Berg record goes DOWN!!!

[Andrew Porter]

Stijn and Andrew H. have completed the berg traverse in 3 days 9 hours 53 minutes. That is almost a day faster than the record!

Well done guys - awesome achievement!

[Andrew Hagen]

Hi all - just signed up!
Again, thanks for the support and for your comments, and thanks especially to Andrew P for relaying our updates. The enthusiasm over here is great to see!

This, I'm almost certain, is the only 'berg hike I've done where my rain jacket has served only as a pillow. That made me extremely happy. Actually, Stijn's post is a little misleading in that we did get to watch some pretty spectacular light shows, notably from the top of Thabana, but we never got caught in one!

Stijn has lovingly sculpted this route to be as efficient as possible, but there are a few things that one should be aware of before attempting it, and an example follows:
I firmly believe that the Jarateng valley has too many bends in it. Mental toughness is key. Rounding the um-teenth corner only to find another kraal, another river crossing, and another cheerful cry of "masweet!" could be just enough to tip one over the brink of madness.

Otherwise, we're pretty chuffed and will certainly come back and post more details once they've settled out in our addled brains.
For the record (pun unavoidable, I'm sorry), our exact time was 3 days, 9 hours, 52 minutes and 52 seconds.

/Andrew

[Stijn Laenen]

Thanks for all the comments and support guys - it really helped getting some of the SMSes en route and it's nice to see that we managed to cause a little stir on this blog while pounding away the kilometers ;-) And Laura, thanks for the pom-pom cheering on the AR mailing list too :-)

I'll put together a trip report soon (or maybe I'll delegate that to the awesome writing prowess of Andrew H) but for now let me just say that we had a fantastic time up there and couldn't have been luckier with the weather. Not a single drop of rain, wisp of fog or spark of lightning in 4 days on the escarpment in mid-summer... whaaaat???! Hey, I'm not complaining :-)

A few interesting anecdotes to whet your appetites for now:

Quote of the trip was from Andrew H, about 12km after starting, somewhere in the Khubedu Valley... he had finally stopped talking for a few minutes and quipped that this slogging thing "could get quite boring" :-)

At Bushman's Nek, I discovered that I had taken 2 copies of the Cobham map with us... doh!

And I carried a deck of cards with me (part of the plan to keep ourselves in check and force a few entertaining breaks). The first time we had a game was at the Busman's Nek campsite though... the Amarula we took along did go down really well as a night cap every day. hehe :-)

[Malcolm Millar]

Well done Stijn and Andrew. Brilliant record breaking achievement! Looking forward to reading your report. Best wishes to all for the festive season.

[swazidarron]

Nice effort...hope you had time to enjoy the environment whilst you were pounding away at the kilometres

[Karen Addison]

A great achievement. Congrats! It won't be forgotten easily.

[Laura Forster]

WELL DONE, well done, well done. Huge admiration and respect to Stijn and Andrew H for what was obviously a very well planned and carefully executed effort. Great stuff, guys, you're superstars.

[Gary Mortimer]

Wow, thats a fantastic achivement I really look forward to hearing about it.

The best part of 10 years to beat the previous record.

I doubt very much if much can be shaved off this time.

Bloody good show Andrew and Stjin