Drakensberg FKTs - Record of Times

Johardt van Heerden set the Sterkhorn FKT at a time of 02:18:15, starting at Monk's Cowl by the mountain register boom, up Sterkhorn and back.

Mark Michell broke the Rhino Peak FKT (Drakensberg Gardens Cultural Centre to the summit and back) on 5 July 2015, with a time of 3h 10m 03s, breaking Matt Kretzmann's previous mark of 3h 15m 12s.

kzntrailrunning.co.za/blog/drakensberg-fkt-s/259-rhino-peak

@AndrewP - can you share your route track for the FKT on Mafadi? Would be keen to have a look please. Is the time 6h 27m ?

Then for the group...
How are the rules for any FKT determined?


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My time for Mafadi was 6:22. From Giants, up Bannerman ridge, along the contour path to Judges Pass and then the highway to Mafadi. Back the same way. The only important bits are:
- start/end point = the mountain register (using a fixed point because of multiple car parks)
- Mafadi is of course a huge, flat field. I consider the summit to be at S29 12 08.2 E29 21 25.4 It is sort of in the center of the field and is higher than some of the other cairns, and is impossible to see with naked eye what the true highest point is.

The first person to do anything can call it an FKT. I think that over time, some FKT's will be repeated a lot and will become a classic. Others will fade away. I expect that the following will be key factors:
- the goal must be simple and worthwhile
- the rules should be simple yet explicit
- they should not be contrived

So, for example, you could set an FKT for Cathedral Peak from Didema but nobody will repeat that. They will set their own FKT from the hotel and that is the one other people will attempt.

Can you have multiple FKT's for the same thing?
For Mponjwane, a separate time for cave to summit and back is logical, but so is the time from Mnweni vistor center to summit and back
For Mafadi, it is also tricky. I first did Mafadi from Injasuti and got an FKT there. But, nobody is going to use Apes Pass as a way to do Mafadi at speed, especially now that we know that Judges is so much faster. So, technically, my time via Apes is an FKT in it own right, but it is silly so should be ignored.

I recall an early FKT from 105 Penzance Road (I think) in Durban in 1984/5 to the top of the Bell and back again in about 23 hours, starting around midnight at a party, with a planning horizon of around 1 hour. The time would have been impressive but I confess we used a car for the road sections. This was before people thought of being in a hurry, so it was an unusual undertaking at the time.

Mt Tiska was the architect.

I drew the short straw and ended up carrying a 20kg+ anemometer down from the top of the Bell, which made for significant under-steer while fast cornering on the descent.

I am not sure this qualifies as an official FKT, but was probably one of the early forays into high speed trips and should go down in the annals as such!

Thanks for the input. Of course there was already an existing FKT for Mafadi. This one was from Injisuthi up any pass and down any pass back to Injisuthi. So technically that is the original. What was your fastest time on this original route? Last time I still had for George Louw was 9h 18m I think.

The option from Giants up and back is obviously then a seperate Mafadi FKT. 6h 22m is a great time. Well done!!

I don't think there are really any remaining feasible FKT options for Mafadi.

As a matter of interest... the original Mafadi FKT rules were starting / ending Injisuthi at the mountain register.

Thanks again for sharing. Chat soon...

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George's time was 9h57m.

www.vertical-endeavour.com/forum/8-drakensberg-hiking/55197-fast-ascent-of-mafadi.html?start=10#56047

www.movescount.com/moves/move10911751