24 March 2005    to      27 March 2005

Click HERE for Bigger Map

We arrived early on Thursday afternoon at the Pilgrimsrest hut which has nice facilities with hot water, electricity and plenty of wood. The second group of five people arrived a bit later and John after them. The rest of our group only arrived around ten that evening.

Dinner.

Next morning after taking the cars to the local Police station (had to do this due to break-ins to the cars at the hut) we were on our way.

The very first part of the trail takes you through the town. As it was still early the town was fairly deserted with all the tourists only arriving later.

You then follow an old gold mine railway track for some kilometers.

Once you leave the mining area, the trail starts to climb. At this point a fine drizzle rain started to fall, so out came the ponchos. At one point higher up the mist became quite thick.

Some Protea plants in the foreground with the gray sky. The weather made for pleasant walking as it was not hot.

Lunch time.

From here it went into a bit of indigenous forest. The rain had made the rocks extremely slippery and it was not long after that, that I ended up flat on the ground with a sprained wrist.

Finally we got to the hut. After a verrry cold shower Silvia and myself decided to wile away the remaining time with some Poker dice.

Next morning it was misty, but it lifted quite quickly. This was to be a very tough day with a 700m climb.

A spider web with tiny dew drops on it.

The area that the hike is situated in belongs to the forestry department so a lot of the trail runs through pine plantations. The problem with this is that very few plant species grow in these forests, unlike the indigenous forests which literally contain hundreds of different plants.

After descending first to the valley floor, the trail starts its climb, getting steeper and steeper the higher we got.

Here's a Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria, genus Amanita). No...I'm not an expert! I've got a book on the stuff :-) We found quite a few of these on our ascent to the Black hill hut...or as others called it, the Black hell hut due to the strenuous climb! After doing a very steep climb up a gorge of indigenous forest, I thought we had reached the top.. well that was what the map indicated in any case, but nooo way! We did a bit of a descent along a forest road and then found we had another long climb up another gorge. We decided to have lunch at this point, but had no sooner started when we could hear thunder in the distance which rapidly got nearer. That was the sign to pack-up and move. And move we did, expecting the rain to come pouring down at any minute. Somehow we made it to the top in record time. This time we really were at the top!

A lot of lichens covered the sandstone rocks at the top.

A view from the top. In the far distance if one looked carefully one could see the Morgenzon hut that we had come from that morning.

After another very cold shower most of us relaxed or took a nap in the sun. Some time later the next group of four that had only started the hike from the Morgenzon forest station that morning arrived, generously helped by Veronica and Tim as they were really struggling to carry their many liters of booze, coke and cigarettes up the mountain.

Silvia trying to wash her hair in a bucket of warm water.

Sunset with some rain in the distance.

Next morning one could see the clouds in the valleys below.

The trail takes you around the edge of the mountain among the rocks.

Into the pine plantations again.

Some sort of fungi hanging from a tree.

Due to the poor map and trial re-routing, the third day was quite short and we got to the hut very early. On the positive side, the hut had a "donkey" (water boiler fired by wood) that we soon started and everyone could have a hot shower for a change.

Another nice sunset.

Next morning the group split up. Tim, Veronica and Aileen decided to go site-seeing in the area and skipped the last days hiking. The other two groups I have no idea what they wanted to do. The plans kept on changing all the time. Silvia, John and myself decided to take the forest road and try and connect up with the trail a bit further again, but that was not to be!

We ended up coming out at the Crystal Springs resort and had to follow the tar road all the way to the Morgenzon hut. According to the map the trail should have crossed the road at some point, but there was no sign of it anywhere.

We got to the Morgenzon hut at 9 already and decided to just carry on down to Pilgrimsrest. This involved another lot of tar road walking. Not very pleasant at the best of times! At one section the trail did lead off the road which was quite refreshing, but not for long before rejoining again. Once we got to Pilgrimsrest we decided we had had enough and headed back to Johannesburg. Such is the tail of our Prospectors hike!