On the Press

 

Drakensberg North on the press!

It's been almost exactly seven months since I fingered the first click of the mouse on Side 1 of Drakensberg North, but last night I was rewarded at last by the sight of both sides of the map beautifully printed on Duraflex paper.

All that remains is to coat them, trim them, fold them and insert them into their transparent pockets before they go out there to meet the challenge of the Drakensberg and its rigours. Should be, I hope, by next week ... and the website is now open for your pre-orders ...  Even if I have not sent you a code there will still be a discount for the first month ... so get yours now!

In the meantime the first draft of map 3 has gone out for comment, so keep watching this space!

Two ou toppies admiring the first copies of Drakensberg North ... the cartographer with the CEO of FormsXpress, John Donaldson

Naming the Map Series

 The ancient, huge sculpted sandstone boulders of the Cederberg form wondrous corners and caverns where you can explore for hours, seeking scores of ancient rock paintings and finding fresh ideas and inspiration amongst the weird shapes and ochres and fabulous flowers. I have reflected further while revisiting the Cederberg on comments received by email, and focused on one important point that was raised. The Maloti mountains, the geographical reality of them at least, are indeed not the subject of our new map series. I have thus decided to remove the name ‘Maloti’ from the titles, and call them simply ‘Drakensberg North’, ‘Central’ and ‘South’.

Reasons:

1. As above, the true Malotis do not feature on the maps.

2. Removes any potential confusion that may remain, that we are in some way contracted to the Maloti-Drakensberg Park – or EKZNW – to produce the maps. We are not. We are totally private and working on a Memo of Agreement with EKZNW regarding content and endorsement, but there is no contract. I have also removed the MDP logo from the covers for the same reason. The maps include recreational areas that are not in the Park.

3. Remains true to the titles of their actual predecessors, my original series, with no suggestion that these are in some way successors to, or revisions of, the existing Geomap series, because they are absolutely not that either.

4. Emphasizes the nationally and internationally iconic name ‘Drakensberg’, where the lesser-known name ‘Maloti’ might well cause confusion.

The revised covers for maps 1 to 3 are pictured below.

From the summit of Groot-Krakadouw you can see, a hundred kilometres to the east, the blue line of the Roggeveld Mountains. These dolerite cliffs represent the extreme western edge of the great igneous cap that once covered much of our land, and that left the mighty Drakensberg behind on its eastern rim. When there has been good rain and the streams are sparkling and the tall rye-grass is green the Roggeveld much resembles the mountains and glens of Scotland, rather as parts of the ’Berg can do.

The Verstepunt pinnacles, on the edge of the Roggeveld escarpment. The Cederberg Tafelberg can be seen faintly on the extreme right horizon, 100 km away to the west. In between lies the Tankwa, the driest area in the whole of South Africa.

Pass Ratings, QR Codes, and Rules and Regs for hiking in the Berg

Theuns van Rensburg [L] and the cartographer discussing the first draft of "Noord Drakensberg North" with Natal officials at the Cathedral Peak Forestry Office, 1980

25 April 2022

RATING THE BERG PASSES

There has been a fair consensus amongst map contributors that some sort of rating system should be applied to the escarpment passes, especially considering that these maps will not only be used by experienced hikers. Such ratings are always going to be subjective and we could all argue until the cows come home about this pass vs that, etc etc. Right at the start of the process I found the Vertical Endeavour ratings, and there are three reasons why I have more-or-less stuck with these:

1. They are not DANGER ratings, they are DIFFICULTY ratings. We have other symbols for danger, impassability etc. These VE ratings relate to length, steepness, bushiness, stoniness – all the factors that require specific kinds of fitness rather than sheer climbing competence and ability to deal with vertical rock faces or height exposure. Hence a really long arduous route that requires a whole day’s very steep slog up a broken stony route with lots of snaggy bush, little water and exposure to the hot afternoon sun might rate much higher than a route with one short C pitch in the middle, or higher than one that has a fairly easy ascent but a really dangerous descent IF you don’t turn out of the gully at the right point.

2. They are ratings for AVERAGE CONDITIONS. You can’t rate for every single kind of weather, temperature, ice or lightning danger, etc etc. In ‘Dragon’s Wrath’ Pearse says that ‘it would be a sad day if the Drakensberg were ever made totally safe’ – and the same surely applies to every wild place on Earth, and our apparently inborn need for the challenges of danger and excitement in our lives.

3. I found that three people involved with the original VE ratings had signed up for our mapping group, so what was more logical than to ask them to look at their ratings critically, and add passes that had not previously been rated by them? They are all highly experienced and I have no reason - including from my own now admittedly ancient experience - to doubt them.

Consequently the ratings have been updated with more precision in the later drafts, and stand for now with these words added to the map reference:

“Difficulty rating for Escarpment passes [where 10 is the extreme, requiring great experience and fitness]. Ratings according to Vertical Endeavour, under average conditions of weather and temperature. NB These are subjective DIFFICULTY ratings from experience, relating to the distance, altitude and steepness, state of path or substrate, need to bushwhack, scramble, etc etc; they do not indicate DANGER levels.”

I hope that we can all accept that there are issues in this process of mapping that we won’t all reach consensus on - otherwise the maps will never be made.

 

QR CODES

It's our intention to include a set of QR codes on the maps that link to relevant and informative websites. There are any number of free QR scanner-aps available for smart phones and they are a wonderful way of making the maps interactive and a rich resource in themselves. If you have a QR scanner on your phone scan the above and you'll see what we mean. We have room on the map for 20 codes and we have chosen those shown below. If you would like to suggest any others please contact us. NB if the codes below won't scan because they too close together block those you don't want with a bit of paper. If you click on the pic it will enlarge.

"RULES AND REGULATIONS" HIKING TIPS, SAFETY HINTS ETC.

We've published these as a separate Page [click here] -- if you would like to comment please feel free to do so. These are basically the same as published on the existing EKZNW maps but cleaned up with duplications omitted, etc etc.

All the best!

Peter Slingsby, April 2022

Map Drafts available for Download

Ezemvelo KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife, with whom we’ve been discussing the new map series since 2019, can’t meet on making inputs into the drafts of the first two maps until near the end of April. The delay is unfortunate but I have put a lot of thought into how we can move this process along as speedily as practicable, bearing in mind the extreme need for revised maps. With this in mind I have prepared two special maps for their meeting, which anyone interested may access and comment on at the link below.

I have taken the existing EKZNW maps and first aligned  them accurately upon the official 1:50 000 topo maps [SG or Surveyor General maps]. In this regard they match with some precision, regarding contours, rivers, etc but not paths or roads. Apparently the topographic info on these is based on the same projection as the SG maps but the paths etc are not, being based on the Cape Datum instead. This curious mixture of two systems is unprecedented and has led to many problems, not least of which is  that many paths appear in effect about 150 metres+ east and south of where they actually are, without any reference to the hills, cliffs, gullies and river beds around them. As you know there are no long/lat coordinates given for features on these maps and because of the above it would be impossible to provide them.

To illustrate this I have overlayed in purple the path and roads system as it appears on the drafts of the new maps. This ‘purple’ layer has been geo-referenced and is 100% based on actual gps readings in the field and/or interpolated with information from the SG maps, Google Earth and other photo sources, and inasmuch as it is subject to the same errors as any human-generated information I am satisfied that it is 99.5% as accurate as I can make it given the limitations of scale.

I have then added question marks where problems arise. Red question marks refer to paths and roads shown on the EKZNW maps that cannot be found and are not explained by the datum shift outlined above. Orange question marks refer to paths shown by EKZNW as ‘Minor Paths’ but which have been recently reported only as ‘ways to go’ –  nor can any trace of them be found on photos. A few purple question marks refer to paths found in the Cathedral Peak research area which do not appear on the EKZNW maps and where I don’t know if they are included in the public MTB system, or should be excluded.

Your comments on any of this would be welcome, the DropBox link is at https://www.dropbox.com/s/ujnj2fmpx22n25d/Compare%20Paths%20Maps%201and%202.zip?dl=0 

 MAP 1 SIDE TWO DRAFT ready for comment!

The draft of MAP 1 SIDE TWO is ready for comment at last! Compilation has taken a little longer than expected, but it seems possible that the Cathedral Peak - Monk’s Cowl - Injisuthi area is one of the more complex parts of the Berg path system.

We have several queries and your inputs will be very gratefully received [and acknowledged!]. Preferably append them in ‘Comments’ below, or private message me at this address. 

CLOSING DATE: Sorry to rush you. April 25th is the deadline for comments - we want to go to print in early May!

Please refer to the 'Progress so far' page [see link on right] for most REFERENCE items; below the map extracts is a panel of most of the additional symbols we have added for the Side Two map.

1. Sphinx – see map extract below. There are two different peaks labelled Sphinx on different maps, flanking the summit of the Tlhanyaku Pass. Which one is correct? [and not to be confused with the Sphinx near Monk's Cowl campsite]

2. Cataract Valley [at Injisuthi]. As above, maps differ. Which is correct?

3. Dingaan’s Cave [just north of the Champagne Castle Hotel]. Not vital info for Berg hikers, but it falls on the map so we’d rather we had it right. Is it on the banks of the Sterkspruit, or does it look out over the Mankulumani?

4. Ladder Cave near Rainbow Gorge - does it exist? Is this where it is, near the Chockstone? How many does it accommodate?

5. Reido Cave, on the escarpment near Pampiring - how many can sleep in it?

6. Are you an MTB enthusiast? The jeep tracks off Mike’s Pass are used for MTB riding - have we got the grid right?

7. Quad biking near the Cathedral Peak hotel - is this for real?

There's a new page that you can access from the column on the right, dealing with the GOOD NEWS -- that we're printing on all-waterproof paper again!

NEW REFERENCE ITEMS

As we progress southwards on the maps we come across features that have not been encountered before, and these often require new map symbols. The panel below illustrates the new symbols added to the Reference in map 2.

Looking forward to your comments!

- Peter Slingsby, Lakeside  - 4 April 2022

Welcome to our Drakensberg Map blog, the blog for our all-new 2022 Drakensberg map series, which is already well underway, with map 1 all but complete, and map 2 nearly there.

I hope to use this blog ...

* to keep contributors and enthusiasts up to date with our progress towards completion of the series;

* to ask questions and seek answers from you as we go along; and

* to help us all feel that this brand new series is a community effort with maximum input from you, lovers of hiking, climbing or simply being in the Berg.

The process of involving members of climbing, hiking and camping organizations in the mapping began in January 2022 and is already quite advanced, so I am not going to repeat the history of what went before January or since then. If you are new to the game please have a look at the pages so that you know where we’ve come from – the ‘long’ history is here, and the ‘progress’ history since January is over here.

This is an open comments blog where you can add your own remarks as you see fit – but keep it clean, hey – or you can email me any time here. If you do email please indicate whether you are happy to be included in open, ‘send to all’ emails or if you want your messages to remain private. 

If you are familiar with Slingsby Maps you’ll know our style - and you can view sample snatches from existing maps at www.slingsbymaps.com . If you’re not already familiar with our maps here are extracts of a well-known area from the two existing Drakensberg series, contrasted with the new series.

L to R: 1980s 'Slingsby'; 2000s EKZNW; 2022 new series. Click on the pic to enlarge.

I will be posting my first questions in the next blog, but in the meantime here are some ‘facts and figures’ about the new series, so you’ll know what kind of creature it will be!

* There will be three double-sided maps covering more or less the same area as the present six-map EKZNW series; the scale will be the same [1:50 000] and the maps will be titled ‘Maloti-Drakensberg 1, 2, 3

* Unlike the original Slingsby series, each map will be orientated to true north, with full GPS info on the same datum as the official 1:50 000 topo series

* The maps will be printed on fully-waterproof Duraflex paper and sold packed in plastic pockets. The three maps will be available separately and we are expecting to market them at about R190 each.

* The maps will become available as they are printed, Northern Drakensberg in the winter of 2022, Central Drakensberg in spring and Southern Drakensberg in the summer.