Report and photos courtesy of Rebecca Wakeford
[CLICK ON PHOTOS TO VIEW FULLSIZE - or view pics in accompanying SIMPLEVIEWER Presentation]
The Dargle road was a freeway of cars, but the path up Inhlosane was pretty much ours alone. Choosing the forest route for our upward climb left us all slipping and sliding, but some nifty use of a walking stick ensured safe passage. We were all expertly hoisted up the slippery bits, secured by Ed, who valiantly secured himself to a tree here and there to give us a hand. It was a bit like a challenging game of snakes and ladders with ten steps forward a good slide backwards. All layers of the forest were bedecked with crispy white powder and the bird song echoed the onset of spring in the air. Truly magical.
Coming out the forest we stopped for tea and to catch our breath and started on the upward climb to the summit. The first views of the snow covered Drakensberg, made every slippery step worthwhile. Virgin snow at our feet, we were drawn upwards, and onwards, with every step making us all feel grateful to be just present in the moments. A lone trailer runner nimbly outpaced us to the top, but we took it slowly, and built up the layers of clothing against the cold as we went. We had veteran Inhlosaners in our midst as well as some new initiates, but for every one of us, the views from the top were just spectacular. A few snowballs were thrown and there was much laughter as we all posed for the traditional photo shoots.
We took a gentler path back down, stopping to build the snowman en route, raiding our backpacks for left over snacks that could be used for decoration! The jelly baby eyes were quite striking! Slowly we descended down the contour path, with some wobbly chorusing from the Sound of Music sound track, inspired by the arrival of a heard of goats! We knew that Mount Park had some freshly baked scones with our names on them, which were tantalizingly close by. By the time we got down, the afternoon sun had pretty much melted away all the remnants of snow, but we were left with a flurries of photos of our snowday adventures. Chris won the Omo prize for the dirtiest finisher!
