Camping in Magaliesburg

Jolene, one of my co-workers, invited our group to join her friends on their overnight backpacking trek to Magaliesburg. The mountains of Magaliesburg are located about 90km West of Pretoria. It was early in the morning on a gloomy, rainy Saturday when we left. Thankfully, by the time we arrived at the trailhead, the skies completely cleared up. After meeting the crew, we loaded our packs and headed out. 

There were a few members of the group who are very familiar with this hike and were our unofficial guides the area. They informed us it would be about a 6km (~3.5mile) hike to our camping site. My first thought was that 3.5 miles could barely be considered a hike....

Starting the hike on a rugged dirt road.

However, I quickly realized why they expected the hike to take us so long. It wasn't necessarily the distance, it was the terrain. We climbed down into a incredibly steep canyon, then hiked through rocky creekbeds, and then climbed (or crawled) back out of the canyon on the other side. It was definitely the most technical "hiking" I've done with a backpack. Made me regret bringing those 2 bottles of wine in my pack...

Dan is surveying our route. You can see other climbing down the rocks on the right.

Tshema checking out the view from the top of the canyon.

After making it out of the canyons, the trail flattened out and continued through some incredible rock formations.

The weather changes very quickly out here; it went from this....

....to this, in only minutes

Fortunately, it was a quick rain/wind storm that came after we set up camp. We barely got through one game of cards in the tents.

Then the skies cleared up again and we got to see an incredible sunset, while enjoying wine, cheese, and crackers on the top of a huge boulder.

It was incredible to see how many stars were visible out there. This is my first night shot using my cheap tripod.