Who is doing or has done the Grand Traverse

Hi Cam.

If you are doing N to S GT, stay at Witsieshoek (www.witsieshoek.co.za/), which is just down the dirt road from the Sentinel Car Park. If going S to N, you can stay at Bushman's Nek Berg and Trout (www.bushmansnek.co.za/Pages/default.aspx)

Ghaz will also have more info.

Great,thanks! Doing a N to S GT.

Witsieshoek has hiker accommodation which is reasonably priced and includes breakfast (they will give you a packed breakfast if you ask for one). There is also the incredibly basic Sentinel Hut which is right at the start. You could even be funny and walk the first few km and spend the night in Sentinel Cave, or even push through to the hut above Tugela Falls. Plenty of accommodation options around there!

For the record - at the finish line, there is also Bushman's Nek Hut (which is R100 pppn, includes beds but no hot water) and Silverstreams (they offer camping and rustic huts, both with hot water).

Hi Guys

2 mates and I are planning a 5 day GT starting 26th April.

In terms of navigation, is it worth bringing the full set of 6 Geomaps of the berg, or does someone have a more compact idea (e.g. printing A4 pages with the route and surrounding detail only)? We will obviously be using GPS with routes primarily, but will definitely take some form of mapping as well. Any suggestions appreciated!

Do you have topo maps on your gps? If you do that reduces your reliance on printed maps somewhat.

On all my GT's (and other hikes) I made copies of the maps and took the copies with. I find colour double sided A3 copies work well for a GT, and have lots of advantages - you are carrying much less paper and only need the relevant section for the day to be close at hand, you can make notes and scribbles on it etc, and if it gets wet in the rain or torn you don't feel bad to just throw the copy away later, instead of damaging and throwing away your original map.

Many thanks Tony - the double-sided A3 copies sound like a good plan. Yes I have topo maps on my GPS but like to check the map now and then too

Naturally you wouldn't take the Highmoor map on a GT - I think you can figure out those 100m between map 3 and map 5

Only once have I ever taken maps on a GT, and that was the 14 day one I did with Hobbit. Aside from my 5 day with AndrewP, every time we have had someone in the group who did actually have the maps, though. Always crucial to study the route well in advance - a GPS can fail, and in a gale force wind with rain, you probably won't be taking your map out.

I didn't mention it in the post above, but I suppose it is self explanatory for a GT to only make copies of the portion of the map along the route you will be following, and not of the entire geomap.

Some other tips I learnt with the map copies;
Keep the grid lines of the map parallel with the edge of the A3 (or A4) paper you copy them onto, it's just a lot easier to orientate everything that way, than with the grid lines diagonal or skew on the paper copy.
Make sure adjacent copies have a small overlap with each other.
Because the copies may not have the grid reference on them (which is usually on the edge of the original map), be sure to write in the south and east grid references onto the copies at every 2nd or 5th grid line, in case you need to cross reference your position on the map to/from gps.

Thanks Tony and Ghaz, yes that's what I was thinking - to copy just the route portion and surrounding detail into A3/A4. Highmoor map not required We'll have 2 GPS and have done plenty of studying of the route and have physically done large portion of it too. Covering all bases Thanks for the additional tips on keeping the grid straight and adding the grid references.

Because a dgt can actually turn out different than expected..... I think it is wise to cover the "bail out" possibilities and other alternatives with the copies you're making. If you have to change plans, with big maps its easier to study the different options. I cut mine down to a reasonable size, but kept them big enough to have civilisation on them aswell.