Third Report-back

This will be my last report-back until after the holidays – so compliments of the Season to you all!


First, two older ‘responses’ that fell through the cracks because they came in long before we put up the Cederberg Hiking Map webpage. At Cisca Nieuwoudt’s request Hendrico Burger has sent in comprehensive GPS tracks for the MTB routes – old and new – at Dwarsrivier. Many thanks, Hendrico – these will certainly be on the final map, and also on the Dwarsrivier/Sanddrif downloadable freebie, when we get around to revising that!


Back in August Johann Lanz sent us the Panorama Cave coords and some useful path info.

Cathedral Rocks, also known as the Organ Pipes

Back to the present. Mike Scott has been sifting our virtual Book 3 and came up with these:


Picture 112 is just known as the Welbedacht cliff with rock climber’s routes mainly by Andrew de Klerk.
Picture 114 is the old Sleeppad used for sledges laden with Ceder logs.
[That’s what we thought, Mike, until Alex Basson put us right – see previous blog!]
Picture 118 is the Uilsgat needles, and Picture 120 looks suspiciously like another view of the Westernmost one.
Picture 127 does NOT look like The Anvil to me, unless there is another rock also called an anvil? [See NOTE below]
Picture 128 [Vogelgesangvallei] I am trying to find my pictures of the valley, but would tend to believe Ralph Taylor, as often Trig maps were wrong, and if not actually wrong, used names from the locals which differed from the ones used by mountaineers! 

Vogelgesangvallei:  we too agree with Ralph Taylor

Picture 129, mystery concrete-lined hole near Sneeukop Hut:  we thought it was an old toilet hole filled in when we were last there!
Picture 135 Yes - Cathedral Rocks, but some people refer to them as the Organ Pipes.
Picture 143 Yes [Boskloof Pinnacle]
Picture 144 Yes [the Machine Gun of Machine Gun Ridge].

Boskloof Pinnacle

Many thanks, Mike – looking forward to your inputs for Book 4. 


However, we’re still uneasy about The Anvil. Can anyone comment? 




We seem to have these options:

The Anvil – the left or the right?

David Donald sent this interesting account of the Maltese Cross path in the snow, thereby illustrating yet another hazard for the mapmaker: what happens when the path is simply buried? Unfortunately not all the high-altitude paths have tall beacons ...

David’s pic of the Cross
in the snow : we used it
on the cover of our second
Cederberg touring map

In the winter of 2001 or thereabouts, I set out to climb up to the Maltese Cross with two good friends, Peter Fiske and Chris Wren-Sargent.  It was a beautiful, clear day after heavy falls of snow across the Cederberg the previous night. However, as we made our way up the gully to the Cross, the path became more and more difficult to follow as the snow became thicker towards the top. Nevertheless, we floundered on through ever-thicker drifts but with a clear sight of the top of the gully to guide us. The sight which greeted us as we reached the plateau was absolutely stunning: a thick, white blanket of white as far as we could see with clumps of snow clinging to the ledges of the Cross itself. After having a mild snow-fight and taking some photos we retreated as rapidly as we could in the face of an advancing south-westerly squall of snow. When we showed the photos to the manager of the Nieuwoudt farm below, he was amazed: he had never before seen the Cross and its surrounds as deep in snow as that.


The moral of the story is simply that if any one contemplates climbing up that gully to the Maltese Cross when it has snowed, please be well clad, aware of what I have described regarding the path and, even on a day that starts out sunny and clear, keep an eye out for the sudden changes that the south-westerlies can bring!


Galeo Saintz sent a GPS track of the routes used by Rim of Africa - useful, Galeo. See what he's all about at www.rimofafrica.co.za


Justin Lawson continues to keep us prominent on the www.climb.co.za website: many thanks, Justin. I’m hoping some of your members spend some holiday time in the Cederberg, and send in info early next year!


Paul la Grange turned out to be a former colleague of Alex Basson, when the latter was teaching at SACS; Paul sent this snippet:


On one occasion, Alex, having had quite enough of the stresses of teaching naughty youngsters, took himself off to his favourite area near Basson’s Klip and by his own admission tried to live like a Bushman for a couple of days. He wore only a loincloth, no shoes and survived by living off the land. I cannot remember the details of the story, but suffice it to say that he did not last too long and had to scramble for his bundle of tucked-away clothes and emergency rations in quite a hurry! He did mention that the experience had done him the world of good and he certainly went on teaching for many years to come after that. 


And to end off, the formal stuff ...


Mapping: have digitised comprehensive map info from the northern edge down to a line more or less from Boskloof to Biedouw ... hope to be down to Wuppertal by New Year.
Response to webpage: 671 individuals since Nov 14; 102 Algeria maps, 150 books and 55 GoogleEarth photo-tracks downloaded.
Info already in:
Already acknowledged: Rudolf Andrag, Quinton Martins, Ronnie Hazell, Charles Merry, Wim Morris, Alex Basson, Graham Bellairs, Julyan Symons, Galeo Saintz, Paul la Grange, Laurence Elton, Mike Scott, Peter Hart

Second Report-back

Here are this week’s NEW INPUTS ... in the order received:

Strydom’s Path

First, a Fabulous Fax from Alex Basson, a genuine Cederberg old-timer who has been stomping the ’berg since he was twelve .... which was in 1943! Alex has info about names, places, stories etc etc that will all be available for the new map. I asked him about the ‘built path’ up Uilsgat – he tells me it was built as a pure folly by a long-gone forester, possibly a Mr Strydom, whom Alex described as a ‘frustrated road builder’. I will call that path ‘Strydom’s Path’ on the map, unless a different name comes to light. ‘Strydom’ also rebuilt the Eikeboom-Sneeuberg jeep track and the Pakhuis-Heuningvlei road that is still in regular use by donkey-carts, hikers and boulderers. Basson se Klip is named after Alex – see photo below.

The Pup – pic by Graham Bellairs

Graham Bellairs sent some valuable info about the path confusion around The Pup. Thanks, Graham, we had already found that the path on the south side of The Pup no longer exists. 
Graham also had more info about the old path up Protea Peak that Rudolf had mentioned to us. After a careful study of GoogleEarth and Bing maps I’ve managed to locate most of it – we’ll probably show it as a ‘way to go’ rather than a marked path.
Graham also suggested that we should not neglect the Klipbokkop and other paths in the Nuwerust area; we’ll certainly show all the routes that fall on the map, but we’ll need some GPS tracks.


Julyan Symons confirmed the pic of Welbedacht Cave, but still no names for the nearby rock-pillars – for some good news see below, Julyan.


Galeo Saintz asked that we include a link for the Rim of Africa trail – see www.rimofafrica.co.za 

Meidegat Falls near Sevilla

Paul la Grange named the falls at Riempie se Gat as Riempie’s Falls; he also pointed out that the Eselbank Falls are higher and even more impressive [how do these compare with the Meidegat Falls near Sevilla, by the way?]. 


Laurence Elton wrote about his recent [November] trip down the Heks River valley. Just as we did, his party found the Kruisrivier kloof path over to Algeria impassably blocked by fallen trees. His party bailed out to Klein-Jongenskraal and copied us their letter of complaint to CapeNature about the state of a path that is shown so prominently on their map. 
Hmmm. I can see the mapmaker’s biggest hazard rearing its ugly head here – ground features that change and render the map info incorrect ...
Laurence also asked for the inclusion of a UTM grid ... more on this later. He asked for True North to be at the top of the map: it will be.

Basson se Klip? Maybe. Pic by Mike Scott.

Mike Scott sent a couple of great photos and valuable info. He confirmed our pics of The Anvil, the correct position for Vogelgesang-vallei [Ralph Taylor was right, of course], and the Knobless Robot. Mike’s pic of Basson se Klip is included here, though I’ll have to get Alex Basson’s confirmation that this really is his klip! Mike confirmed the location of several other features, sent me off to revise my ‘Vanzylsklip’ with a new pic of the real thing, and he named one of your ‘unnamed pinnacles’, Julyan Symons – the one to the east of the Welbedacht path is the ‘Pepper Pot’ and was first climbed in 1969. [our pic 75]

Pepper Pot: climbed in 1969

Finally, Peter Hart of the Cederberg Heritage Route provided a couple of gps tracks for the Route’s great new 4-day trail from Driehoek to Wupperthal, via Gabriël’s Pass and Eselbank/ Kleinvlei [opening January 2012]. Peter was great source of info, with several new names and some great – and previously unknown to us – waterfalls.
See www.cedheroute.co.za 

And, to end, the Formal Stuff ...



Mapping: completed geo-referencing & correct setting for the northern section; adding info about bouldering in the Pakhuis area.
Response to webpage: 413 individuals visited the website-page since 14 November. 82 Algeria maps, 112 books and 47 GoogleEarth photo-tracks were downloaded.
Links on other websites: These orgs kindly notified their members of our quest, though their websites:
Meridian Hiking Club  – http://www.meridian.org.za/news.htm 
Climb ZA – http://www.climb.co.za/2011/11/new-cederberg-hiking-map-can-you-help/ 
as well as the MCSA – http://mcsa.briefyourmarket.com/Newsletters/Mountain-Ears-December-2011/Help-make-a-new-Cederberg-hiking-map-.aspx 
Info already in: 
Already acknowledged: Rudolf Andrag, Quinton Martins, Ronnie Hazell, Charles Merry, Wim Morris.

Keep ’em coming!

Kaartman 2011-12-02