Circumnavigating Lesotho

I know what things can be like up in the high Drakensberg. Minor situations can escalate. As gusts batter my body, I feel the freezing, wetted-out fabric of my jacket clinging to the saturated base layer below. Looking back down through the mist that tears over the endless rocky landscape we’re traversing, I can barely see our support team. Can the horses even make it up here? What are we doing? Nothing feels right. Nothing is how I expected it.

It’s day six. Ryno Griesel and I are not even halfway into our attempt to run around the kingdom of Lesotho – a journey of some 1,100km – and already the mountains have thrown everything at us. It has barely stopped raining here for months. The ground is sodden. Wind and rain lash at us, and my frustration mounts at how tortuously slow our progress feels. We’re hampered by the ankle-twisting rocks, the logistical challenges of finding a route that our support team can negotiate, and the uncharted pathless terrain in this southern section of the Drakensberg where tourists never come.

The horses know these mountains, they’re born for the terrain, but there are limits. I wonder if we’re testing those limits right now. We’ve just climbed up onto the high escarpment and it feels like we’ve stepped into a freezer. I glance at Ryno, a rain-soaked blur a few metres away, as he hops from rock to rock. His expression is grim under his hood. ‘It’s flipping cold,’ I say to him. He nods but doesn’t reply. Our gear never had the chance to dry out from yesterday’s soaking and I can hardly remember the last time I felt warm and dry.

Ryno and I can make it over this terrain. It’s nothing we haven’t faced together before on countless adventures, from the Drakensberg Grand Traverse back in 2014 to the Great Himalaya Trail. If it were just us, we’d press on. But this time it’s different. I feel responsible for the guys in our support team – especially, at this moment, Wiesman and his horses, tirelessly working to support us. I have to think about the safety of the whole team now. Wiesman won’t want to be the one to turn us back, no matter how hard things get; it’s up to me to call it.