Injisuthi security

For your info:

Last Wednesday, October 20th, 2 of us were camped by the Centenary Hut. About 18h, just before dark, while we were chatting by the tent, a group of not less than 20 smugglers coming down the ridge opposite to the hut walked past us. They were all carrying huge polypropylene bags and were quite spread out along the ridge. It took about 5 minutes for the whole caravan to go past. We greeted them and the greeted back smiling. We never felt threatened. They were obviously coming down from Corner Pass. There’s a clear path down the ridge that I can’t remember seeing before, so they obviously must be using this route now. I wonder why they weren't using the usual Judges Pass.

I’d stayed in Centenary Hut twice before (20-09-2008 and 20-01-2010, for the usual route to Mafadi up Judges down Leslies) and I’d never seen any smuggling activity around the hut.

We made sure all our belongings were inside the tent for the night, stayed alert during the night but we didn’t experience any incidents.

Hi homearanya

Welcome to the forum.

When you say the ridge, are you referring to the ridge that goes up from Centenary Hut and then drops into Corner Pass. On the image, it would follow the line of spot heights 2560 and 2909 that i have put on the ge jpeg?

@homearanya: Last year August me and two friends (plouw and ccjoubert) were hiking toward Corner Pass. We passed Centenary Hut at sunset and chatted to two hikers who camped next to the hut. About 4km along the contour path we saw a lantern train (also around twenty lamps and also spread out) approaching the hut from below. We were pretty concerned for the two guys at the hut but there were no incidents reported when we arrived back at Injisuthi camp.

Hi Gollum

Waiting for homearanyas reply here. As the route down the ridge above the hut fro the CP saddle is a mission. I am wondering if they have not created a 'higher' contour path fro Judge, towards corner and round to intersect the ridge G E does show faint banding in places higher than contour.
Re the lantern train, I have serious doubts that these guys use any form of artificial lght.
[A] they live and move very efficiently in the dark at home.
this kind of light will completely blow their element of stealth.
I suspect it may have been a deliberate or delayed late walk in by Backpackers or MCSA guys, as they often use the two huts.

Keen to hear what he says to serioustribes ??

i was hiking with gollum on that trip, and reckon it was very unlikely to be other hikers, as we saw the same train of lights the following night from up the Trojan wall, going in the same direction, towards Judges Pass. and they were all about 50-100m from each other. seemed very strange that hikers would walk like this. we counted between 15-20 of these lights. also, they were yellow in colour, not the cold-white of LED headlights. seemed very suspicious.

I have been wondering why the Centenary hut area might be a strategically useful location for smuggling activity. I'm thinking that the main reason is that there is a jeep track which runs pretty much all the way from Centenary hut to the trout hatchery on the Bushmans river. The jeep track can be gained just 1.5km from centenary over easy ground and the same track reaches the tar road at the hatchery about 8km down valley of the main Giants Castle camp. The track is easy walking in the dark and, importantly, I reckon this is a very, very quiet area. Compare, for example, with Mnweni where the valleys are very populated. That in itself is not a problem, except that given enough smuggling, I can imagine a situation where some of the kraals would want a payoff. Meeting no one on the jeep track leads to no such issues.

If the authorities were so inclined, it would not be difficult to intercept a train of 20 smugglers going down that jeep track. A phone call from the ridge near Centenary would give about 5 hours of lead time. That said, its hard to imagine that the guards at Giant Castle entrance don't notice.

More difficult to pin down but also probably relevant to the chosen smuggling routes are the politics from the road-head onwards in KZN. There are a number of possible dynamics here. On the one hand, I would expect that the smugglers can't let any general pattern of behaviour become too obvious on the roads leading out of the mountains. The more obvious and regular the car traffic, the more risky and expensive the route will be. On the other hand, there are probably safe houses in the foothills and paid off officials which make the route secure, at least for a time.

Paths that lead out from the escarpment directly to tourist camps, e.g. Giants and Langalibalele are undesribale - which explains why the Ndedema Valley, for example, and now Corner/Judge are becoming popular.