Mt aux Sources again (16 to 18-April-2010)
This is the accont of a hike up to Mount aux Sources, prepared by Jörg.
The plan was such: Thilo, Christopher, my father (Horst), and myself (Jörg) would head off into the Drakensberg for two nights and two days. The intention was to spend one night in Sentinel cave followed by another night higher up possibly crows’ nest or maybe Müller’s cave with a visit to the top of the Tugela Falls and also Mont-Aux-Sources. Something that only occurred to us some time after organising the hike was that this would be the first time that it was solely the four of us on a hike together.
Our day started fairly early as Thilo arrived at my place in Joburg at around 10am after which we jointly made our way through to the Müller residence in Loch Vaal. After enjoying our last home cooked meal for lunch we made our way through to Sasolburg to pick up Christopher from school before we headed off to the mountains.
Our first hurdle when arriving at Sentinel was the unmanned toll gate at the entrance to the mountain pass and a notice announcing new management would be in place from the beginning of May. The empty toll house indicated to us that the old management had already given up and walked away. This was however not the case as old management had still left two conservation officers at the car park to collect our toll and also our overnight fees.
Once the formalities were done and the mountain register signed we geared up and headed off, in the dark, aiming for Sentinel cave. I had done this section of uphill before in day light and can remember how taxing it was, however in the dark it just seemed so much easier, was it perhaps the coolness of the night that made it easier or was it perhaps a physiological effect of not been able to see the uphill ahead? Eventually, after mistakingly walking past it once, we arrived at Sentinel cave and after briefly admiring the view of the lights of Phuthaditjhaba in the distance it was time for dinner and straight into bed.The next morning we were greeted by the most enjoyable view and from this point on the views would just get better and better. After breakfast we once again packed up and headed off, this time in the direction of the chain ladder. This is the stage where my Father made the announcement that he wasn’t feeling too sharp and that he was contemplating staying in the cave for the day (I didn’t blame him, it was a nice cave). It seemed my Father had picked up some bug somewhere and was now suffering from ‘Don’t want to go up the mountain’ sickness and the high altitude did very little to help. Eventually on his own accord he decided that he would make it up the chain ladder but would then proceed to the hikers hut above the Tugela Falls rather than face further uphill to get to crows nest. Christopher volunteered to go up the chain ladder twice carrying his own and then his fathers pack. This was all beneficial to Christopher as he used this opportunity to intensify his HAT (high altitude training).
After once again pausing to admire the astounding vista and the view of little falls we made our way to the hiker’s hut which would be fairly easy walking to get to and as we were first on the mountain there was no need to rush to occupy the hut before anyone else.
We arrived at the hut (later dubbed “The Kaya”) just prior to lunch time. From the outside the hut resembled a prison built with rocks with thick steel bars on the windows but from the inside the hut represented more of an fire stained informal settlement dwelling with the monotonous sound of corrugated iron clanging repetitively every time a breeze brushed past the outside of the hut. After an inspection of the hut I decided that relative to the hotel room I had stayed in two nights ago this hut was not the most luxurious, lacked room service, a bar fridge and in-house plumbing, but, relative to our other option of the four of us cramming into the only two man emergency tent we brought along the Kaya seemed a mighty fine place to spend the night.
An early lunch was had before three of us (Thilo, Christopher and Myself) headed for the heights of Mont-Aux-Sources. Christopher was nominated as the leader as he had a good vision of what the mountain looked like and if it ended up that we had scaled the wrong peak we would have someone to blame. Skirting around crows’ nest we were confronted by an incline that would take us to the highest point of Mont-Aux-Source at 3280 meters above sea level. Thilo seemed to have a very patient approach to tackling this assault on the mountain and found it very easy to ignore my cries of encouragement that we could do this last hurdle of uphill in one go, but finally we did make it to the top. The few minutes we had at the top were spent posing for the obligatory summit group photo, depositing Jim’s ashes in the cairn and Christopher doing some science homework, albeit only for as long as it took to take a photo.On return to ‘The Kaya’ we noted several more hikers had made it to the top of Tugela falls and had set up camp close by, one particular couple had lugged up a five man tent and an additional small dome tent, it only made me wonder – was this due to lack of experience or possibly due to having experience? As the skies became a darker shade of grey with flashes of lighting illuminating the heavens night time took over. We settled in for dinner as we waited for the impending storm to arrive. With my Father already in the sack it left Christopher without any proper parental supervision and this became very evident when he chose to have Oats-o-easy for dinner. But this is the nice thing about hiking – there are no rules.
And Jörg you didn't mention that we improved things in the hut somewhat by making a fire using whatever we could find, mostly rubbish.All of us had a rather sleepless night that night because if it wasn’t rain on a tin roof keeping us up, it was the sound of the wind trying to remove the tin roof that kept us up. But I guess the campers had an even worse night as they were packed up and on the move whilst we were still preparing for breakfast the next morning.
The last day was fairly simple as we headed towards the chain ladder and slowly made our decent along the Sentinel zigzag, past the Sentinel cave, eventually past the Sentinel itself and back to the Sentinel car park.
