Destination...Cathedral Peak, some 70km across the escarpment. Apparently there were no travelators laid out for them, nor any Pret a Mangers along the way... and I bet there was no-one checking up on their warm up exercises either...hmmmm.....
Will in this season's best, on the Drakwalk.
Daisy fresh still....even the Khakibos has not launched an attack yet.
And here we have Graham showing the casual Italian sweater over the shoulder meets Camp and Climb's latest in backpack retro look of the hiking year.
The Clapham Junction equivalent of the Berg. The waiting list to scale the chain ladder. Although there were plenty of people waiting their turn for the Ketting Express, Graham says they never saw another soul up the mountain other than their own party (when the mist cleared that is).
And not a Big Issue vendor in sight...this was the entrance to Heaven I think (Heaven is twinned with Tipperary as you can see!)
Camp the morning after the heavens opened (and Tipperary still stayed far away). G says that when they pitched camp, their tents were on a slightly raised piece of ground above some rocks and sand - where you see the huge puddle below, which filled up when they were trying to nap.
B-I-G Sky...... you can almost smell what it was like...thanks Will for taking some of these amazing shots!
Part of the group. unfortunately I don't know everyone but I'll see if I can get Graham to fill in the gaps along the way? I thought traditional weapons had been banned in SA, maybe this was taken on the Lesotho side?
Who needs a beer to chill out? And not a kit-kat in sight.
A few days and quite a lot of (painful) kilometres on, the end was in sight but I doubt it was near! (Take that Pudley Gorge) - the camera could not have done justice to what they must have seen before them and I'm not talking about the hallucinations involving cheeseburgers, cokes and aromatherapy (?)
Graham described this part like 'God's Window' and like its famous relative in Mpumulanga Province, he said that the curtains would flutter open every now and again to offer a peek at what lay behind and after a few minutes of a teaser campaign, the luscious green and gold dappled valleys were exposed. (I have tri-nations on the brain now). Would that he had a hang glider and state of the art DVD machine........
G's camera battery was dead by now but he did get some amazing pics from the others in the group, especially of the descent but they are on the laptop and we haven't transferred them across yet. In G's words it was "hectic". This is one of the only ones I can find.It wasn't made pleasant either with what sounded like one helluva wind blowing as they clambered down. they eventually hobbled into Cathedral Peak and persuaded the hotel to make them cheeseburgers and serve up the very finest ice cold beers they could find.
