A misty morning started our hike on Saturday. Fifteen hikers showed up for the forest walk. As agreed beforehand some of the hikers were to join us for a few kilometres before turning back to the cars at their own pace.
L to R: Albert (V) and Saartjie van der Merwe, Mike van der Heyde, Cheryl and Greg Devine, Karin van Niekerk, Karen Kohler (MC KZN), Jenny Brovelli (V), Alex de la Rouviere (V), Claudine Bennetts, Fay and Dave Jones, Wolf Schneider and Erich Brack. Jan Heyneke behind the camera (V)
(V = Visitor)
At this point I recommended the “Short” route as advertised by Sanparks to some of the returning hikers and got the following report:
in case you are ever tempted, that “short” route was a trap.
It followed a jeep track for a while and then swung off into the forest on a badly maintained, very twisty with tricky gullies and stream crossings path to eventually loop back onto the normal Perdekop trail not far from where we had left it.
These “interesting” loops in the forest added at least 1 km to the length and at least 1/2 hour to the walking time.
We got back to the cars, buggered, and just before your voortrekkers started steaming in from the full trail.
As they say, there are no short cuts on a hike! My apologies for the misleading information.
This hike is through beautiful indigenous forest. Lots of fallen trees after recent strong winds and many interesting fungus along the way. A very pleasant morning in the forest.
Thank you for photos from Karen Kohler.
Meet Leader ~ Karin van Niekerk