Kao- Katse -Village chiefs road and home.

[Outhere]

JonW was visiting in Sept and checked goggle earth for Kao mine road I was not watching him and later went and found the village chiefs road in T4A .

When we next discussed this we realised we both had different roads .So what to do but
ask you thousands of dogs can we do it.

https://wilddog.net.za/forum/index.php?topic=39350.0

After a long wait for various reasons we were on our way leaving nice and early.

Can you see the road up to Sani Top?

Down Black Mountain to Mohotlong for Petrol 88 Km from Himeville

I’ve never travel on the road to Butha Buthe from Mohotlong but it seemed to be 30km
tar then 30km more of graded tar to kao mines turn to left.

Don’t take this road to the left

Take this road just to the right of pic above

Kao mines road to Katse Dam 50%  semi technical but doable. Great fun.

Were is Jonw

O There he is

Seems like a sudden jolt to the foot peg was too much for the bolts we tried to turn the broken studs out but failed so it was 7km of technical road without a foot peg on the brake side. Must admit this did not seem to slow this bloke down.

Although I did stop to look at the flowers

Reached Kao mines then on to what I’ve learnt to call family roads { good gravel road}to Lejone .

My words cannot describe the beauty.

At lejone we managed to get this guy to weld the foot peg back on after a short attempt to drill the broken bits out.

The beauty continued  short stretch  of tar then some petrol and 40 km of family roads along the dam to Katse lodge .

Best boney in the world

Down the hill below the wall round to Katse Lodge.

Left Howick at 5.30 had misty ride to Himeville 3 to 4 hours on Kao mine road got to
Here at 17.00 Good days ride average temp 28 degrees not a cloud to be seen.

Next morning early start back towards Lejone  on tar about 10 km turn right on beginning of what I call Village chiefs road local told Jon we will find it interesting and there is ‘not really a road’ Well put.I call it highly technical for me. Absolute jol.
If wet absolute night mare one of the reasons we waited so long to do this trip.

This is what happen to my foot peg after a bang the previous day .

Had to happen stopped in rocky section and fell over tacking off again. Don’t laugh.

Earlier Jons foot peg on the other side had taken a knock and this time the bolts had
bent and stripped only thing we could do now was use cable ties to hold bolts in .
Not the strongest respect to Jon who rode like this not using the peg again all the way back down Sani and home.

At this stage our jackets were soaking wet with sweat this is adventure riding for me.

Closer to civilisation now this guy wanted to know were the immobilizer was as when he turned the key it did not start.

My route on GPS took us to dead end

But we could see the newly graded road below so on we went down this slope

And onto the family road back to tar and right 30km to Mohotlong  Time for more scenery.

Back to Sani

Check the traffic

Check the future

My babies back not sure if I would go that route again pretty remote if any of SGB’s
Lesotho surprises come along.

Thanks JonW wouldn’t have done it without you.

 

[JonW]

As Outthere (Kevin) said, we had been planning this trip for a while, but were waiting for a dry few days, as I wasn't keen to do the trip in the rain.

At last we found a gap in between work and family committments where the weather looked good so we decided to go.

I had a problem with my KLR front brakes, the lever would "pulse" whenever I braked, locking and releasing the brake, making braking really unpleasant. No this was not the KLR version of ABS, I had somehow bent my disk. Our local kawasaki Stealer wanted just under R3000 for a new disk and said it would take about 3 weeks to get it, so this did not fill me with joy.

Luckily Kevin is a talented guy, and in 2 days flat he copied my original disk and had two new disks made for under R500 for both. fitted the disk on Wednesday evening, took the bike for a test ride, brakes felt great, so we were good to go for Thursday morning.

We left from Howick at about 05h30, had an unevetful trip to Himeville, filled up with juice and headed up Sani nice and early.

I didn't stop to take any pics on Sani, I think everyone on the forum has seen what Sani looks like by now. I must add though that even though I have done Sani more times than I can remember, it still remains a great ride to the top, one that gets the juices flowing every time I do it.

After a quick stop to get passports stamped we headed into Lesotho, beautiful blue sky, not a cloud to be seen, very different to the crap rainy weather we have been having in KZN the past few weeks.

At the top of Black Mountain we stopped for some breakfast and Kevin checked tyre pressure in the brand new TKC's he had fitted for the trip, as they felt a bit hard.

We then had an uneventful ride to Mokhotlong where we again filled up with juice and then headed off along the A1 to the turn-off to the much talked about Kao Mines Road.

 

[JonW]

As kevin said, at the kao Mine Road turn-off, don't take the obvious road that leads off the A1, this just takes you to a mine a few km down the road. take the road that looks like a goat track that looks like it doesn't go anywhere, this is the Kao Mine Road.

The road itself was really apleasure to ride, not nearly as technical as I had been led to believe, but some nice ups and downs with a few rocks to keep you awake. i was obviously not wide awake as I should have been because I must have hit a rock which caused my right hand side footpeg to shear off. No more standing for me for the rest of the day. Luckily we found a really cool guy in Lejone to weld the bracket back on.

We reached Katse Lodge quite late that afternoon, having been delayed a fair bit by having to locate a welder then waiting while he welded the bike. Katse Lodge was pretty good value and the food was excellent. Needless to say I didn't battle to fall asleep after a long day in the saddle.

 

[JonW]

The next morning woke early, decided to leave without having breakfast as we wanted to get away as early as possible. Also breakfast sounded a tad pricey at 110 SA ront each.

Took a few pics of the dam from in front of our room before we left.

We then turned off onto the Chief's Hut Road, not really knowing what to expect, as reports of this section of the road are hard to come by, the only ones we could find were by Wes and Michiel, and they both seemed to have a bit of a torrid time.

This section of the road was fantastic, some of it nice sandy paths, others some very challenging rocky climbs.

A couple of elderly Sotho gentlemen on their way down the track stopped for a chat

On one particularly steep and rocky hill I saw something that I very seldom see, Kevin had actually dropped the big heavy GS for the first and only time of the trip. I had to grab the opportunity to take pics as I don't  know when I'll get the chance again.

So after helping Kevin pick his bike up we were off again.

Here is Kevin negotiating some more challenging sections on the GS with heaps of skill.

After riding my KLR over all sorts of terrain the past 3 years and never ever having a problem with bashing my footpegs, I manage to smash the right hand side peg on day one and then the left hand side one on day two. We stopped and attempted a repair using cable ties, but this did not work, I had to continue on with only one footpeg for the second day in a row, although I must say I preferred riding without the left one compared to riding without the right peg. The plan was to carry on to Mokhotlong where we would find a welder to fix it before our climb down Sani.

Some friendly kids along the way

An example of what parts of the road looked like

Now one of kevin's many strengths, besides handling his gS over terrain more suited to enduro bikes, is plotting courses on Mapsource and using them on his GPS. Unfortunately at some stage of this route when the road seemed to disappear Kevin admitted to being a bit creative with Mapsource. The track we were riding on did not join up with another road shown on Mapsource, so Kevin just plotted his own route, connecting our path to the established road, after all, it was only a centimeter or two apart. What he could not see on Mapsource was that this couple of centimeters went down the side of a mountain. Kevin set off first, with me dubiously following.

After a nice steep descent down the hill we reached the road at the bottom

From here we followed a well maintained dirt road all the way back up to to where it meets the A1 at this sign

We then hit the tar road to Mokhotlong where we had planned to sort my broken footpeg out, but I decided to carry on with it broken, I was not battling that much any more.

The trip down Sani was a pleasure as always, just a bit busy as it was almost 12h30 already.

Very sad to see that construction of the tar road has already started above the SA border post. The once entertaining section between Sani Pass Hotel and the SA Border Post is now an uninteresting easy dirt road.

We stopped at Himeville Arms Hotel for lunch, as it was now nearly one o clock and we hadn't eaten all day. The food at Himeville Arms was as good as ever and the beer cold and refreshing

Thanks for the ride Kevin, it was worth the wait.

 

[BMWPE]

Great pics  :thumleft:
Looks like a great place to ride
Thanks for posting

 

[Chrisl]

Beautiful photos.
Lesotho is on my list.

 

[philemon]

Hey Jon & Kevin

Fantastic RR guys !! (as usual) 

Jon. I wish a could have joined you guys but it was just not possible for me now at this time of the year. Maybe some other time.

:thumleft:

 

[husky]

Great stuff guys - super report, thank goodness the weather played ball and very envious. Pity about the road construction - both from a riding and tax pain point of view. I'm told that the project is already well over budget.

 

[rubiblue]

Awesome, just did a very simlar  route about 3 weeks ago, Lesotho is unbelievable.

 

[LeonDude]

Fark, that is a ride report and a half! Nice.  :thumleft:

 

[user 5710]

Awesome man  :thumleft:

 

[popipants]

Nice!!

 

[ianb]

Nice Jon and Kev we planing for March will let you know

 

[Gee eS]

Lekker!

 

[wooly bugger]

Nice Jon and Kev we planing for March will let you know

Cool!

 

[Tweetie]

Real good adventure RR, with great pic. Nice guys, this is what its all about. You both enjoyed the adventure, and made it home again, albiet an few dings and dongs, but that's part of the adventure. It RR's like this that make us plan for the next trip

 

[Oetie]

Nice RR :thumleft:

Lesotho is on the to do list :deal:

 

[GSZA]

Awesome ans stunning come's to mind

 

[JonW]

Nice Jon and Kev we planing for March will let you know

Cool!

So you coming with next time Woolly? :ricky:

 

[SGB]

Great, thanks for sharing.  Well done for being able to foix things and go, it is all in the preparation.  :thumleft: