Adam Kok’s Road. Done and dusted. Box ticked (Ongeluks Nek to Mt. Moorosi)

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ianhogg

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Adam Kok’s Road. Done and dusted. Box ticked.

Of the three rides that I had hoped to do I had largely given up on Adam Kok’s road. The window of long days and temperate nights had passed and I thought it was an unobtainable goal. For the background see:

https://wilddog.net.za/forum/index.php?topic=213242.0

Kok and about 2000 followers; about 20 000 head of stock; something like 300 wagons and numerous donkey carts set off, early in 1861 to cross the mighty, uncharted and the most incredibly precipitous mountains to reach Kokstad on the eastern side of the Drakensberg range. Much is written about the historical events leading up to this trek, but very little, if anything is recorded about the arduous and harrowing trek itself. Near Mt Moroosi, the Dobson Map clearly shows ‘Adam Kok’s Road’. It climbs the steep Mkochomela range near Tosing.

Last weekend Iain McDonald phoned me up. His wife and family were going shopping for the weekend and he told me he would be bored kicking around the farm on his own and he thought we should go and do Adam Kok’s Road. After checking that Stuart Joyner was in and that I wouldn’t finish up in the divorce courts I signed up.  I found out later that he had another ulterior motive apart from his limp excuse of the shopping expedition. He wanted to clear the decks of unfinished projects so that he could get down to the business of setting up a Roof preparation/trainer event wearing his Rockrabbits/7 bridges hat that may be held in conjunction with the Natal WFO enduro Association.  Now THAT will be exciting! See Rockrabbits on Facebook & www.rockrabbits.co.za.

As with our grand traverse, we couldn’t have chosen a more unsuitable weekend. On the Monday and Tuesday there was quite heavy snow at that end of the Berg and on Thursday I got a plaintive morning phone call from Iain asking me to bring up a three bike trailer because it was so cold in Matatiele he couldn’t stand the thought of the first thing in the morning 70km ride from his farm to the Ongeluks Police Post. It was a fortuitous decision. I used 7.4l of petrol from Ongeluks to Mt Moroosi and the others about the same. If we had chucked in our 2l coke bottle at the border we would have been sucking on a standard 8l plastic tank. I had fitted a 14l long range tank that would have got us through but it would have been an issue.

Attached is the gps track in gpx and kml for Google earth and an overview map. Ongeluks Nek Border Post to Mt Moorosi petrol station 87.3km
 

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