Day 8
So after day off waiting for my eye to get functional again, I set-off next day for another attempt at crossing to Mohale dam. Unlike on the prior attempt few days back, I didn't rush in the morning, as I hoped that later start would dry a bit the ground from the prior day rain. So I set-off about nine-ish.
I've made it without glitch across the first smaller pass that stopped me few days ago becuase of the mud and into the valley from which I will have to climb the main range to connect to the cattle trail indicated on my iPhone application:
Here, in the middle of the valley is the cattle track that I was to take to make it hopefully to the top of the range where I should be able to connect to the track running on top - supposedly based on my iPhone:
When I came level I had a good look again and set-off up the hill. On the bottom part I avoided the cattle track and rather just gunned it up to the left of the track all the way to the steeper top rocky section where I then connected to the trail to take much more measured approach. Idiotically the approach wasn't measured enough, I picked wrong line and instead of doing clever thing of just backtracking few meters until I would be able to cross into much better track, I just gunned it up, got stuck and spent next 30 minutes or so trying to disentangle myself again. Which I eventually did when the bike flipped on me and has fallen down going over handlebars. But I wasn't bothered by that stage as I was completely knackered - doing this kind of ju-jitsu at 3000 meters altitude has a way to take it out of you. The good news was that the only damage to the bike was broken registration plate.
Trying to catch breath between my attempts at bike recovery I took some pictures of the scenery towards Katse dam sitting somewhere down there:
Once I got the bike into the right track and I recovered enough to be able to ride it, I made it with few cautionary breaks to the top of the mountain:
Once on top, the riding become much easier and I was able to follow along the top and fine eventually the cattle track the MapOut was indicating in about 2 km or so. The track continued east along the top of the mountains and as I expected was much easier than trying to follow the steep slopes down in the valleys:
I knew from the countour map on my iPhone that about half way through the track will descent into a valley and follow quite steep off-camber before it will again climb up on top. I planned to avoid it and rather try to find alternative staying on top all the time, but then I got lured into the valley as I was a road further on down the valley and thought I can get some easy pass there. It was of course big mistake - always stay on top!
Off camber track following the valley:
Down in the valley I came up on a ridge overlooking little settlement and I could see the road running on the opposite mountain range few km away. But there was no way for me to get there - at least reasonably safe one, so after wasting hour or two trying to see what I can find, I had to retreat back up the valley and tackle that off-camber track - which is the kind of riding in Lesotho that makes me most nervous:
Once back up in the upper reaches of the valley I tackled the off-camber. It was tiring process as I usually gunned it successfully straight up all the way to the high cattle tracks, tried the off-camber, but it become too much so rode down to the bottom of the walley (which wasn't flat either by any stretch of imagination) and repeated the whole process two more times. But I eventualy made it back to the top of the range, even though it involved about 100 meters of walking the bike through some sections I didn't have balls for. Could have saved myself few hours if I would have just stayed on top in the first place.
Luckily, once on top the situation improved dramatically. The top was flat and wide and pleasure to ride after the slow attrition game down in the valley. By now it was quite late and the sun started to set down so I pushed on sensing the success is close.
Setting sun provided for some stunning scenery thought, so I had to stop for few pictures along the way:
When I approach the end of the range, I was pleased to see that there is actually road heading down to the Senquanyane valley, as this was in my estimate the last serious obstacle between me and medium rare fillet at Mohale dam lodge - i.e. getting down to the deep valley and connect to Losper's track heading down the valley to the dam. It was quite late but the inner gastro tourist was now in full control so I pushed on to make it to the nice bed and fillet about 30 km away as the crow flies. In the retrospect, I should have just camped up on the top and enjoy the scenery, as the track down in the valley proved much more challenging than I expected and the road down to the valley was steep and badly washed out:
It took me a while to get down in the valley which by now was in deep shadow and I gunned it down the valley as fast as possible on rough double track crossing the river few times after carefull reconnaisance (not keen to exchange filet steak for extracting water out of KTM cylinder) which I fully expected to turn into proper road every minute. It didn't, and I was running out of time, especially as I got lost once quite badly and it took me good 20 minutes to get back on track again. Eventually almost in darkness after one particularly hairy river crossing I came upon a section of very steep badly washed our road, where I got stuck, which finally wiped out that fillet steak from my mind. There were some locals millingi around who showed me way across the river and they told me I will have to sleep there - which I was very much aware off as the road was horrible and it was complete darkness. They invited me to stay with them, but that would involve crossing the river back to the other side so I thanked them and rather to just sleep out at the bottom of the mountain next to the river. It was very cold and quite uncomfortable night, but nothing extreme, so in the morning I was ready to finish the job.
