Global warming is obviously happening, we had a very hot
hike, so much so that when there was an opportunity for a shortcut (which cuts
out the hike to the very top) it was unanimously accepted.
But lets start at the beginning, got there on Friday night
with only one person missing, that was Tony, who got lost somewhere and decided
to abandon. Jenny came the next morning, she had a party with some Finnish
people the previous night. We have been here before, but not in this camp (I
have forgotten the name). What was annoying was that we are not allowed to drive
to the camp, despite the fact that the road is pretty reasonable. One has to
make use of their Landrover transport at R50 a trip. And than another R50 for
the return back to the cars.
The next morning the hike started, we had to find the way
to the other camp, where we had stayed before, to pick up the start of the
trail. This was done following a winding road that probably was twice the
distance of the straight line. The straight line, by the way, was 900m.
From this camp we picked up the trail and went up the
mountain, but didn’t make it to the top, the heat got us and drove us down
towards the gorge. Water was nowhere to be seen and only when some of us took
another shortcut on the return trip, which took us down and out through the
gorge, did we find some flowing water. Everybody got thoroughly soaked with
water being splashed.
The return to our camp was by straight line from the other
camp thanks to my GPS. The participants were most impressed.
Evening proceedings were minimal and consisted of chitchat
and solving the problems of the world.
The Sunday morning walk was into the kloof, but we did it
the other way around, walking up along and entering the gorge at the exit point.
We did this so that we could make use of the more cool period of the day to be
out in the open. In the gorge we were mostly under trees and it was pleasantly
cool.
And that was that, home we went.