Scariest Hike Ever

After our Sani Pass tour, we headed further north up the drakensberg range. I managed to mix the perfect combination of beautiful hikes with relaxation and reading. Nick, Michelle and I went on a spectacular hike one day. It was quite a challenging hike. We think we climbed around 1300 meters in a nine hour round trip hike. Unfortunately, it was cloudy with only the occasional break so I am sure the views are normally even more amazing. This was also the scariest hike I have been on. It definately challenged my comfort with heights. There were many sections that were on a very narrow path in the side of a steep peak, which I decided were the worst. To me it felt like the mountain on the one side was throwing off my balance toward the side where the huge drop off was. This was not a comfortable feeling for me, which I am convinced then made me more nervous and shaky footed. It did not help that I had decided not to take my actual hiking boots, but instead my keen shoes. I tried not to think about it too much and just walk normally, but that was easier said than done. The other fear provoking areas were ridges that we had to walk along where each side dropped fairly quickly and a couple rock scrambles. At these times the clouds were my friends, shielding for me just how far it is I could fall. The worst part by far was our final rock scramble. This was about 5 hours into the hike and we were all pretty tired. From where we stood the peak was in the clouds and we were not able to tell which way we were actually supposed to go. So we chose the rock scramble that had a several hundred meter fall below it. At the bottom of the picture below, you can see the beginning of the sheer drop just below the rock slide. I initially stopped at the beginning adament that I would wait there. I was not going to go...until my competetive nature got the best of me again. As I sat there realizing that Nick had made it, then Michelle had made it, I went. I literally crawled my way to the top. We later found out from pictures that the actual peak is just to the left of this area. We were supposed to have gone around and summitted from the other side.

The next day Tini, Nick and I laid low. We enjoyed a lazy morning of reading, napping and eating before heading out a brief hike to a waterfall.