Category Archives: Golden Gate Highlands National Park

Beneath the Mushroom Rocks

If the trail to the top of the Brandwag Buttress is the most popular of Golden Gate Highlands National Park’s walks, and the Echo Ravine trail the most spectacular of the short walks radiating from Glen Reenen, then the Mushroom Rocks trail is the easiest and least demanding. And that’s a good thing, because you can concentrate on finding the little jewels hiding among Golden Gate’s flowing green grasslands and gawk at the amazing scenery without using it as an excuse to catch your breath 😉 . The only challenging section of the trail is the crossing over the Little Caledon River, especially in summer when the Park experiences most of its rainfall and even more so when lugging a couple of cameras, binoculars and water bottles along…

Which way to go?

Looking back at Glen Reenen

Looking up at the Mushroom Rocks

Dwarfed by the massive cliffs

Heading straight into a wall of rock?

Looking up

Water dripping from above

Dwarfed by the massive cliffs

Looking back at Glen Reenen

Moss growing where water drips from above

The trail

Looking up at the Mushroom Rocks

Drakensberg Crag Lizard

The Mushroom Rocks towering over Glen Reenen

The Little Caledon far below

Heading into the mountains

Scenery along the Mushroom Rock trail

Crossing the Little Caledon requires a steady foot

The Mushroom Rocks towering over Glen Reenen

Glen Reenen camping grounds in the foreground

The valley Glen Reenen is located in

Up and into the Echo Ravine

35 Replies

What better way could there be to ring in the first day of a new year than exploring new places? Especially after ending 2014 on a literal high atop the Brandwag Buttress? That’s why Marilize and I decided to undertake the Echo Ravine trail at Golden Gate Highlands National Park that day (Joubert was out exploring other pastures in Golden Gate with his grandpa), a walk we’ve not done before. We were not disappointed that we did, the scenery on the way to, and inside, the ravine is simply awe-inspiring and in our view this is one of the best short (taking an hour or two to complete) walks in the Park. It’s not an easy walk, requiring you to clamber over boulders at several stages, especially as you near the head of the ravine, but the rewards are entirely worth the effort.

Into a copse of Ouhout Trees at the start of the trail

Which way to go?

Scenery on the way

Upwards and onwards

Romance in the ravine – Heady Maiden moths

The vegetation gets denser as the ravine’s walls come closer

Small mountain stream flowing through the ravine

The walls are closing in

Clinging to life

The walls are closing in

Small mountain stream flowing through the ravine

At the head of the ravine

Looking back out of the gorge

Don’t lose the way

Small mountain stream flowing through the ravine

Clinging to life

Water falling from the overhanging rocks above

Getting to the top of the Brandwag

44 Replies

We wanted to do something special to end 2014. We couldn’t think of any better way to spend the last morning of the year than getting to the top of the Brandwag Buttress, the icon of the Golden Gate Highlands National Park, even if the weather did not play along as nicely as we had hoped.

The walk to the top of the immense Brandwag (Afrikaans for “sentinel”) formation is the most popular of Golden Gate’s trails. You can walk the Brandwag route in less than an hour, but to us that would be missing the point; you have to take time to appreciate the scenery along the way and the grand views from the top. There are two routes to choose from; one starting at Glen Reenen Rest Camp and the other at the Golden Gate Hotel and Chalets, and combining the two; going up one way and down the other, really is the way to go.

Which way to go?

The trail

Crossing a mountain stream

Enjoying the view

A trail with a view

Hiding from the wet weather under an overhang

Low clouds and scenery

Looking down at Glen Reenen from the top

Looking down at the Golden Gate Hotel and Chalets from the top of the Brandwag

The road westwards towards Clarens

The route down on the Hotel side of the Brandwag

Halfway down

A grey rhebuck coming to investigate the interlopers in his territory

Cape Rock-Thrush (male)

Crossing the Little Caledon

Walking back to Glen Reenen

From the foot of the Brandwag Buttress

The floral splendour of Golden Gate

43 Replies

There is only one way to truly appreciate the amazing diversity and breathtaking beauty of the flowers that occur in the Golden Gate Highlands National Park, and that is on any or all of the Park’s walking trails. This is a gallery of just some of the fragile blooms we enjoyed while exploring the Park during our December bush holidays.

Floral splendour at Golden Gate Highlands National Park

We’ll be dedicating upcoming installments of de Wets Wild to three of Golden Gate’s easiest walking trails.

Rule of thirds

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Joubert and his grandpa heading for the swimming pool at Glen Reenen, in the Golden Gate Highlands National Park

Rule of thirds

“Rule of thirds” is the theme for this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge.

“Basically, the Rule of Thirds asks you to imagine a tic-tac-toe grid over the thing you’re photographing, and suggests that you put your subject at one of the four spots where the lines intersect“

Shadowed

29 Replies

Contrasting light and shadows in the Echo Ravine, in the Golden Gate Highlands National Park. An easy but exquisitely beautiful walk from Glen Reenen Rest Camp delivers you to the ravine, a wonderland of enormous rock walls, dripping water, crystal clear streams and a diverse plant life. We’ll share more from Echo Ravine, and other trails at Golden Gate, in a forthcoming post.

Shadowed

“Shadowed” is the theme for this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge

Yellow

6 Replies

The grasslands of the Golden Gate Highlands National Park are a tapestry of wild flowers and seeding grasses in summer. Among these are some brilliant yellow varieties.

Golden Gate floral splendour

We’re catching up on the WordPress Photo Challenges we missed while on our extended summer holidays in the bush. “Yellow” was the theme for the challenge of 19/12/2014

Twinkle

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The sun reflecting from a rapid in the Golden Gate Highlands National Park’s Little Caledon River

Twinkle

We’re catching up on the WordPress Photo Challenges we missed while on our extended summer holidays in the bush. “Twinkle” was the theme for the challenge of 12/12/2014

It’s the end of our summer in the bush…

18 Replies

We arrived back home in Pretoria after our epic 21-night summer holiday in the bush. We’ll soon start wrapping up with a weekly trip report of the beautiful wild places we visited. Today we’re simply compiling a gallery of the photos we posted on a daily basis while we were away.