Adventures through the Cederberg

[Smiley73]

So I'm sure some of you will know about the 16 hike I went on (Called the Epic). Seeing as it was pretty awesome, I kept a diary of events (sort of) and I'll be typing them out and posting them here, one everyday starting today, one week after I returned home. I'll be editing this post with the page number that each diary post is on. You are all welcome to ask questions on what happened each day, of course I can't tell you about anything that happens later though, that would ruin the story! Otherwise I will put up the first diary entry later today.

 

Just to clarify this camp / hike that I will refer to as the Epic was organised by my school, as it has been for the last three years. The grade 10 year all attend epic and it runs during the school term, before Christmas holidays. There are 120 or so boys who went on epic an we are all split up into 5 groups with about 25 or so boys in each group, each group is then further split into smaller groups of about 12. The big group names are all peaks in the Cederberg and the groups were subdivided into red and blue groups. I was in Tafelberg (Table Mountain - no not the famous one in Cape Town, there's one in the Cederberg as well) Blue.

 

Now the area I went to is nearly entirely Afrikaans-speaking, so I'll translate anything in Afrikaans to English, also my the original Afrikaan's farmers who named everything in the Cederberg wern't too imaginative so the names are very simple, e.g. The highest mountain in the Cederberg on which snow occasionally falls is called Sneeuberg - Snow Mountain, Simple right?

 

That's it for my first post, feel free to comment a bit while I get my first post done.

 

EDIT:

The plan for my groups Epic is as follows:

3 nights at a base camp called Sandrif

3 nights hiking with two teachers

3 nights at Waterbase

3 nights at a base camp called Jamalka (one of which is the solo)

2 nights hiking without a teacher

Last night with Fathers

[Niniel]

This is going to be exciting. Who needs tv? So many questions need to be answered. How many survived? Did you eat the dead students or did the lions take them? How many times did you think about pushing a teacher down the top of the mountain?

 

*makes popcorns*

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

*comments*

 

thank you for unboring me, looking forward to more.

[Smiley73]

This is going to be exciting. Who needs tv? So many questions need to be answered. How many survived? Did you eat the dead students or did the lions take them? How many times did you think about pushing a teacher down the top of the mountain?

 

*makes popcorns*

 

1. Who needs tv, when you can laugh at my many misfortunes/triumphs

2. Only those I spared

3. No Lions in the Cederberg, but there are leopardsand Caracal and African Wildcats, all of which aren't much of a threat, especially to humans

4. None really, but I did think of myself falling over a couple times

 

and yes popcorns would be nice, but only if my topping and be butter Taint

[Smiley73]

Editted first post missed some very important info about Epic plan

[Smiley73]

Edit: I will put the post here when it's done

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

*comments to keep it on watch list*

[Smiley73]

Day 1:

(We had to arrive at school at about 6 to leave on the busses, the journey to get to the Cederberg took 3-4 hours)

 

22^nd November 1:56 PM

 

The bus trip (to the Cederberg) has been delayed twice today, one by boys coming late to the bus and then by a crash that forced us to turn around and take a different route. I got a little sleep on the bus but most of the day was spent waiting on busses or for busses. The first bus we got on took us to a campsite called Algeria, and then two smaller busses took the red and blue groups of Tafelberg to our first base-camp called Sanddrif (Sand Drift is my best guess). The campsite is actually really nice, considering where we are in the world. We are sleeping in cement bungalows with bunk beds, which are pretty comfortable. The bungalows have tin roofs and house a few spiders, but they’re not bothering anyone. There is a river running nearby to the campsite that is nearly completely hidden from sight by very tall grass/ bamboo type plant The blue group has taken one room of the structure and the red group took the other. There is a separate area where all the supplies are kept. There’s a fridge, a couple taps, gas stoves, a braai* pit and further out there is an ablution block, also no snakes in sight yet (to belay those boys who morbidly fear the Epic). Lunch was bread with margarine/ peanut butter/ chicken mayo and the activity after lunchtime will be abseiling, which can’t be too bad.

 

4:27 PM

 

Abesiling did not happen for our group today, but we did go down to a place called Maalgat (Mincing bowl – a very nice name). It’s basically a small waterfall that has carved out a massive basin with steep drops on all sides. Of course people now jumped of those sides, but it’s all safe. I jumped twice, once from 8 meters up and once from 12 meters. I wasn’t really afraid of jumping or the height, but I was just ‘unwilling’ as best as I can describe it, I took the medium (8 meter) jump first just to get me used to it and nothing too bad happened, I was underwater for longer than I expected/ accounted for while falling so I was grateful to get to the surface. I took a slow swim to where you climb out, getting over the shock of hitting the water. In a little bit I went up to the higher 12 meter jumped and took it pretty well, nothing went spectacularly wrong but I did hurt my knees slightly from jumping. Actually the second time water hit my mouth pretty hard and when I had swum away a bit I had a slightly bloody, metallic taste in my mouth. On the inside of my mouth, in line with the middle of my mouth I have a little piece of gum/ mouth lining stuff that connects my gums with my inner lip. That got cut/ damaged/ ripped off from the water coming into my mouth but it didn’t hurt too bad and I never really notice it through the Epic.

 

7:15 PM

 

About to make a braai* supper, but during the afternoon a couple boys went across the river to the rocky hills on the other side and started the now glorious past time of ‘rock trundling’. I was happily spectating as some of the boys (from both groups) got involved pushing/levering rocks down small cliffs and ledges

 

*A braai is a traditional South African barbeque, mainly consisting of meat put onto griddles over hot coals, more information on this friendly Wikipedia link!

 

Hopefully people will start posting pictures that I can get to you soon

 

 

[Smiley73]

Day 2:

 

23^rd November 8:43 AM

 

I woke up a lot earlier than everybody else and had breakfast with a couple other early birds. Basically the teachers come down in a minibus morning and afternoons to take us to activities and with them they bring the food for the next meal. Up until now we’ve made some serious measures rationing food so that no-one ends of not having a meal, but yeah, not eating too much as is, not like it’s a worry, or I’m walking around feeling hungry, I just normally would like to feel more full after a meal.

 

The current theory on why that is besides “Our school is too cheap to buy us more food”, is that the rationing is supposed to make the groups start talking/ get people on edge from all this negotiation, rationing and small portions.

 

8:43 PM

 

Aaah Foooood! And lots of it, chicken, toasted cheese, and (HOMEMADE) Apple pie + custard. So yeah, we’re all in high spirits now.

 

Today we went to Stadsaal, which is just a rocky hillside type place that is filled with San cave paintings and boer war hiding spots. After our teacher took us on a basic tour we had half an hour to mill around/explore and get to the busses. While going back the adventurous route, I COMPLETELY parried out going onto a ledge with little grips and quite a fall down. I was at the back anyway so this way I was falling way behind. I just sat inside a little alcove until I finally got over myself, manned up and carried on. Of course now I had fallen really behind and only had a basic understanding of what direction I had to go. So I used my head and got up to a high ridge and just kept on walking until I saw the guys congregated at the bus, not even very worried about my disappearance, which I guess is better than them all going inane looking for me.

 

We got taken back to the camp and had a long chill until the bus came to take us for our Leopard Trust activity. The Leopard Trust basically just tags the leopards around the area, tracks their movements and killsites, that sort of thing. To that end when we hike we get given some equipment that we can use to collect bones from a killsite and get the GPS position. Today we went with the guy, hike up a mountain and changed some batteries on a motion capture camera which I know researchers use around the world to get pictures of animals, like the snow leopards in the Himalaya regions of Asia, so this was pretty legit. Well we changed the batteries and had a look at the pictures. There were hares, baboons as well as an African Wildcat, but no leopard. The hiking was pretty hard on my knees and I was going slowly on the downhills (not because I was out of breath or because my knees were hurting too much, I’m just slow on downhills).

 

Then as we were driving back th guide stopped and said that he had a GPS signal from a leopard, so we all got excited, hoping we’d see it. Unfortunately though after a little driving around and a lot of waiting, the guide determined that the leopard was one the other side of a mountain, and with light fading fast, we wouldn’t be going after it.

 

I’m still doing alright, no major problems... yet. Tomorrow I go to the school and abseil

 

 

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

you handing this in at school too?

[Smiley73]

no, schools been over for more than a week now, I'm doing this for my own record and for you guys

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

thanks.

[Smiley73]

Day 3:

 

24^TH November 6:31 PM

 

This morning we went to a school in the area. Of course we’re out pretty far from any big settlements so this was just one classroom with 17 children from grade 3 – 7 I believe. After they finish Primary school the children go on to a school in a nearby town called Clanwilliam where they board at the school. We did all sorts of activities with them, played a little soccer and generally had a nice time. One thing that was strange to me was the way all the girls were messing around with my hair. Apparently it’s because of my hair type. You see the people who work on the farm around here have really curly hair, really curly as in it forms little clumps in their hair instead of straight-ish lines, which is more like what I’ve got I’ll see if I can get a picture of stereotypical coloured hair to help explain.

 

 

I guess the hair was more like the girl in the bottom right, hopefully I'll be able to get some proper pictures when they get uploaded to facebook, until then this is the best I got

 

Then came lunch and abseiling. Abseiling really was not that bad, we walked up to the spot got out gear on. There were two guys taking us for the abseil, an old boy from our school, Peter (who lost an eye earlier that year when a surfboard whacked him there while surfing in Finland), the other guy was Matt Bush, one of the best rock climbers in South Africa (according to Guy, and he knows his climbing). I got lowered down first with guy and we made Matt made quite a show of drooping us large distances before letting us stop. After the abseiling we had a really long time with the campsite to ourselves while the Red group were out with the Leopard Trust.

 

I had a great big chop for an early supper and our group was all chilling around the fire, everything was relatively quiet and then the bus filled with the Red group comes in and its like a massive wall of noise and profanities hits us, all of them complaining about how far they had to hike or whatever and I just looked dimly down upon them.

 

Also GUY IS THE MOST USELESS REGULAR HIKER EVER!!!

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

I'm quite enjoying these, smiley. wish I'd done this kinda thing so I could remember stuff better.

[Aiel Heart]

I enjoying too :)

[Smiley73]

YAY! responses, just wait till the next post where we start hiking

[Smiley73]

All these pictures are of Maalgat, enjoy!

 

 

 

 

[Smiley73]

Day 4:

 

Firstly I think I should explain Guy. Now Guy is one of my best friends and so when we were given a chance to choose one person we wanted to be in our epic groups, I chose him without any hesitation. Now Guy is probably the most Aryan bloodstock person I have ever met, blond hair, blue eyes, (ultra) smart, strong, you get the picture, right. Not to mention that he’s an experienced hiker and even goes out to the Cederberg, more than occasionally, to climb, as in rock climbing. Guy is also the best rock climber in his age group in South Africa, the only reason he’s no competing internationally is because he can’t afford the airfare. Yeah so Guy’s pretty insane, but he has a tendency to do pretty randomly stupid stuff. Like saying 3*3*3 = 9, this was his only mistake on one of those maths Olympiads.

 

So now that you know Guy I can go on making references to his mistakes/insaneness.

 

So we had been told the night before that our group (Tafelberg Blue) had to be up and ready by 6AM to start hiking with our teacher, the dreaded and scary Mr. Court (I’ll explain why he was dreaded/scary a bit later). So seeing as waking up at around 5 AM to have time to pack up, etc. would be hard, Guy said he would set his alarm for 5. Unfortunately We get woken up at 5:40 AM, because Guy SET HIS ALARM FOR 5PM instead. So we all were scrambling to and fro to get started because, apparently Mr. Court don’t wait for latecomers. It was fine for me as I was pretty muched packed up before I went to sleep last night, but some weren’t as prepared. SO I grabbed breakfast with Guy and a few other people and went off towards where the teachers were staying (in nice little cottages, no anything like our bungalows). Apparently Mr. Court was also quite late in getting up, which suited us just fine so we went back to where he was directing us and waited for everyone to arrive. The rest of group arrived shortly, and Mr. Court came as well, bringing Mr Theron (say “Tron”) much to my dismay (this will also be explained later). Now Mr. Court had to go back with two other boys to get us gas cookers, while the rest of us got final preparations done, fill water bottles, put on sunscreen and whatnot. When they got back we all seemed to get brand new ones, which also suited us just fine, I’m sharing one with Guy, but everyone carries an extra gas canister. We are also getting the GPS phones from the group walking into Sanddrif who we will pass on our way. Our route would start by going through a pace called the Valley of the Red Gods and go up Wolfberg Cracks.

 

Now another side description:

 

Mr. Court: He’s a geography teacher at our school and a seriously fit hiker, despite the fact that I think he’s pushing mid – fifties at the least. Also there are horror tales from the year before us of how hard he will push you or whatever. Our group has now concluded that the year before us was filled with a bunch of wusses. Also he is not supernatural seeing that he overslept just like us which was heartening for me to notice. He is also probably the most knowledgeable teacher about the Cederberg in our school so we would probably always be able to get water etc.

 

Mr Theron (“Tron”/”Tron Legacy”): A new teacher at our school, he started out this year and so this is his first Epic. He is a SERIOUS Christian, like I’m not joking he is a legit missionary. He actually tried converting one of the boys in our group who is a Jew. He gets bleak when we swear and does not take kindly to people saying “Oh my God!” or “Jesus”, which made me crack up laughing, a lot (at the fact he takes it so seriously). He took it so seriously he talked to some guys saying how he noticed some people were saying “Oh my G-O-D”, yes he spelt it out because he didn’t want to blaspheme. So our group had quite a laugh at the sort of seriousness he took with his religion.

 

Now moving on from those descriptions, we started in walking toward and through the Valley of the Red Gods, which was a pretty nice start, it was mostly just flat track. The Valley of the Red Gods is so named because the ground, soil and rocks there are all reddish, not to mention the hundreds of rock pillars and formation coming out of the ground. We stopped and waited for everyone when we got to a sign saying “Wolfberg Cracks”. This path was zigzagging and climbing a MASSIVE amount of altitude in a short amount of space, this was pretty hard going and I nearly pulled my calf muscles going up, we had a short stop, where I tried to stretch it out. I also noticed most of everyone else was also taking it pretty hard and my entire back was just covered in sweat, well we kept on going, got some water a little further on from a really inconspicuous spring underneath a big rock and continued until we got to a nice shady spot (now when I say shady, its because of the rock covering out the sun, vegetation in the Cederberg is all fynbos, which is basically, small shrubs, where not much gets above waist level, and some plant are spiky, I hate spiky plants, at least now I do). We rested here and Mr. Court explained that we were going up TWO cracks (cracks as in a crack in the rocks). The big crack, that we took our bags through, was exactly that, a really big crack that was easy to get through and was wide and cool and really nice, when we got to the other side, we dropped our bags and went back through the big crack to where we had stopped, which was where the small crack was. Let me just say now how much lighter I felt without my pack on.

 

The small cracks start off with a squeezy section with very little light available, almost completely black, this place was aptly called the Birth Canal. Then we Mr. Court spotted some Danes (as in people from Denmark), I would never have guessed actually, because their accents was very similar to our own, but they followed us from behind when Mr. Court invited them to take the fun way with us. The rest of the way was pretty easy and basic until we got to a place called the Coffin (pretty cool, the small crack starts with the Birth Canal and ends with the Coffin). This was also very squeezy but in a different way. In the Birth Canal you are sandwiched between two rocks in a sort of standing position. Going through the coffin you go through on your belly or your back and slither through under a rock that is stuck in the small crack (the actual crack is about half a meter across, maybe a bit more), sort of like the rock in 127 hours, but much closer to the ground, so I squeezed underneath on my belly and then when I was on the other side I had to do this weir d thing of grabbing the rock in front of me while arching my back in so I avoided hitting the rock, which was uncomfortable to say the least, but I got through and up the rest of the cracks to join the rest of the boys at the top while Mr. Court helped the boy behind me and the two Danes. They came out eventually and went their own way but at the top of the cracks we also met a lone hiker who was going the same way as us (camping the same place as us), so Mr. Court suggested another place where he could find some alone time away from 12 raucous boys.

 

We stopped for a little snack when we got to our bags and then continued onwards until we got to a lunch spot, which was not the best seeing as we had no shade or water, but it must have been the best spot around. After lunch we went to get up our first peak, Wolfberg. We dropped our bags off close to where the peak started and had an easy climb up, what’s really cool about most of the mountains we went up was that because of the mainly wind erosion they have these “mushroom” type structures where you have a piece of rock, whether it’s a pillar or the ground you stand on that is eroded in such a way that part is hollowed out with big grips, and it just looks pretty damn cool, especially in Wolfberg where at the top you go through a forest of these pillars, it really is just very different. So we got up to the top, but before we set out Mr. Court asked me to bring up a sheet of paper so everyone could write their names on the paper and put it into a little box that had become a Bishops tradition even from the precursor to the Epic, the Adventure Course (The Adventure course was optional and only lasted 7 days). So we got to the top, had a group photo and wrote our names on the sheet and by put it in the container with all the others. We got down to out bags and then set out for the Wolfberg Arch, which as you can tell from the name is a stone arch, with a great view. So to climb up we dropped our bags and went through what’s called a chimney, which is basically a space between two rocks that you can squeeze through, I got through eventually, the key of course is not to panic,and came around the other side all the way to the top of the arch and crossed to where everyone was gathering for another group photo, we came down the same way, no problems. We then descended to a trail and got to our first campsite called Gabriel’s pool about 3:30 PM today. I went for a swim in the pool, which is about 5 meters wide and waist high. We met that lone hiker again who could not find the spot, I believe he got directions again and I hope he got where he wanted to go. I got set up with Guy and got all my stuff in order, and got into my sleeping bag and to sleep just about as soon as the sun went down.

 

What I really like about the hiking is the sense of openness here, and the grasp you get of how far you can actually travel, in a couple hours, not to mention the water’s really nice. The group is holding up well, we have no real conflicts and I’m really enjoying hiking with Mr. Court, going up all the side things is really, really enjoyable.

 

Tune in for the next entry, where we plan to go and peak Tafelberg!

 

 

[Smiley73]

Wolfberg Arch (Picture not from our hike):

 

 

Typical fynbos landscape (Also not from our hike):

 

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

beautiful place. nothing like the kind of camping trips I got taken on.

[paetric]

Awesome!

[Smiley73]

Oh damn I forgot something important that also means I can put on cool pics. On the second day at Sanddrif, Joshua van Niekerk, the groups resident Bear Grylls went out getting grasshoppers and making hooks and all the other things to start fishing. We all told him that it was impossible that it was never gonna happen, that the river wasn't big enough or the water was flowing too fast for fish to stay in there. Well, this is what happened:

 

 

 

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

bear grills is a cheater. always go by les straud.

 

but yeah, more pics, please.

[Smiley73]

At the school:

 

 

 

 

 

I'm the awesome guy in the middle of the picture, with the stick

[Smiley73]

More randomly spaced pictures:

 

Abseiling:

 

 

Guy climbing insanely after the abseil:

 

 

At the campsite:

 

our groups bungalow:

 

 

Cooking area/taps:

 

 

Leopard Trust:

 

 

Changing some batteries: