Ask most school kids which is the highest mountain in South Africa and you will probably get answers that include Mont-Aux-Sources, Champagne Castle and Cleft peak. This is because, during the history of the Drakensberg, these peaks have all at one stage or other been credited with being the highest. Unfortunately, few people know that the highest peak is in fact called Mafadi, found in the Injasuti area of the Drakensberg.
In April 2002 a few members of the Mountain Club of South Africa, led by Jimmy Stone, set out to visit the area. Mafadi is on the watershed next to the Injasuti Dome, which has perhaps the highest and grandest cave in the Berg, if not in the whole country.
To celebrate the International Year of Mountains, the purpose of our expedition was to get rid of misconceptions about South Africa’s highest peak and to promote the country’s heritage of mountainous regions.
Mafadi lies some 2km from the escarpment on the border with Lesotho. It is situated in a rather remote area of the Berg that requires a longer-than-usual hike (typically four to five days) and is therefore not often visited. In Lesotho the name of the peak is Ntheledi.
Our trip ended up taking us through the four seasons, with the consecutive days being excruciatingly hot, below freezing, very misty and rainy, and ending off very pleasantly in the green valleys of Injasuti.
The Injasuti Summit cave is definitely in the five-star category for Berg accommodation. The entrance is well sheltered with veranda seating for sunbathers, there are cooking areas with ample furniture (rocks) as well as sleeping quarters for the tired and weary. Added to this is a lovely view across Natal facing the rising sun.
After a good night’s rest in the cave, we set out to measure the height of Mafadi. Former measurements of the peak were made using the topographical sheets of the Directorate of Survey & Mapping, which set the height at either 3 446m and 3 450m — depending on whether you consult the 1:50 000 or the 1:250 000 map. These heights were determined from aerial photo surveys, and are not highly accurate.
In an attempt to settle the issue with a measurement that had a higher degree of accuracy, Jimmy Stone, a surveyor by profession, took along a state-of-the-art Trimble GPS, sponsored by Optron South Africa. This was a challenge on its own because of the very flat top of Mafadi. The top is about a quarter of a rugby field in size and there are a number of beacons on it with claims to be the highest.
After much debate and measuring, we settled on what appeared to be the highest “fixed” rock (and cairn) on Mafadi. The GPS was left to log data for about eight hours to get a precise height. The results were not immediately available, because the process is rather complicated: although the differential GPS technique is accurate to 1cm, heights are referenced to the WGS84 ellipsoid, while the heights that are used in surveys, engineering and on maps, plans, trig beacons, bench marks, etc are based on the geoid (the geoid is the mean sea level extended under the continents and is the equa-potential surface of gravity; it is also called mean sea level or orthometric height). To compensate for the difference between the two, additional measurements are required.
So a number of weeks passed by after our descent from Mafadi before we confirmed what we had set out to prove: the peak was measured to be 3 541m high — one metre higher than was generally accepted. That means South Africa is actually one metre higher than we have assumed for all these years.