The Background: A New Map Series for the Drakensberg

From 1978 to 1985 I literally spent seven years of my life mapping the Drakensberg. Without any digital aids at all –  no computers, no gps, no such thing as a cell phone –  everything had to be hand-drawn, including every single contour line. Every step of every path had to be surveyed on foot – though we did cadge a short trip on an SAAF helicopter to locate some distant caves!

Hill-shading –  the 3D effect that today takes but the press of a button –  was added to the maps by making models. 100 m contours were cut out of thin plywood with a jigsaw, moulded with Plaster of Paris, and then photographed in bright sunlight, with the best angle chosen for the best effect.

The then Department of Forestry managed huge swathes of the mountains, including large catchment areas. The KwaZulu homeland governed the ‘Upper Tugela Location’ –  essentially the Mnweni area –  and the rest fell under the Natal Parks Board. I was a Cape-based cartographer whose Berg experience was limited to a few expeditions in my student years, on two of these accompanied by my pet cat –  but that’s another story!

The only detailed maps available were the official 1:50 000 topo series, and some of the older maps were still contoured in English feet. The need for a dedicated set of hiking maps was clear. We decided upon six maps, scale 1:50 000, to be printed on Tyvek waterproof paper, then new on the market. We completed about six weeks of field work for each sheet, and by 1985 the series was complete. I have no idea how many kilometres we walked!

By 1994 two editions of the maps had been printed when tragedy struck. The films used to print the maps were lost when our printer moved their premises. Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife asked us for reprints –  and we could not provide. To redraw everything from scratch was impossible for me at the time, and so the authorities commissioned the present ‘Geomaps’ series.

Over the years I have been nagged and nagged to reissue my original maps – the ‘Geomaps’ have not been revised for some 20 years. In 2019 my son Jasper and I flew to KZN for a most constructive meeting with EKZNW at Midmar Dam, in the same hall where I had gathered 40 years earlier with Forestry and the NPB! We and EKZNW agreed to investigate the possibility of a new Slingsby Map series.

Then Covid intervened and our project – like millions of others around the world – was forced on hold. The matter rested until December last year, when yet another email arrived, begging for a reissue of those original maps. It was the last straw for me, and the new series was born.

Part of this article was originally prepared for the newsletter of the MCSA: KZN section.