Injisuthi and Sterkhorn Swimming Trip

Hey guys

Just a short write-up on our trip to the Berg this past weekend. We had taken the Friday off, hoping to give the Mafadi record a crack on Friday and do a 2-day mission via Ship's Prow North Fork and Judge Pass on Sat/Sun. Unfortunately the weather (and my cold) had other ideas!

We were anticipating snow based on all the forecasts during the week, but other than a few views of the escarpment lightly dusted with snow, pouring rain is all we got. Since I wasn't 100% healthy, but I wanted to get some solid distance in the legs for Expedition Africa coming up in 2 weeks time, we decided to forget the Mafadi record attempt and just spend the whole day on our feet at a comfortable pace. We settled on Sterkhorn via van Heyningens Pass as a good objective, which makes for a 32km round-trip from Injisuthi Camp, where we had a chalet booked on Thursday and Friday night.

It took a fair bit of resolve to set out in the pouring rain at 7am but these decisions are never really regretted once you're up and moving - as they say, a bad day in the mountains is still far better than the best day in the office! Not much to report other than that we both got soaked and cold (a good incentive to keep moving) and that one of the only views that opened up all day was timed perfectly with our arrival at the Sterkhorn summit!



It was still pouring the next morning and the forecast was for it to pour all day again, so we decided to call it a weekend and head back to Joburg. The rivers were huge and brown and there were waterfalls cascading off most of the cliffs - pretty spectacular!

Nice! Too bad about the cold and the weather though. I'm looking forward to the Mafadi record being broken again - always awesome to see a record that was 27hours last year get shorter and shorter

@Stijn: While I was putting up the pics on the Sterkhorn thread I remembered my comment to Hobbit. It was something to the effect of "Sterkhorn is a nice chilled easy day hike for our group, and probably a things-to-do-between-getting-up-and-eating-breakfast for Stijn"