Day 12 - Sentinel Peak, Drakensburg Mountains

Six of us were up at 0600 this morning for breakfast to get onto the minibus at 0700. We were joined by another 7 people and had a 2 hour drive to get to the base of Sentinal Peak Mountain that we were to climb that day. 

Looking at the Mountain from the base of it we made the mistake of saying that it didn’t look that high to climb...... we couldn’t have been more wrong really. 

Our hike leader Sejmo stormed on ahead and we followed at a steady pace not taking our eyes off the ground as all we were walking on was unsteady, moving rocks with absolutely no barriers or anything to stop us falling over the side. After an hour we came to a Gulley, a dried up waterfall that was a vertical 250m high. Sejmo took pleasure in telling us that we were to climb this and to be incredibly careful not to cause an avalanche and send large boulders tumbling onto our climbing buddies below - no pressure! It took us about 30 minutes to climb this as we had to stop to catch our breaths (we were about 2000m high by this point) and give our calves a minute to stop screaming. 

Eventually we scrambled to the top (all of us unscathed thankfully) and was presented with the most incredible view I’ve ever seen. 3,100m high and the world below us looked tiny. We were so high that, had there been clouds, we would have been well above them. We sat down and had lunch together taking photos and, pretty much completely sat in silence, just generally marvelling at the view. Sejmo explained that this cluster of mountains was called the Amphitheatre and showed us by shouting loudly, the noise then echoed around the mountains for a good few seconds before finally falling back into silence. Hoping it wasn't an omen the only noise that would break the quietness was from the vultures flying overhead. 

After lunch we walked along the top of the mountain and Sejmo led us to the 2nd highest waterfall in the world. At this time of year it was more of a water-trickle but it was still an impressive sight. It was so warm up on top that we were all sweltering as we were told to wear layers, we then found out that only last week there had been snow up on the top of the mountain - we were very lucky with the weather!

Numerous photos later we set off for another 30 minute walk across the top of the mountain and came to a ledge were Sejmo suggested we sit down (never good hearing this), he then went on to explain that as we couldn’t go back down the Gulley without killing ourselves there was only one other way down this mountain, and that was by ladder - 4 very old, very unstable, very wobbly ladders. I decided to bite the bullet and was the 2nd one to head down, with no ropes, no sides to the ladders and absolutely nothing to stop us falling 3,000m down the mountain. Typically the wind picked up just as I was heading over the edge on my second ladder and I had to just stop climbing and cling on until the wind subsided and then carry on. We all got to the bottom alive and high fived each other knowing that it really wouldn’t have taken much for one of us to slip or miss a rung, and that would have been it!

We then continued down on the crumbling footpaths until we reached the minibus at the very end. 23,000 steps, 3,100m and 7 hours and we had climbed a mountain and made it back safely! What a day!