HIKING TRAIL HINTS

 “THOU WEAR’ST UPON THY FOREHEAD THE FREEDOM OF A HIKER IN THE WILDERNESS”

COBHAM DRAKENSBERG

HIKING TRAIL HINTS

Safety is of the utmost importance and disregard for a few commonsense rules can turn a trail into a tragedy. In most cases where fatalities or serious injuries have occurred in the Wilderness they could have been avoided.

Bear the following in mind – they will not only ensure pleasant hiking, but could also save lives.

   The party should always be led by the most experienced person.

   Plan each day carefully. Start off as early as possible if you have a long day ahead of you, if the terrain is difficult or unfamiliar to you or in hot weather.

   Keep in mind that there is considerably less daylight in winter than in summer.

   Large parts of Southern Africa receive rain in the summer and thunderstorms are common in the afternoon. Try to reach your destination before the rain sets in.

COBHAM DRAKENSBERG

   Hike at a steady pace. Three kilometers an hour is a good average. For every 300 meter you gain in altitude an hour can be added. On steeper sections it is advisable to shorten your stride slightly, while maintaining your hiking rhythm. Avoid frequent breaks – rather have short rest stops and use the opportunity to appreciate your surroundings.

   Keep the party together. A member lagging behind is an almost sure sign of trouble, exhaustion or exposure. Establish the cause of the problem, assist the person by spreading the weight of his/her backpack and keep him/her company. In large groups it is advisable to appoint someone to bring up the rear. If you do this you will always know who the last person is.

   Keep your energy levels up by eating snacks – peanuts and raisins, glucose sweets, chocolate and dried fruit – between meals.

COBHAM DRAKENSBERG

   If you encounter bad weather, or if the route proves too demanding physically, do not hesitate to turn back if you have not reach the halfway mark of the day’s hike by midday.

   Misty conditions occur frequently in the mountains at high altitudes. If mist sets in seek a suitable shelter and stay put until it has cleared.

   Be aware of the dangers of flash floods. Never cross a flooding river. Fortunately most South African rivers soon return to their normal flow after flooding. Either wait until the flood has subsided or make a detour.

   Some routes necessitate frequent river crossings. At times it might be possible to boulder hop across, but avoid long jumps with a heavy pack which could result in a slip, and not only a soaking, but also injury.

COBHAM DRAKENSBERG

   If you are uncertain about a river’s depth, always probe it without your pack. If the river is shallow undo the hip belt of your backpack and loosen shoulder straps for quick unloading.

   Float packs across deeper rivers.

   Avoid crossing rivers near the mouth unless there is a definite sandbar. These rivers are more likely to be shallow and slower where they are wide. Steer clear of bends, where the water is usually deeper and the flow stronger.

COBHAM DRAKENSBERG

   Avoid the dangers of lightning by staying clear of prominent features such as trees ridges, summits, shallow caves and large boulders. Find an open slope; sit on a ground pad or a backpack, preferably on a clean, dry rock, with your knees drawn up, feet together and hands in your lap. If you are in your tent during an electric storm, sit in a crouching position and avoid touching the sides.

COBHAM DRAKENSBERG

   Always carry two water bottles. Remember that smaller streams are often dry during the winter months in summer rainfall areas and dry during summer months in winter rainfall areas. Unless ample water is available along the route it is advisable to ensure that you always keep a reserve supply of water.

   Water-bottles should always be filled from safe, fast-running streams above human habitation. Water below human habitation should be regarded as unsafe and should not be drunk before it has been boiled.

   Water suspected of being infested by bilharzia, cholera or other waterborne diseases should be boiled for at least 5 minutes. This method is preferable to using commercially available chemicals. Strain water through a handkerchief to remove debris before boiling it.

COBHAM DRAKENSBERG

   In the event of a veld fire, try to find shelter in a kloof or ravine rather than going up a slope. Avoid waterfalls and take care to minimize unnecessary risks.

   Always carry a whistle. It can be used to attract attention should you get lost. Remember the international SOS – three short, three long and three short whistles.

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.

Acknowledgements

Extract from the book - Hiking Trails of Southern Africa – W&S Swanepoel

Photos:  ©Willem Pelser

Compiled by:  Willem Pelser

HIKING THE WILDERNESS - CARING FOR YOUR KNEES AND FEET

  "I’VE LET MADNESS POUR OUT OF MY SOUL TO SWIRL AMONGST THE VASTNESS OF THE WILDERNESS”

UNKNOWN

HIKING THE WILDERNESS

CARING FOR YOUR KNEES AND FEET

The human knee is a troublesome thing, aching, breaking, and creaking at the slightest provocation. So where are we going wrong?

   Walkers don’t often see themselves as sportspeople, but if you are going for an eight-hour walk, you are putting as much stress as someone who plays squash or going running a couple of times a week. Women are more prone to bio-mechanical injuries because their wider hips give them a shifting centre of gravity.

   When people first experience knee pain, often they accept it or try to manage it. When it becomes a problem, you might buy a pair of trekking poles. These work, but only to a limited degree. You can help the symptoms improve, but the underlying cause is still there.

The most common knee injuries

   Walkers often complain of knee pain on descents, pain in the inside knee or behind the knee-cap, and pain in the outside knee.

The causes

    Everyone has a distinctive gait which becomes more exaggerated as we get older. Very few people have perfect gait, with the body’s weight aligned perfectly through the feet, ankles, knees, and hips. Most people have a slight bio-mechanical imbalance, which your body will compensate for – from the feet upwards – in an attempt to bring the center of balance back in over the feet. It could be a roll of the foot, a flick of the ankle, or an outward or inward movement of the knee. However, in some people, there is excessive movement, and it concentrates pressure on a part of the joint that can’t carry that kind of load. If your knees hurt, you have to stop the movement and encourage the body to adopt a more neutral position. You can do that with off-the-peg or custom-made orthotics.

   Even if it’s the jarring of a steep down-hill that brings on the symptoms of pain or discomfort, it’s only an aggravating factor, not the cause. Most knee injuries relate to excessive movement in the joint, rather than shock transferred through the limb. Cushioning or shock-absorbing insoles can add another kind of movement.

   However, orthotics – EVA sport insoles personalized to cradle and lift the foot – fit inside the boot and hold the foot in a more neutral position to control excessive movement. This reduces stress on the joints and soft tissues in the legs and lower back. You can buy off-the-peg orthotics or have them fitted by a qualified podiatrist.

   Knee injuries caused by a twist, tear or knock will usually repair with a few weeks of rehab and rest. If, however, your injury ‘just happened’; if the pain worsens with activity, but clears up when you lay off, then you may have a bio-mechanical problem. This won’t just go; it will need specialist attention if you want to stay active. Ask your doctor for advice, or make an appointment with a podiatrist.

Coping with age

   It’s not inevitable that you’ll have aches and pains as you get older. Problems appear because as the body ages, the degree of discrepancy in skeletal misalignment increases: the collagen which makes up tendons and ligaments becomes less resilient, so things are more like to snap rather than spring back into place. People start to have problems such as fallen arches, which become set in position. It sounds depressing, but the good news is that this process is not irreversible. Over time the orthotic encourages the ligaments and tendons to stretch back, allowing the foot to adopt a more relaxed neutral position when non-weight bearing, and to be less gnarly. Hiking is one of the best ways to stay active in later life, but as you get older you can’t take your body for granted.

Make your knees last a lifetime

   There are three things you can do to ensure your knees are still in good order when you are hiking the wilderness in your dotage.

   First, every time you go out, take it steady for the first five minutes of your walk, and don’t burn up the first hill you come to. This will dramatically reduce your chances of sustaining a knee injury.

   Second, get into the habit of stretching your hamstring, Achilles, and quads afterwards. This stop the leg muscles from contracting and shortening after exercise.

   Third, if you go to a gym, build some knee-strengthening exercises – leg extensions and squats – into your work—out. Speak to your gym about this as it’s important to build balanced muscle groups that work together, so as not to pull the limb out of alignment. Some osteopaths also recommend glucosamine sulphate supplements. This promotes cartilage repair and make joints more resilient.

Blister advice

   The old wives’ tale says to rub surgical spirits or perfume into your feet to harden up the skin. This works, but large blisters can form between the hard layer and the soft skin beneath. So what can you do to prevent them? Try these if you are prone to blisters, or wearing in a new pair of boots.

   Wear a thin sports-type sock under your thicker walking socks to lessen friction between the boot and your skin.

   Rub talcum powder into your feet before you set off.

   If you’ve got a ‘hot spot’ – an area that’s prone to blisters no matter how far you walk – stick a hydro-colloid plaster, or strap zinc oxide plaster, surgical tape or micro-pore tape over it before you set off.

   Ordinary plasters fold and rub against the sock and your skin – especially in a moist environment – so they’re more likely to give you a blister than save you from getting one!

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 – The Ultimate Hiking Skills Manual – Hinkes/Bagshaw

Photos: Willem Pelser

Compiled by Willem Pelser

Storms in the Drakensberg Wilderness

 “WE HIKE THE WILDERNESS, SO THAT WE FILL THE SOUL, MILE AFTER ENDLESS MILE, WITH THE GOODNESS OF NATURE”

Storms in the Drakensberg Wilderness

The magnificence and tremendous impact of a storm in the Drakensberg has to be seen to be believed.  First come the black clouds, enmeshed with billowing soft puff-balls of gleaming white. It grows ominously darker and the clouds are heavy as lead. There is a distant growl of thunder. And suddenly the storm is upon you. The cloud is split by a fiery javelin of white-hot light, a sharp crack which merges instantly with the mighty roll of thunder, and you know the dreaded thunderbolt has struck not far from you. And then they come, one after another, hammer-blows, and you stand appalled at the fury of the storm. Sometimes so rapid are the discharges that the whole sky and the boiling clouds seem to throb and glow with fire. Cataracts of flame pour down on the earth, glowing like molten iron, and the roar of the storm is an unending, deafening cacophony of sound.

   No wonder the ancients thought they were witnessing the anger and black hatred of their gods. Modern science, of course, has explained much of the wonder of the storm, especially the mechanics of lightning, but still there is much that we do not know, much that is still unpredictable.

   We know that as the thundercloud builds up it becomes a huge dynamo, generating millions of volts of electricity. Then a separation of electrical charges takes place, the positive charge streaming to the top of the cloud and the negative to the bottom.

   Then, by a complicated interaction of electrical forces, the negative charge at the bottom of the cloud induces a positive charge on the earth below it. As the cloud passes slowly over the countryside, it draws the positive charge below on the ground after it, and the two drift together, down-wind.

   It is, of course, a well-known fact that if a positive charge is brought into contact with a negative charge, electrons flow from one to the other. But the two charges do not necessarily have to touch. If they are brought close enough together, the electrons will jump the gap, causing a spark. The spark is nothing more than air intensely super-heated to 30 000 degrees Celsius in a split second. No wonder you hear a crack (the air expanding with the heat) when you touch the two terminals of your car battery together. And no wonder you hear a mighty roar of thunder, and see a spear of light, when the lower terminal of the cloud and earth come close enough together.

   One consequence of all this is that lightning, contrary to popular believe, does not strike down. Actually, three things happen almost simultaneously. First there is certainly a downward discharge of electricity, about one million volts in barely one hundredth of a second. But then there is a surge of high voltage electricity flashing back up the original path, again in a minute fraction of a second. It is the second, upward flash that does the killing. Lastly, there is a sustained and longer charge between the cloud and the earth, lasting for about one-tenth of a second. It is this charge that burns or melts the object struck. The total voltage, in a single flash of lightning, can reach 100 million volts. Of course, all this can also take place between one cloud and another, if they are differently charged. High-speed photography has proved all this.

   Heat is the main killer. When a tree is struck by lightning it looks as if the bark has been split open. That is exactly what has happened. The intense heat, passing through the core of the tree, causes the sap to expand explosively, and to burst open the enclosing bark. The electric current runs through the roots and trunk and out through the branches and leaves, raising the temperature in the flash of a second to millions of degrees centigrade.

   Lightning is completely unpredictable. There are certain general rules, but the main rule appears to be that these are continually broken! For instance, climbers are told to avoid high points during a storm, on the theory that lightning will always strike the highest point. But often, sitting on a hillside during a storm, you will see lightning striking down in the valleys below. Even so, it is a wise precaution to choose low, flat ground (not a slope) as a place to sit out a storm.

   What other precautions can one take? First of all, on no account shelter under an isolated tree. Clumps of trees, or forests, are safer, but it is better to even avoid these. Also, keep away from wire fences, posts, horses and cattle. If you are mounted, dismount and move away from your horse. Drop anything metal you are carrying, and don’t, whatever you do, run for shelter. Running seems to produce a magnetic field which can attract lightning.

    A deep cave is safe, but avoid shallow caves and overhangs, and also cracks and chimneys, especially if water is flowing down them.

   The safest place in a storm is a car or a building. There is some evidence that in a dry storm the bodywork of a car can be damaged by lightning, but there is no known case where a person sitting in a car has been killed or even injured.

If you have no car or house in which to shelter, the best course is to sit down on some insulating material, such as a sleeping bag, drawn your knees up, put your arms around them, and sit the storm out. It is a good idea to drape something like a cape around you. Don’t lie down and down stand up. Above all, don’t panic. Remember that, statistically speaking, it is extremely unlikely that you will be hit.

   Actually, although African huts in the Drakensberg are often struck by lightning with fatal results (thatched huts are potentially very dangerous, South Africa holds a world record in this respect. Some years ago a hut in which 64 Africans were holding a party was struck by lightning, and 61 were killed instantly.), very few climbers and hikers have been struck.

   Two incidents are worth mentioning. Years ago 2 climbers were standing in the middle of a group of horses. Lightning struck and killed the 2 climbers and a horse. Years later, at Injasuthi, a park Ranger, his girlfriend and a dog was standing in one of the most exposed positions one could imagine – the highest point on a bleak, remote and rock-scarred plateau, next to some Protea trees -  watching an approaching storm coming from Monks Cowl. Then came a freak thunderbolt – one blinding flash of light – and left all 3 dead.

                             

   Don’t take a chance, respect the mountains and her weather patterns and always play it safe.

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 –  Dragon’s Wrath – J Byrom/RO Pearce

Photos:  ©W Pelser

Compiled by:  Willem Pelser