Bucket List Ride - 23 Rivers, Wolkberg, Serala

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Minxy

Race Dog
Joined
Jun 14, 2013
Messages
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Location
Pretoria
Bike
KTM 690 Adventure
Sooooo HSK and I have really been on a bucket list high this year! :ricky: On our recent Cape Trip I got to tick The Old Postal route and a bit before that, the notorious Old Mill Drift Pass.

https://wilddog.net.za/forum/index.php?topic=237656.20
Trans Karoo

https://wilddog.net.za/forum/index.php?topic=234804.0
Old Mill Drift

The 23 Rivers happened somewhere in-between those two trips in early May and I can finally report on our epic experience. I've got some incredible video footage which I cannot wait to put together.

If you google 23 Rivers literally nothing pops up. I only came to learn of this magical route right here on the forum. A couple of brave adventure riders have undertaken this route before and I read all their ride reports in complete wonder and awe. Such a mysterious and wonderful route through one of the most beautiful places in our country and nobody knows about it! I like to place this in the 'niche' adventure bracket which includes forgotten/obscure old passes/roads, really bordering on 'extreme adventure', so I guess it only appeals to a certain type of adv rider.

As we love exploring and riding off the beaten track, we have actually eyed this for a while, but never had an opportunity to undertake it, as we felt it was a bit dangerous to go on our own due to the remote location and extreme difficulty to get a 4x4 vehicle in for emergency recovery (as we'd find out later on). Lucky for us, we met [member=24722]malmens gerrit[/member] on our Xmas Xtreme ride https://wilddog.net.za/forum/index.php?topic=233018.msg4191457#msg4191457 ,where we slept over at Oppie Oewer. Gerrit mentioned that he knows the 23 Rivers route extremely well and has recently been offering this as a guided trip. Yay, no more excuses, lets go!? :D :) :D

We get a couple of friends on board, commit to a date, get our bikes ready (the totally badass 500s of course) and Gerrit sends us a couple of photos of the route just to get our excitement levels up.

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This is Orrie Baragwanath Pass, we'll be going down this time to the starting point of 23 Rivers.

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This is on the actual 23 Rivers route, some nice rocky terrain to navigate. On this part of the route we'll be doing 23 River crossings over the Mohlapitse River and one over the errrr (help me with the name please Gerrit) :p After we navigate the rivers we ride through the beautiful Wolkberg and forest surroundings. Can't wait!!!
 
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