The highest provincial peaks in South Africa

I have no doubt that an initiative to document 'highest peaks' will prove popular - but particularly so with the outdoor community beyond the core of those who contribute to this forum.

'Highest Peaks' are often things that friends/family who know little about mountains first ask me about. I think they are usually quite surprised when they find out I know more about some minor detail on a Mnweni free-stander or pass than I do on any of southern Africas highest peaks. I can't honestly remember if I have crossed over Mafadi. I think I may have once when navigating in to Upper Inj Cave. When I stayed over at UIC with Spook some time ago, a group of 4 or 5 mostly European tourists came into the cave just after dark. Their mission was to find their way to Mafadi. Their presence raised the prospect of us doing the same the next morning. But when the time came, without having to make a conscious decision, we found ourselves wandering down to the escarpment edge to get a better view of the Western Triplet and the moment had passed.

So, in summary, the VE profile will no doubt be extended by documenting the info. It is probably the sort of thing that someone not familiar with SA mountains would expect to find. But if I have the choice again, it would always be, as it twice has been, Mnt Kenya over Kili. I can't say I know for sure why.

On the opposite extreme to Mount Tiska (btw where is Mount Tiska, never heard of it before...), I like these lists, all I know about the highest peaks in SA is that 5 of the provinces have highest points in the Berg, obvously Free State has Namahadi, Eastern Cape has Kwa-Duma and KZN has some odd little low point in the central berg (but sarcasm aside). I would like to see this list, give me a list of peaks to kill...

On the point of high peaks, is there an official Africa list, even just and Africa top 20 or something like that, all I know is Kili and Mount Kenya (followed by many Atlas mountains peaks)...

And if I don't care about stats enough, I plan on hiking in the Caucus mountains just so that I can do 3 things:
- Remain in a country but change my continent (I have done this in Istanbul, but the Bosphorus is over 1km wide, so I can't stand with a foot on each continent). Azerbaijan has its border in a different location to the actual continent change over...
- I can find a river that is on the continental border (unlikely to exist, but I'll see if I can find one), so that I can say I "swam from Europe to Asia"
- Walk back and forward across the border 20 times so I can say I went to Europe/Asia 20 times in 1 day...

(I always think about the stories I'll be able to tell my grandchildren in 50 years time)...

On a related note, a bloke called Ginge Fullen had a project to get up the highest peak in every country in Africa. Last I heard he was sorting out Libya - which had to be approached from N.Chad. There are a few details here:
www.gingefullen.com/projects/africa.html

The biggest difficulty in completing the Africa list was countries at war. In the case of N.Chad, Ginge had to make big payouts to the Tibesti bandits to prevent kidnapping. He was the only westerner I know of who made it to the Tibesti in that enevelope of 5-6 years - maybe more. We have been working in Chad, Algeria, Mauri etc for the last decade and so I kept an interested eye on what he was able to do. Puts Lesotho into perspective for us at least.

Read his account of climbing the highest point in Uzbekistan which was "previously unclimbed", I love how there was a massive cairn on top, brilliant story!

When I say a list of the highest points in Africa, I mean like our Berg Khulu lists, but for Africa, it would be cool to know if peaks like Mafadi can break the top 150...

On the provincial peaks and the Berg wiki, I've been thinking that it would be a good idea to set some sort of a template to encourage a uniform set of info (apologies if this has already been done - I haven't cross-checked).

In the case of the peaks, there could be photos off in 4 directions of the compass as well as a description of the approach. The same method has been used in the confluence project (lat-long intersections) confluence.org/country.php?id=20

For the wiki, passes could include several photos of the way up, a line on GE for passes with no paths, last water in the 2 main seasons etc. The recently posted photos of Rwanqa and Mansome Pass would be a good example. Abundant use of photos would help to make the wiki more useful than any guide book as hardcopy could never be as generous on colour photos.