FLOWERS OF THE DRAKENSBERG WILDERNESS

DRAKENSBERG

KwaZulu-Natal  South Africa

Mountain of the Dragons

South Africa’s mightiest mountain range with its spear-like peaks – reminiscent of the saw-toothed spine of a gigantic dragon.

 Where Adventure beckons..........

DRAKENSBERG WILDERNESS PHOTOS © WILLEM PELSER

GO OUT ALONE ON THE HILLS AND LISTEN,

YOU WILL HEAR MUCH,

THE WIND AND THE STREAMS TELLS STORIES,

ALONE AMIDST NATURE,

A MAN LEARNS TO BE ONE WITH ALL AND ALL WITH ONE”

FLOWERS OF THE DRAKENSBERG

WILDERNESS

   The Drakensberg and its Wilderness is a forbidding, awe-inspiring territory caught amongst the mist and clouds of basalt peaks where waterfalls turn to columns of ice in winter. Long familiar to herdsmen and mountaineers, the area is largely inaccessible and still considered terra incognita by botanists.

   The plants may differ with every fold of the mountains, with every change in altitude, aspect, drainage, from one valley or peak to the next, clinging to cracks in rock faces, taking hold in basalt gravels or floating in shallow rock pools on the summit.

   The dramatic broken landscape of the escarpment and the harsh climatic conditions on the highlands of Lesotho account for the remarkable diverse plant life with about 2200 species and almost 400 endemics (plants found only in this area and nowhere else in the world).

   The flora of these high mountains has been recognized as one of the world’s ‘hot spots’, a centre of plant diversity of global botanical importance.

   Although the interior is exposed and windswept, its marshes, mires and sponges are the watershed of southern Africa, giving rise to rivers that flow to two oceans on opposite sides of the continent, the Atlantic and the Indian.

   The summit of the Drakensberg, which averages an altitude of 3000m, forms an almost inaccessible boundary between Lesotho and South Africa, with sheer cliffs falling 1200m in places. This beautiful area can be very bleak until the plants respond to rain and warm summer temperatures with a burst of colour, flowers carpeting the sheet rock and marshy ground on the summit.

The grasslands can be transformed into fields of flowers in response to fires, often started as a result of lightning (the area has the highest strike rate in southern Africa). People also use fire to bring on new grass for grazing.

   May of the Drakensberg and Lesotho plants are already well known to gardeners in the northern hemisphere. Some were introduced to horticulture in Britain and Europe by intrepid explorers and collectors as long ago as the late 1800’s. Although mostly unknown in gardens of southern Africa, many plants are popular and available to gardeners in Europe, Britain, USA and Japan, while horticultural hybrids and cultivars abound.

A note of caution to both the professional and the amateur plant collector – feast on these plants with your eyes and your senses only. Growing them can be difficult and, more importantly, they are protected by the nature conservation laws of South Africa. You may not collect plants without a permit.

   In 2000, the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg area was proclaimed a World Heritage Site for its rich diversity of plant and animal life, spectacular natural landscape and outstanding San rock paintings. Africa’s greatest concentration of rock art is to be found in the caves and overhangs of these mountains, with more than 600 recorded sites containing over 40000 images. The area is recognized as one of the world’s few sites that meets the criteria for both natural and cultural properties.

   The region was formed by massive volcanic activity in the Jurassic period resulting in basalt lavas covering most of the plateau and the upper face of the escarpment with dolerite intrusions. It overlays the softer Cave Sandstone which is exposed as cliffs and overhangs below the escarpment and in great wind-sculpted boulders in the south.

   The soils are black, very rich; thin on the summit plateau, deeper on the foothills. In summer the soils on the summit are often waterlogged. In winter they freeze every night. The freeze and thaw heaves the soil and stones making it an unstable habitat for plants. This activity also causes the crescent-shaped scars on the mountain slopes lower down.

   The friend of nature who wants to get to know and experience the region at its best, must come here high or late summer when the richly colored splendour of flowers unfolds most abundantly, then, like the Cape Flats in spring, this stunning and melancholy land, too, resembles a lovely garden, a more beautiful one than could hardly be imagined.

We as hikers, explorers, and adventurers have the absolute duty to respect and protect our Wildernesses. Nobody else will do it for us. Take ownership!

The End.

Safe Hiking.

References and Acknowledgements

From the book – Mountain Flowers - Elsa Pooley

Photos:  ©W Pelser

Compiled by:  Willem Pelser

DRAKENSBERG - RIVERS OF FIRE

DRAKENSBERG

KwaZulu-Natal  South Africa

Mountain of the Dragons

South Africa’s mightiest mountain range with its spear-like peaks – reminiscent of the saw-toothed spine of a gigantic dragon.

 Where Adventure beckons..........

DRAKENSBERG WILDERNESS PHOTOS © WILLEM PELSER

"THUNDER ROLLS AND ECHOES AMONG PEAKS THAT WERE BORN IN FIRE”

DRAKENSBERG RIVERS OF FIRE

 In the centre of Southern Africa, like a dark island in a sea of grass-covered plains, there lies a gaunt, steep-sided mass of basalt, the country’s principle watershed, and its rainy roof.

The coming of this basalt was in comparatively recent geological times, about 150 million years ago. It was as though nature suddenly became a little bored, after taking so many long millions of years to lay down the sedimentary rocks of the Karoo Systems. A change was indicated – something really spectacular to mark the ending of the age of monstrous reptiles, swamps and interminable rains.

   The change took the form of a prodigious fireworks display. Volcanic fissure after fissure erupted, pouring out lava until at least a large area of Southern Africa was covered to a thickness of about 1500 meters. This mass of basalt, known as the Drakensberg Volcanics, flowed from the ruptures in the earth’s mantle like rivers of fire. One flow cooled, and was followed by another, producing distinct layers varying in thickness from 1 meter to over 50 meters and of considerable difference in hardness and character.

   These basalts are interesting rocks to examine. In the molten state they were full of bubbles of gas. As the basalt cooled, the gas bubbles filled with minerals which crystallized into the cavities. A lump of basalt resembles a dark-colored fruit cake. Imprisoned in the rock are agates, rose-pink amethysts; calcite; chalcedony; quartz; zeolites of lovely green shades; a great variety of agate pebbles formed in steam holes in the upper levels; and pencil-like pipe amygdales which formed in the lower levels, in escape tunnels made by the gas rising from below.

   The basalt is soft and crumbly. To provide it with some backbone, nature thoughtfully squeezed up from the depths a succession on intrusive flows of hard dolerite. This rock worked its way between the basalt layers to form horizontal sills, or up the original feeder channels of the basalt flows, solidifying in them to form supporting skeletons of dolerite dykes.

   This whole mass of basalt was then left by nature to the weather. Clouds blown in from the warm Mozambique Current in the east brought rain to this high roof. The run-off water was a cutting tool that carved a masterpiece. Deep valleys, ravines and gorges were cut, full of rapids, cascades, waterfalls, caves and pools. The face of the rock island was worn back, leaving spectacular pinnacles, buttresses, and precipices. Landslides littered the approaches with giant boulders; wild valleys were deeply eroded into the roof of the basalt island.

    As it remains today, this mass of basalt covers practically the whole of Lesotho, an area of 30 344 square kilometer. On all sides, its aspect is of a range of gaunt mountains, known as Ukhahlamba (the barrier), Maluti (the heights) or as Drakensberg (mountains of the dragon), from an old legend of the sighting there of monstrous flying lizards, breathing fire.

   The whole summit of the basalt island is a jumble of spongy, water-soaked bogs, complex, zigzagging valleys, springs, waterfalls, streams, rivers, mist, snow and clouds, all inextricably mixed into a gigantic scenic symphony.

    The most spectacular length of the Drakensberg looks down on KZN, Griqualand East and the north-eastern portion of the Cape. For 350 kilometers the Drakensberg presents a high wall of basalt precipices. There are no easy ways over this mass of rock. The few passes are steep, zigzag routes following water-courses. Bridle paths, wilderness trails, and tracks follow the contours along the lower slopes, but it takes a mountaineer to find a way to the summit of most of the peaks. In some areas mountain hotels and resorts have been established. Other areas remain completely wild and difficult of access, and demand no little endurance from those with the energy to explore them.

   Snow can fall along the Drakensberg in any month of the year, but winter usually sees the heaviest falls. The summer months are marked by some of the noisiest and most spectacular thunderstorms occurring anywhere on earth. From November to May these violent storms break in two days out of three.

   Clouds start to close in for the brawl at about 11 a.m. Preliminaries commence at about 1 p.m. with a few bangs and buffets. By 2 p.m. there is a general uproar. To a hiker or climber caught in such a storm is something like trying to shelter in a box of fireworks after somebody else has thrown in a match. Tremendous flashes of lightning seem to tear the sky to pieces. Thunder rumbles, explodes, and echoes in an incessant uproar. Rain streaks down at over 50 km an hour, usually turning into hail at some stage, with lumps of ice the size of pigeons’ eggs.

   Even more abruptly than they started, these mountain thunderstorms end. The clouds suddenly lift, there is a real flaming sunset, and by evening all the stars are out, quite dazzling in the well-washed, pollution-free sky. Storms of longer duration, accompanied by days of clammy mist, also set in at times and bring an average rainfall of 2000 mm, the water soaking into the basalt and the oozing out to feed the rivers.

   It is now somehow less difficult to believe the Bushmen’s tales that dragons once lurked here. The tales give the Drakensberg its name.

What a magical, beautiful, wild place.

We as hikers, explorers, and adventurers have the absolute duty to respect and protect our Wildernesses. Nobody else will do it for us. Take ownership!

The End.

Safe Hiking.

References and Acknowledgements

From the book – Land of Beauty and Splendour – Readers Digest

Photos:  ©Willem Pelser

Compiled by Willem Pelser