Tag Archives: Travel
The Crack and the Mudslide
My first trip to the Drakensberg was a hike up to Tiger Falls when I was 6 years old. I remember it being so steep and difficult, I remember a super scary bridge over the river that looked like a slide and had no protection on the side, I remember a sketchy traverse above a […]
Sani Supertraverse
I have always considered Vergelegen to be very appropriately named. A region of the Drakensberg tucked between Lotheni and Sani Pass – with no campsite and a poor quality jeep track as the most common access, it is most certainly not the most inviting region of the Drakensberg. I first visited Vergelegen in 2017 and […]
Namahadi Pass Loop
The Free State Drakensberg remains one of the least hiked regions of the range. I have always found this odd – the area is spectacular and reasonably accessible. Rising above the rather large town of Phuthaditjhaba, it is home to some properly hard passes. So on a Friday afternoon, Ross and I found ourselves at […]
Mbundini Abbey Spire in a day
When I was asked to relocate for work purposes, I knew my era of being in the Drakensberg on roughly every second weekend would be coming to an end. The symmetry of the era starting and ending on the summit of Rhino exactly 10 years apart added a bit of poetry to it all. But […]
Rhino Peak: a decade later
On 29 December 2009, a very unfit (and slightly overwight) version of myself stood on the summit of Rhino Peak in the Southern KZN Drakensberg. It was my first Drakensberg pass, my first 3000ers, my first time on the Drakensberg escarpment. Over the decade that followed, I would stand on this summit a few more […]
The Magic Valley
“I can say with a fairly high level of certainty that Hilton Pass is not a pass that will ever form part of my list of bagged passes” – me, 31 August 2011 Hilton Pass has been a bit of a Drakensberg mystery for a while. I had read an old account of a team […]
Vergelegen Passes: Hitchhikers Guide to the Drakensberg
My charge through the marked passes I had not yet done south of Giants Castle in the KZN High Berg had been going amazingly well. A cluster of 4 passes near Sani Pass was all that remained. My logic was simply – drive to the lower Sani border post, hike up Mqatsheni, down Ntshinshini, up […]
Verkyker/Mzimkhulu loop: Looking ahead
Earlier today I was reading something I wrote in 2012. In the comment I had said that I wanted to do every pass at Giants Castle and Garden Castle. Over the years of trying to cover as much ground as possible, I have learned that you can never do “every” pass in an area – […]
Vergelegen traverse
On 27 December 2009 – an article clerk who had wanted to try Drakensberg hiking for years finally got a chance to hike to the top of the Drakensberg. Mashai Pass was hard, and even scary in places – but despite not being fit enough, that younger version of the person known as Ghaznavid made […]
Masubasuba Pitsaneng Loop
I don’t really recall a time before Masubasuba Pass appeared on my radar. When I visited Underberg for a stock count in February 2009, before I had ever hiked to the top of the Drakensberg, I wondered if there was a route up the very obvious saddle between the Hodgeson’s Peaks – not that I […]
Ghaznavid Hiking 
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