Adventures through the Cederberg

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

or a better girl

[Smiley73]

Day 10:

 

I had a good night’s sleep, and breakfast was good, but that didn’t stop the trepidation ahead of the cycle today. I packed everything up and got my bags in the bus. We were going to get dropped off a little bus ride away before we started cycling (along a different route). While we waited for the bus, we messed around with the rugby ball and moved down to the airstrip, oh yeah the airstrip, I forgot about that. Basically for some reason this place has a dirt airstrip, which I guess would be fine for light aircraft. The bus did eventually arrive and we had a 10 minute or so drive to our starting point where I collected a bike, helmet and water bottle. Also I have learnt my lesson and wore gloves.

 

My plan here was to take it slow, hell I’d even walk the entire way, as long as I didn’t fall. At the start I waited for most of the guys to start off before starting myself, just to escape some of that chaos. I actually did pretty well, mostly because this was on pretty flat ground with no down-hills. I must remind you that it’s the down-hills that get me, I can ride a bike fine, my muscles check out I just don’t have a head for going down-hill.

 

I did actually catch up and overtake some guys before we got to our first stop next to a sign proclaiming “Niewoudt’s pass”. Niewoudt’s pass is the stuff Epic nightmare are made off, at least if years prior are to be believed. Niewoudt’s pass was made by a farmer who owns much of the land in the Cederberg (at least his family made the road; this is the same family that owns Jamaka). The pass is a big slope that goes on for a while, it’s not at a crazy angle or anything, just enough to make cycling a mare. As always, we don’t let a good photo opportunity go to waste so we packed in by the sign for a big group photo.

 

The pass wasn’t actually too bad going up, even if you were an idiot about it. Essentially my strategy here was to cycle any straight-ish parts and walk up the inclines; this served me well all the way up to the top. At the top there was a nice stop place where we put our bikes down and got bar-ones and oreos. The rest of the way had more little hills and I was really cautious here. The teacher driving the support vehicle even got bleak with me for going too slow, which I ignored completely, ‘cause there’s no way in hell I’m going faster than I feel comfortable with.

 

It felt really good getting back to Algeria all in one piece, I put my bike down and joined the rest of the guys. We rested for a bit and then walked from Algeria to Jamaka which was pretty uneventful. Although the people at Waterbase told us a big, fat lie when they said Jamaka was 2 kilometers away, more like 7. Actually, cool story, Jamaka is made up of the first two letters of some of the family members who own it (the Niewoudt’s), JAnnie; MArie; KAtrin to make Jamaka. Jamaka is actually a proper campsite so there were normal people there as well, but not anywhere near us really, just in the area. We stopped walking basically at the first camp spot we found, which was a grassy area with a couple trees. We stayed here until some guys volunteered to find where the teachers, and our proper camp was. Once those guys came back and started leading the way we set off.

 

“SNAKE!” is what I heard, which surprised me seeing as I hadn’t seen one yet and we were in the not more than 20 meters from where everyone was set out waiting. Unsurprisingly the snake (a juvenile Puff Adder, from what I saw) was slithering away for its life after hearing so many boys walk past, so it wasn’t going to bother anyone. At our proper campsite we found two tables stacked with foodstuffs, which the Red group attacked with gay abandon.

 

The Red group was first to leave on solo (24 hours on your own, more tomorrow) at about 3 pm. At about 4 – 4:30 pm the teachers had got the red group to their solo spots, and then they got our group together to start the GPS challenge (sounds fun).

 

The basic idea is you get a GPS a set of co-ordinates and instruction on a sheet of paper. You go to the co-ordinates; find the place described and measure/count/do what they want you to do. There was something like 16 things on the list. I went in a group with Guy and Stephen (picture of Stephen pending). Most of the time you had to measure things (distance between posts or around rocks), sometime it was counting (tiles in men’s shower block, number of fence-posts), on one we even had to calculate the circumference of a wheel (using a formula any schoolboy should know of course, except one group of guy who used the formula for the area of a circle instead of the circumference, maths LOL!). Guy contributed smartness, Stephen a compass, and me general awesomeness/helping. Apparently that was enough because not only did we finish first (even though the winner is accuracy based), we won the entire competition AND set a new Bishops record, 30mm off the measurements the teachers got, which is even more amazing when you consider our answer was around 28 000mm. Was it Luck? I don’t care I got myself a slab of chocolate, and our group got a 2L Coke.

 

 

[Smiley73]

Pictures:

Juvenile Puff Adder (the one I saw, looked a lot thinner than this one, also it was slithering away, not in a strike postion):

 

 

Stephen Crowther is the one without the hat:

 

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

love the snake - it's a beauty.

[Smiley73]

also Puff Adders are dangerous (from Wikipedia page):

Normally a sluggish species that relies on camouflage for protection. Locomotion is primarily rectilinear, using their broad ventral scales in a caterpillar fashion and aided by their own weight for traction. When agitated, they can resort to a typical serpentine movement and move with surprising speed.^[/url] Although mainly terrestrial, these snakes are good swimmers and can also climb with ease; often they are found basking in low bushes. One specimen was found 4.6 m above the ground in a densely branched tree.

 

If disturbed, they will hiss loudly and continuously, adopting a tightly coiled defensive posture with the fore part of their body held in a taut "S" shape. At the same time, they may attempt to back away from the threat towards cover. They may strike suddenly and at a high speed, to the side as easily as forwards, before returning quickly to the defensive position, ready to strike again. During a strike, the force of the impact is so strong, and the long fangs penetrate so deeply, that prey items are often killed by the physical trauma alone. The fangs are apparently able to penetrate soft leather.

 

They can strike to a distance of about one third of their body length, but juveniles will launch their entire bodies forwards in the process. These snakes rarely grip their victims, instead releasing quickly to return to the striking position.

 

 

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

dangerous and beutiful. excellent combination.

[Smiley73]

Incredibly dangerous, a boy stepped on a Puff Adders head on the Epic before ours, luckily for him he had boots on so the snake got stomped and he was fine, unlucks for snake though

 

They are the laziest snakes in the world, which makes them more dangerous because they are less likely to run away fast like most snakes

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

we have rattlesnakes here, but nobody ever gets bit. they're not lazy i guess.

[Smiley73]

rattlesnakes are nice, give you lots of warning I guess

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

and they get eaten by wild turkeys so i kinda feel bad for them.

[Smiley73]

wild turkeys? really...

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

very small ones, but that's how the cats get rid of all the rabbits and birds. eat the babies.

[Smiley73]

OK so only the baby rattlesnakes get chowed, that makes sense, actually, the baby or juvenile snakes can be more dangerous because they don't always know how to control their venom, so instead of giving you a "standard shot" they might just empty all their venom into you and if that happens, it's game over

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

and they're crunchy and wriggly and tasty

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

like all babies

[Smiley73]

*insert dead baby joke here*

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

they're not wriggly then.

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

so please do not

[Smiley73]

Day 11:

 

The plan for today is to go off to a school in the morning and then to go on solo in the afternoon, swapping out the Red group guys who were there yesterday and today. The atmosphere at Jamaka is pretty nice, the teachers leave you alone until activities and most of the day is spent doing mostly nothing, so I spent a lot of time today and yesterday just talking with guys and getting to know everyone better, along with the usual banter and fun-poking.

 

The school here was bigger and better with about 40 kids I think. We made Christmas crackers, read stories, had some biscuits and drew picture like at the previous school. There was also general rowdy-ness with bean-bags and some cricket to end it off. After we were done at the school we got driven back, had some lunch and got ready to go on the solo.

 

The quickest way to describe the solo is 24 hours on your own. You aren’t really on your own though, in reality you’re about 20 meters away from each other so if anything happens to you; you can shout and get some help from the guys around you. Each solo spot is right next to a river so you have water. In addition to staying alone you also get a letter from your father.

 

Go back about 3 years from right now when I in Grade Eight and in Geography class. Not just any Geography class, my teacher for that year was Mr. Hanley, the guy who made and managed the Epic, until his death halfway through last year. My thought on the Epic then was basically something that I wanted to avoid at all costs. Now the way to avoid Epic is to go on Exchange to a school in another country, which I applied for but I got fully denied. I was pretty angry about that, ‘cause it ended up being a lot more political and biased than it should be. By that time my feelings towards the Epic weren’t as hostile but the thing that made me start thinking about going on Epic was the Father’s letter. It just seemed like a really cool idea to have.

 

Actually getting to the solo sites was a little challenge because of the fact that we were going completely off the beaten trail, so it took some RAWRing to get through all the foliage. Mine was the fourth spot upriver and pretty nice. Basically it was a sandy rectangle area about 3 meters long and one meter wide with lots of plant growth on one side; on the other side was a section of river. The river was nice and wide where I was, but still pretty fast flowing. It went in to about waist level at the deepest; also it was inhabited by FISHEZ! Well small fishes, sandy colour and about as big as my palm in length. The foliage around was mostly trees and some shrubs but it was really thick on both sides of the river.

 

I set out my camp pretty early on then swam mostly just to get myself slightly more clean, I then attempted to clean my hiking clothes, with mild success. I also catched up on writing my journal, ‘cause until now I’ve been a couple days behind the pace. Otherwise I opened and read my Father’s and Mother’s letters (my mom wrote one too, which isn’t against any rules). The rest of the day I spent laying around eating a bit of food that I packed into my Solo box. You pack in food for your day on solo in a box so that the teachers can give it to you when you need instead of carrying, the same thing happens with the second hikes food. I had a nice big meal and went to sleep more or less as soon as the sun went down.

 

This is mostly a random, all the time sort of thing that happened, but the sky in the Cederberg is awesome. I’ve been on another school camp up to the Namibia border river rafting. Both there and in the Cederberg it is very sparsely populated with next to no light pollution so the sky is bursting dull of stars. I’ve never been good at getting constellations but I can usually, and did, get Orion the hunter, and on one of the hiking days I even saw Scorpio, which I had never done before, which was pretty cool, because for some reason seeing a bunch of stars can be cool.

 

Next time I review Epic so far!

 

 

[Crimson_Ayla]

This is mostly a random, all the time sort of thing that happened, but the sky in the Cederberg is awesome. I’ve been on another school camp up to the Namibia border river rafting. Both there and in the Cederberg it is very sparsely populated with next to no light pollution so the sky is bursting dull of stars. I’ve never been good at getting constellations but I can usually, and did, get Orion the hunter, and on one of the hiking days I even saw Scorpio, which I had never done before, which was pretty cool, because for some reason seeing a bunch of stars can be cool.

 

Stars are beautiful. I have been trying so hard not to say I am extremely jealous throughout all of this. But I am :) One day I am going to go somewhere like this where there is absolutely no light pollution. I have decided that is my New Year's resolution. But probably not for this year...

[Smiley73]

hmm South Africa is good and safe, no joking there, Australia too

[Smiley73]

Day 12:

 

Yes we are nearing the end of the Epic, tomorrow I leave on my group’s solo hike, straight through to the end of the Epic. The solo would end at about 3pm which is more or less the time that we came in to the spots. The morning and afternoon was pretty uneventful, I spent a lot of time lazing around, sitting on a rock with my legs in the river and generally just enjoying a break. The only other thing to say is that my spot is pure awesomeness and has served me very well. Actually all I have seen today have been a couple spiders and skinks, and I got slightly better acquainted with teh fishiez.

 

So seeing as you probably want more than, “Nothing happened”. I’m going to just summarise the big things that have happened. What has been happening is breaking records, some bad and some good, I mean just yesterday Stephen, Guy and me set a new record in the GPS challenge, and I nearly came to be the only boy ever to go to Waterbase who was not able to ski. What has happened this year that seems slightly worrying is the amount of people who have been taken off Epic, some people for bringing on stupid stuff (ie. Cigarettes, one for marijuana), lots of people also got taken off for injuries (ankle injuries, heat stroke, dehydration etc.).

 

Now this was the first drug bust on the Epic ever and the first one in something like 25 years if you count the Adventure course as well. As I’ve said one person got bust with marijuana and three (but I suspect even more) got bust for cigarettes. About 10 or so other people got taken off for other injuries, some for a couple days in hospital some for the entire Epic. If you do remember the guy who fell 15 meters on the abseil, he is now fine, no broken leg, just bruising, he took a few days off and even finished the Epic with his group (but I suspect that he did not hike).

 

I have also decided that I will go to the last day of school almost solely to hear what our headmaster says about this (he gave the entire debacle about 2 lines).

 

After the solo I found my way back to camp and then collected my box with food for the next two nights hiking. People were doing massive giveaways of food as people realized that they had packed too much. People were especially raunchy after solo. But that was t be expected. Tomorrow we leave and Epic’s end will begin.

 

 

[Smiley73]

Pictures!:

 

At the school:

 

 

 

After solo, people got raunchy, and yes that's proper Korean right there:

 

[Smiley73]

Day 13:

 

Last night the wind howled, there was a little sand and STEPHEN WOULD NOT STOP TALKING! I swear he kept me up for two hours. Breakfast was up at the house the teachers are staying at and was nice. After breakfast and preliminary map consulting, we worked out our basic route for the hike. First off though was a 7 kilometer walk all the way back to Algeria, walking into the wind, which just like last night was HOWLING. At Algeria we had a rest and then consulted the map again trying to figure out exactly where we had had to go, where our stops would be etc.

 

Our walk started by going out of Algeria along a road towards Big Bend, which I assume would be the obvious bend in the road you could see in the map. While walking a couple cars drove past, some associated with our school, some not. What was lucky was that Mr. Court drove by and stopped at Big Bend and told us a little about our route. The next part of our hike would be going uphill through Klein Duiwelsgat (Small Devil’s Arse – evidently a mission from the name). From what Mr. Court said, about half an hour up there was a nice cold pool. Mr. Court also said that we could easily make it all the way through to Sneeuberg hut today, which would basically cut out our entire second day of hiking (ie. We would hike the first two days in one day), on top of that Mr. Court also said that he might be able to come to Sneeuberg hut and take us up Sneeuberg (the highest mountain in the Cederberg, Sneeuberg means Snow Mountain, just by the way).

 

Anyway the hike up Klein Duiwelsgat was too much for some people and part of the group was getting agitated. I’d cut them a break as well, it is HOT in all that foliage. After about half an hour we got to the pools which were towards the top of Klein Duiwelsgat near to the pass that the path goes onto. In terms of where we were on the map, our camping site for our first day was about half an hour’s walk away, so we decided to man up and do the second day as well, because it’d be more fun that way. Of course no one wanted to go during the hottest part of an already hot day (ie 11am – 1pm). So we rested at one spot for nearly three hours, the hike we were on was that easy. The pools here were basically a small river running through a rocky area and forming a couple pools, a way downstream was a pool big and deep enough for us to dunk ourselves in. Did I mention they were cold, because they were COLD, I started losing feeling in my toes after about five minutes. After I had sin dried and got back up to where we were set up I got lunch ready and chilled during the peak of the day.

 

We did eventually get moving, unfortunately is was still hot, which was made worse by the fact that Ozzie made us stop for a group photo, in the heat, what was he thinking? Well anyway through the heat we kept on hiking. I was leading in the front, because apparently I set a nice pace, although I did trip and fall and open my hand, but we stopped and that got taped up good, but I did hurt the middle finger on my right hand which hurts a lot when I pull it into my palm, hopefully, this doesn’t affect me too much when we go up Sneeuberg.

 

Towards the end of that day’s hike the path went along the sides of mountains which gave a beautiful view with mountains all around and a steep drop (which we didn’t go down). So skirting around the drop we went up Duiwelsgat proper, which wasn’t as bad as advertised by other groups, and they were going DOWN Duiwelsgat, maybe our group is just more epic (pun unintended).

 

Straight out of Duiwelsgat there was a big pillar of rock where we waited for the stragglers. The path changed a little bit here, with the path being flat and straight but with rocks put in the paths, sometimes arbitrarily and sometimes to form steps. We walked along this place for a worryingly long time as the sunlight was dying. So I was walking mostly thinking of nothing at all, which happens a lot while hiking when I hear Ozzie (who was behind me) shout, okay not shout, he screamed like a little girl, but for good reason. In between two rocks was a black-ish looking snake, I say black-ish because that what it looked like from a little distance and I was definitely not getting closer to that thing than I needed to be. It looked to be a baby or else very young because it looked pretty thin and it was in a pretty small crack. I tried to work out where its head was when I heard it hiss and saw some movement which I guess was the mouth opening. I didn’t need any more warning and took a brisk pace to leave the snake alone. Apparently it was another puff-adder. I wonder what would have happened if Ozzie hadn’t have noticed it because I walked right on by, didn’t even see it.

 

Shortly afterwards we spotted two people waving to us and suspected that they were near the Sneeuberg hut, which gave us some relief. The two people there were actually stooges from our school. Apparently they had been there for a week or so, with minimal human contact besides us and were pretty ecstatic to see other people. Apparently they saw another passing group (not from our school) and got a few ultra hard Sudoku puzzles from one guy, from the intense boredom, they had both finished all their puzzles and resorted to copying out the puzzles on blank pieces of paper so they could do the others puzzle. Yes they were very excited to see other people.

 

I got my stuff sorted out quickly, but I decided not to sleep in the hut, I like it outside, plus inside has all this dried plant matter used to soften the cement floor, and I didn’t like the look of that. Tomorrow seems like it will be a chilled day, besides going up Sneeuberg, we have heard bad things of that place, at least from the groups that have gone there, but I seriously doubt it is as hard as they say, or maybe, like I said before, our group is made out of pure unadulterated awesomeness.

 

 

[Smiley73]

Day 14:

 

Just a quick recap: Our group is at Sneeuberg hut, with two stooges who will take us up Sneeuberg (Mr. Court told them to by SMS on the satellite phone). Now since We’d already done two days of hiking in one day so all the pressure was off, at least with getting to our destinations.

 

Today was a late start, we only got moving at about 11am and that was to a little pool where some guys got in the water, did some backflips, no big deal. While everyone was drying off there some people went round and round in circles about whether they wanted to go or not, it was actually quite comic. I had resolved a while ago that I was going up there. At about 12 we collected our bags from the hut and went off.

 

All the talk about going or not going had gotten on my nerves that day and I was feeling slightly miffed. Fortunately I didn’t take this out on any of my fellows, weirdly enough I just hiked a lot faster, and was doing more awesome stuff. I was setting a higher pace doing cool little jumps off rocks, it was actually pretty awesome, it was also nice to see how much better I’d gotten at hiking, eventually you don’t feel the pack and the heat and you just walk.

 

We stopped near the base of Sneeuberg next to a sphere-ish rock with a river running about 2 meters away. We had a quick lunch here, and then we left our packs behind and started summiting Sneeuberg, the highest mountain in all the Cederberg, plus if we finished this one, we will have summated all the three highest peaks in the Cederberg. Getting up was a mild challenge the path was pull of zigzags and was made of loose scree so you had to be careful with your footing We stopped where the ground (ie. soil) ended and the terrain turned to rock. We left our daypacks with our drinks here, I left my hat as well, it gets windy 2000 meters above the sea.

 

Now from Tafelberg red we heard scary things about Sneeuberg, once again we must all just be more awesome, because we all got to the top fine. The peaking here wasn’t physically really difficult just there was a whole lot of rock to negotiate, and big drops, really big drops, just as an example there was a part where one stooge, Paul told me “be careful there’s a drop after the tunnel”, no kidding there was a frikkin’ cliff a meter away from that tunnel.

 

So we spent a whole lot of time negotiating various obstacles, climbing, crawling, sprawling, contorting, squeezing etc. near the peak, clouds would form, blow over the top of the mountain and then go over the other side and disappear, and it looked sick. The actual peak is somewhat flat with quite a few random slabs of rocks place around, and the view is insane. We were lucky, the wind was pretty low, considering how high we were and it wasn’t too cold.

 

Going down I actually got closer to hurting myself than going up. Dayne nearly killed me by dislodging a sharp rock with its point pointing at me, about a fist big, that hit my arm where my head would have been in about a second, so lucky save, I don’t know if I would be conscious if that thing hit me in my temple (and it was coming side on). The other time was coming down a rock slab, where I could just not get enough purchase to get a grip so I kept sliding down, the mildly freaking out and attempting it again, here I was helped down by Paul the stooge. Getting down the scree path was slow work, having to make even more sure of every step.

 

Once down, the stooges left as fast as they could, they were going to be picked up by a place called the Maltese cross parking lot, and were keen to get some beers, can’t blame them for that. Now I saw the Maltese Cross from the top of Sneeuberg, what I saw was a giant pillar of rock mildly resembling a fist, which it still looked like close up, but others said this was the Maltese Cross. Now we were supposed to camp here but the group voted to head onto the Maltese Cross parking lot. Now for my own reasons I had wanted to stop, and in the interest of transparency I will say that I whined a bit at not stopping at the first chance we got, not something I’m particularly proud of, but yeah I had my reasons.

 

The spot wasn’t actually that bad, it was a bit of a walk to get water, but I ended up being happy we spent the time doing that section that day. Tomorrow is the last day of hiking, and for all intents and purposes the end of Epic, so stay tuned!