Wolkberg Preface

In about an hour’s time a friend and I are leaving to Pietersburg. We’re going to spend about three days in the Wolkberg Wilderness Area. It’s about 50km’s east of Pietersburg, a huge peace of land covered in a mix of mountains, forest and rivers. It’s got two main mountains, separated by a huge kloof, the highest of which is Serala Peak (also, there is a Serala Mountain a way South of the Wolkberg). It’s actually the northern most part of the Drakensberg. Not the one in Natal, but the one spanning Mpumalanga and Limpopo.

Serala Peak is about 2050m up. Not that high when looking across our borders. South Africa has actually been short changed when it comes to high mountains. It seems Drakensberg (Natal/Lesotho) has some of the highest peaks but they still range around 4000m. Not much compared to many 6000+’s you find in South America and Asia. Any case, you need to run before you can walk, ne?

So we’re going to try to reach both the peaks of the two main mountain bodies in the wilderness area. One peaks at just above 1900m, this will be day one, day two we’ll cross over to the second peak at 2050m, day three we come down. Ha ha, at least this is the plan. I’m taking along my GPS. I used Mapsource to try and create a route (using the SA Topo and Rec v1.5) but we’ll have to wait and see. This is the first route I create from scratch without knowing or seeing the land itself. I sort of overlayed a Google Earth snapshot with the contour maps from Mapsource. Going up, day one, and coming down, day three, each have a specific point that I’m worried about. There’s a possibility that we’ll have to do some climbing. I reall hope it’s nothing serious. I’m lugging around a 15kg bag so it’s gonna be mighty tricky if it’s too steep. Maybe I should just take some extra rope with… Anyways, we’re averaging about 12km’s a day. Not too much on flat earth, get’s long in the mountains though.

So this is me clocking out. I should post a follow up by Tuesday/Wednesday where I’ll try to log some GPS co-ordinates should anybody want them.

Be blessed!

~ by Schalk Holloway on September 21, 2007.