Mafadi FKT

Well done Daniel.

You guys really hammered it down Leslies and past Marble baths on the way back. IMO an indication of good levels of fitness.

Good stuff.

Thanks - if you want to check out my hike report on my attempt on Kobus' old Mafadi record, its here .

I hope to break the Mafadi record in June this year - after the last attempt I have a good idea how hard it is. Hopefully I won't have to deal with snow, hail, rain, mist and lightning at the same time next time

My friend George who done the 9 peaks with me will be trying to bring the record down to 16 hours, now in Feb. He is not part of the forum, but I'll post his trip times here. You might have a new record to crash in June.

HI all,

So here is the new record. Done by George Louw this weekend. Here is the link to the hiking/run detail:
www.movescount.com/moves/move10911751

9h57? Insanity! Thats a real achievement of note

Y O W Z E R! Well done George!

We were looking at giving this record a crack in April and thinking 12h was possible... I guess we have our work cut out for us now!

Having said that, to quote myself from the Epic Day Hikes thread: "Looking at the Mnweni Marathon record times (4h30ish for the 38km via Mnweni and Rockeries Pass), if you unleash some of the top trail-runners on Mafadi, you're bound to get times of about 6-7 hours."

Looking at the movescount graph in more detail:

- Marble Baths 1h14m
- Leslie's Ridge 2h20m (1h06m)
- Top of Leslie's 3h47m (1h27m)
- Mafadi 5h20m (1h33m)
- Top of Leslie's 6h30m (1h10m)
- Bottom of Leslie's Ridge 7h35m (1h05m)
- Marble Baths 8h43m (1h08m)
- Finish 9h57m (1h14m)

.. Repost, sorry.

So I had a crack at George's Mafadi record on Friday, despite the rather dismal-looking weather. I figured it would be a good scouting trip even if it didn't work out due to the poor conditions.

My day started with a 45min snooze in my car at the Injisuthi gate, which was only opened 45mins late... grrr. Anyway, I started the clock from the Injisuthi Office at about 7:10am under overcast skies. I had a day pack with me and wasn't carrying as light as I would have liked, with a bivvy bag, down jacket, etc just in case. I guess that is part of the nature of this beast!

I tried to run as much of the path to Marble Baths as possible, and managed to clock in at the baths (8km) after 1h08m, marginally ahead of George's split. A quick water top-up and I set off up the vague path to the base of Leslie's Pass. This is the section I was most concerned about, so I tried not to rush it and follow the cairns and bits of trail as much as possible. The clouds had come down by now and it was quite misty, which is what I'm going to use as my excuse for what happened next...

I was within spitting distance of the base of the Leslie's Ridge (12km), bang on target at about 2h10m total time. Unfortunately, I didn't realise this at the time and kept forging up the river towards Injisuthi Pass. When the cairns disappeared and nothing was looking familiar, I stopped and consulted the map and GPS. I was still convinced that I had been slow up the riverbed and that Leslie's was another 500m or so upstream - hence it took me a while to relocate and head back downstream. The result - I reached the campsite at the base of the Leslie's ridge at 2h40m, having lost 30mins and my chance at the record.

The weather was also looking ominous, so I scouted up the ridge to 2400m, where the path starts contouring into the pass, before heading back down to the car. I took a mostly different route down to Marble Baths on the way back (true left of the river), but took about the same time at 1h03m. Then from Marble Baths, I pushed pretty hard to get back to the office in 58mins. Also bumped into Ghaz, Ian (Diverian?), Bugs and co. on their way to Centenary Hut (thanks for the welcome break guys!).

Total time for my abridged run was 5h17m for the 26km.

George - well done on the awesome time! Things are going to have to go my way to even shave minutes off your record... maybe next time!

Stijn wrote: Also bumped into Ghaz, Ian (Diverian?), Bugs and co. on their way to Centenary Hut (thanks for the welcome break guys!).

It was great to meet you! Bugs is very proud of the fact that he has now met 3 people who have held the GT speed record.

The other VE members in the team were ASL (Ian) and Fitness (Simon).