one final river crossing of a flooded river near Injasuthi, having taken since 5am to pull out.
Despite being disappointed that we didn’t complete the whole distance on this first attempt, we’re already keen to head back to the Berg for a 2nd attempt. The 50-100km section of the GT turned out to be much tougher than we were prepared for, but we now look forward to the next attempt with the aid of better knowledge. Not only did we learn a lot about the terrain and the best tracks, but we were also able to work out what equipment and food is best suited for another attempt. Now that we know we can finish the GT in 40-50 hours, we can take a bit less food with us. We’d also drop 1 or 2 pieces of equipment that we didn’t use, even in the poor weather we had. What equipment and clothing we did make use of worked pefectly however, and we really need to thank our sponsors for their continued support of Team Cyanosis.
Stay tuned for Episode 2 of our Grand Traverse attempt, which take place in a few months time.
Team Cyanosis is proud to have the following sponsors supporting them:
– First Ascent outdoor apparel, Foodstate vitamins, Island Tribe sun lotion, Salomon and Crocs adventure, trail running and casual footwear, Petzl headlamps, Wiley X sunglasses, Mule Bar 100% natural energy bars.
– Form and Fitness sports supplements, Kreature.co.za outdoor and survival shop, O’Neill wetsuits, Specialized bikes and accessories, Summit Cycles in Midrand, Suunto field compasses and wristop computers.