SP Hike - 11-12 May

Hikers - Ted Forbes, John Bubb, Hope Bubb, Campbell Turner, Thomas Mitchell-Innes and Kayleigh Kluesner.

Staff - Douglas Neary and Mitchell Steenkamp.

For the second SP hike of 2024 we went to the beautiful Royal Natal National Park in the Northern Drakensberg. This park sits at the base of the Amphitheatre and a scenic drive looking at the mountain range greets you on the way in. 

We had 6 Cliftonians with us and the weather was most definitely on our side!

We arrived late in the afternoon at the campsite, and as always one of the most exciting parts! Camp set up! Always a good start to set up an example tent and then let the children set up their own tents…..with some direction of course. With camp all set up and the sun starting to set over the mountains, we got the fire started for a braai. In typical Clifton style the children were off into the little river next to camp to explore, finding all sorts of creatures with great excitement. Early to bed for some as we had an early start while others chatted in their tents before falling asleep. 

The morning greeted us with some mist and cloud cover, not great views of the mountains but nice cool weather to hike in. Our hike would lead us up the mountain to Tiger Falls and then a circular route back down past the cascades to camp. This is about a 6km loop and would normally take about 4 hours. We reached Tiger Falls in good time and excitement, very well led at the front by Tom Mitchell-Innes and Campbell Turner! An important part of hiking is that the children learn what it means to lead a hike and make sure that your group is well looked after. This comes in the form of always being able to see your whole group and managing the pace so that your slowest hiker is not being pushed too hard. Tiger Falls has two caves. We went straight into the lower cave where we quenched our thirst with fresh mountain water directly off the rocks. A little bit more exploring and some photos and then we were off, a short walk over to a pool where the plan was to take a dip.  

The sun had not appeared through the clouds yet, the brave few who did swim had their breath taken away from the icy water, but they swam nevertheless! With warm clothes back on we started our descent back down to camp. The route back down follows a tributary which creates lovely pools and little waterfalls all along the way. Our group of explorers are only too happy to climb every rock and check every pool! Eventually arriving at the cascades at the bottom, some last rock skipping and picking up litter left in the river, we then made our way back to camp. We even had a very relaxed bushbuck spend some time with us on our journey back. 

We arrived back to camp in the sunshine, had a good feed of wraps supplied by the Clifton kitchen and started to pack up. Nice quick and easy process with this bunch! We ended up doing 7,5km with quite a bit of extra exploring. 

We arrived back at Clifton in the mist and light rain, the children still energetic enough to pass a rugby ball around while waiting to be fetched.