Drakensberg: Cathedral Peak

By either ill decision or adventurous nature we find ourselves at the Cathedral Peak hotel on Friday night. I’ve never been a hotel person, yet the grand old buildings nestled deep in the bosom of the towering grassy slopes extending up into the escapement peaks have always enticed me. The way they seem so out of place, yet as old and comfortable as the stone faces of the buttress far above.

Staff usher us in, guests are in a frenzy around us. There are two separate weddings taking place this weekend. A group of women with - as Julian puts it - tacky wigs on. Their mischievous smiles are juxtaposed with children running around the carpeted corridors feeling the wonder of adventure in this infinite labyrinth in the mountains.

Dorothy (the car) being unable to join us after the 4x4 track becomes a 2x2 trail was comfortable allowing us to invite Kaia to fill the adventurous woman role in our little trio. Kaia sits at the dinner table interested in everything and visibly glowing with excitement. We all sample one of everything at the dinner buffet, feeling uncomfortably full we admit defeat at dessert and return to our room to pack our bags.

Loud knocks at the door at 3am were not a fire alarm, but a reminder that life is to be lived - now. Every moment should be celebrated, and it was your responsibility to remind others to do the same. Well… the drunk wedding guests who took the place of the children running the carpeted corridors understood it subconsciously in that way at least. After eating too much breakfast, staring at the looming mountains with awe and changing the position of a few hundred small items from bag to bag to car to bag - it begins. Well, it had already begun.

Kaia and I opt to hang onto the side of Dorothy as we drive up Mike’s Pass. Choosing to drive up the pass cost us a bit more money and cut out nearly 6km of gruelling jeep track with 400m of elevation, but it couldn’t have been a better decision. We started deeper into the mountains, we rode the meandering contour paths from the get go and most importantly Dorothy won Kaia’s respect by showing off a bit up the rocky road. As we turn to admire the view over the next few hours we see her headlights watching out over us in the distance; having an adventure of her own.

When Conor and Amy described the route to us in Kosi Bay it was presented alongside a few other options. The brief given to them was “a one night hike with meandering contours and big views”. At least that was what was in my head. The contour path turns from a road that Dorothy was more cut out for into a slim grassy well trodden animal track and I realise that this hike is perfect. To our right the rolling grassy hills slip down into their neighbouring ridges, plaiting one another into a winding river accentuated by dense forrest thickets in shades of dark green.

Julian has his camera out more often than normal, inspired by the grandiose the the imposing mountains to our left. We come over a crest and aptly named Castle Buttress stamps a priority sticker on our attention. The birds fall silent allowing us to almost hear the significance of this view. All three of us sit down and say little. Mist and cloud that have hung low for the entire morning suddenly lifts, god rays emerge from a single point in the distance. Someone standing over the scale model of the mountains in the hotel turns the saturation knob to max and the colours fill the void left by the birdsong.

Never before have the names of peaks in the Drakensberg been so clearly apparent to me. Maybe it’s the fact that I don’t really know what a Monk’s Cowl looks like… But Cathedral Peak, The Pyramid, Organ Pipes and the Castle Buttress proudly act out their caricatures perfectly.

Our tent resides under a tree behind Tseketseke Hut on the side of a boulder filled river bed. A steady but small stream creates some background noise, normalising the saturation of the colours from before. A stream with menace. Towing walls of tortured soil rise meters above where the river now flows, rocks strewn into places that only a river of rage could have achieved. I look up into the tranquil sky, grateful that we have lucked into a moment of serenity in these dangerously powerful mountains.

Kaia’s eye for beautiful small rocks along with her insatiable curiosity allows her to open an incredible conversation over dinner around a simple question: “How do you see time?”. My initial objective, intellectually boastful and “Eastern” answer is called out by Julian in only a way that a friend who really knows me can do. While there is truth in the fact that there is only ever now, and the past is simply a collection of thoughts from past moments, Kaia asked a subjective question - he interjects. Well, subjectively, time feels like a snake that has eaten a collection of different sized rodents. A linear, chronological set of memories marking the passing of time. With some areas thicker and filled with rich dense memories from a extended periods of deep presence. And other chapters of life that can almost be summed up in a sentence, where repetition and being lost in thought are the main adjectives.

Leaning back on rocks, drinking tea with tired eyes that are determined to take in as much of the night’s sky as possible, we finally see a shooting star.

Dawn breaks and our trio breaks into an unspoken optimised morning routine. Coffee and breakfast is made, the tent is packed up, water bottles are filled and maps are read almost as byproducts of our marvelling at the views. Which have changed significantly due to the dense, moist cloud that we find ourselves in. The surrounding views that we had given so much energy to soaking up yesterday are now completely reimagined, offering endless awe.

Feeling like Calvin’s Father (from Calvin and Hobbes) I suggest that Julian and Kaia navigate our way out of the cloud using only the map, with the GPS watch only as a backup. Recalling only while writing this the times that Josh had given me similar challenges in mountains far away - thank you for that dear friend. A mountain education is always best learned practically.

The route out is shorter, and due to the cloud we walk quickly. With 4km to go we opt for a snack break to stretch it out a bit. And once again, someone in the hotel must have leant into the scale model of the mountains and blown away the cloud - because maybe a minute after the packs hit the ground the great expanse of the mountains was fully in view again.

We joke about Dorothy driving herself back into the hotel and inviting herself to the table of the women in wigs at the wedding. We wonder if she’s made it back up to the top of Mike’s Pass and if the cold weather is helping her hangover. Shorty after passing Mushroom Rock - which too could not be better named - we come across a group of women. I like to think that they were the previously wigged ones, but alas not every subplot can come back around. After a bit of sassy back and forth we console them in the fact that they have indeed missed the turnoff to the waterfall and should continue climbing the steep hill to Mushroom Rock as they’re almost there. The only regret that I have from this whole adventure was not asking them if they had met Dorothy at the hotel bar the night before.

We drink a coffee and have lunch at a hut in Didima camp. It has an objectively better view than the hotel of the majestic mountains from which we’ve just come. We’re filled with a sense of childlike joy, freedom and wonder. A feeling rivalled only by that of children running barefoot around an impossibly big hotel in these very same mountains the evening before a wedding.

Kaia drops me at the base of Mike’s Pass, the adventure at an end. Although there is one last thing left to do. I don earphones and run up the pass until the altitude and my cardiovascular limits force me to walk. I oscillate between these two states until Dorothy comes into view. She’s perfectly sober, happy and content; saying that she would be happy to live out her days here staring off into these perfect mountains.