The Riverman

COME RAIN OR DROUGHT, WE'RE RAFTING!
El Nino promises heatwaves for SA

The past week has seen at least two devastating killer flash floods - one in Nepal that may have claimed up to 2000+ lives and a smaller one in the Grand Canyon that claimed the life of at least one man with 15 others still missing.

I know the Bright Angel Creek at Phantom Ranch at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. It's normally a beautiful but minor stream. This week it turned from Angel to Devil, destroying the campground and buildings. It's created a new rapid on the Colorado River, into which the violent flood poured boulders.

South Africa's Vaal River, where I live at Parys, regularly floods with destructive power. In 1996, 2020-11 and 2023 I've seen what the river can do after heavy rains across the Highveld. Peak seasons are January and April.

In January the tropical convergence through Angola brings something like a mooonsoon southwards. In April the cyclonic system over the Indian Ocean can dump huge volumes on the eastern Mpumalanga catchment of the Vaal.

This coming summer, however, we expect an extraordinary strong El Nino over the Pacific to dry up Southern Africa in a serious and possibly long lasting drought. But it's not certain that no rain will fall. In fact, some past El Ninos have produced spates of heavy rain.

All of this spells uncertainty for our river rafting business. Last weekend we had our first trip of the season on a boisterous Vaal that is flowing at normal summer level even after the dry winter. The Vaal Dam is 101% full after excellent rains in March-April this year, and water is being released.

With heavy rain forecast for the next few days we expect the level to rise - at least for a week or so. Then, it's anyone's guess. We are planning on a fairly good season, basef on 2017/8 records when there was an El Nino but sufficient rain over tributaries to maintain a great flow. Our videos of the time show that

Is this all caused by global warming, accentuating the natural cycle? It seems so. The Nepal flood may well be due to melting Himalayan ice causing rocks that were cemented together by freezing to collapse, releasing a mega mud tsunami into the gorges below.

Summer here is going to be hotter. That's why we plan to spend more time on and in the river. Where we are, it's not polluted except when local towns and industries do something naughty with their waste. Then we stop rafting till the river cleans itself. Regular ecoli and cyanobacteria counts show low stats below the Vaal Barrage where we are, many kilometres downstream.

Our rafting offerings this year include halfday and full day on the fantastic rapids around Parys; two and three day raft-camping trips staying overnight on secluded islands; and one and two days on the leisurely Dome Drift through the crater mountains, staying in B&B if two days.

The poet TS Eliot, who grew up in St Louis on the banks of the Mississippi, described the river as a "strong brown god" with unpredictable moods - as likely to aid commerce as to destroy property. Just so.

But I tend to agree with Laura Gilpin, whose photos of the Rio Grande captured the majesty of rivers.

“A river seems a magic thing. A magic, moving, living part of the very earth itself.”

* Come rafting close to Joburg. 084 245 2490 Https://riverman.co.za/

THE RIVER RISES
..and we plan a Dome rafting season

Bad weather has its benefits. Today the Vaal River - our home for a quarter century - rose fast after the winter rains and snow across the Highveld.

With summer near the weather will warm up. This year - and all the way into April 2027 - THE RIVERMAN will be running whitewater and calm water trips through the spectacular Vredefort Dome. The Vaal is one of the world's oldest rivers and is the only major river to flow through an impact crater - the biggest crater, at that.

Our raft-camping expeditions can be two or three nights, sleeping out on islands. Or if you prefer, you can stay in accommodation overnight.

The halfday and full day whitewater trips have been The Riverman's winner since 2002. And our popular Dome Drift winds down the glacial valley near Venterskoon on calm but flowing water.

Take your pick! Contact The Riverman for details of all three options. Only 120 km from Johannesburg and the ideal way to see the Vredefort Dome crater with an expert guide - Prof Graeme Addison - to explain it all. No experience needed.

Call or WhatsApp 084 245 2490 Https://Riverman.co.za/

GEARING UP FOR SPRING!
Training for the rafting season

Next weekend we start rafting again after winter downtime - but this time it's to train new guides. AsAfrica is running a course for The Riverman as well as a few other operators. Coming along too are paddlers planning a social trip down the Orange River.

It's an assorted crowd but all must learn how the river talks to you, loud and clear. How to look and listen to avoid the many dangerous tricks moving water can play on you.

Last summer we had a wild and wet season on very high water. Scary but fun. An old adage among river guides is "if you're not scared you're not having fun!"

We don't push that too hard among the folks that join us for whitewater courses. But guides must be mentally ready and skilled enough to handle whatever the river throws at them.

When the season starts at the end of August, newcomer guides will assist qualified professionals on commercial trips. They have to log at least 21 days on rivers before trying for assessment to get the basic certificate In personal competence.

After that they can register for South Africa's full legal professional Adventure Guiding ticket. Rafting is one of - would you believe it? - 101 or more adventure specialties ranging from abseiling to ziplining. Many guides qualify in several specialties

Even recreational touring paddlers need savvy. The Vaal is a tributary of the Orange and in many ways they are sister rivers that can pull the same tricks. Trees across the current and unseen weirs are two of the deadly dangers of these rivers.

There's a lot to learn and every trip teaches more - some of coming it as a big, nasty surprise. Why do it? Because it's worth it.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, said Ratty in the Wind in the Willows, beats messing about in boats.

For course details Call or WhatsApp ASAFRICA 084 245 2490 . Venue: Parys. Dates: 14-18 August.

SPRING SEASON 20% DISCOUNTS
Rafting to launch the summer!

We bet you didn't wake up today telling yourself you must go rafting. But you probably did wish to get out of the rat race and enjoy some fresh air away from city streets.

Join us for that getaway on one of the most beautiful rivers in South Africa. Just an hour south of Johannesburg the Vaal curls through the Vredefort Dome World Heritage Site.

It's a stunning landscape of Islands where fish eagles cry and lazy giant lizards, the leguaans, sun themselves on sandy beaches.

Raft the rapids with us OR take a leisurely drift through the towering mountains of the Done Bergland.

Bring family and friends. Call or WhatsApp 084 245 2490 to get the discount. https://riverman.co.za

RIVER TRAIL IN A MOUNTAIN PARADISE

There is a strange semicircular ring of mountains about 120km south of Johannesburg that are unique on Planet Earth and also very beautiful.

These are the Dome Bergland and to many visitors it comes as a surprise to find such wild, bushy country so close to the big city - and yet seemingly so far and so remote.

What gives it special appeal is that a major river runs through them, in a valley formed millions of years ago by a giant glacier. One of the best ways to see and experience what this breathtaking landscape has to offer is to float down the river between the mountains.

They form the first ring (or what remains of it) of the deeply eroded Vredefort impact structure, which has three rings and is about 300 km across. Johannesburg lies on the third, outer ring, which is the Witwatersrand (a fact that few residents of the city know or understand).

The valley is typically U-shaped with a flat bottom and steep mountainsides. The Vaal River runs along the valley floor and nearby is the gravel road to the quaint village of Venterskroon. The Dome Drift paddling trail takes its name from the core of the crater nearby.

The entire range is steeped in history and idca scientific Mecca. River paddlers accompanied by an expert guide get to learn about is as they splash along on gently flowing currents. From the Iron Age Tswana who occupied these hills for more than a thousand years, until invaded by the breakaway Zulu chief, Mzilikazi; to modern tourism developments, there are few South African environments that offer such a rich store of knowledge.

Venterskroon is a kind of miniature Pilgrims Rest, a former mining village. Some 150 years ago, fortune seekers flocked here in a gold rush that predated the discovery of the Witwatersrand goldfields.

In these same mountains, one of the more significant battles of the Anglo-Boer War took place in 1900. Here the crafty Boer General, Christiaan de Wet, outwitted a British force under Lord Methuen. The event was strategically important for two reasons.

First, De Wet managed to spirit the President of the Free State, Reitz, across the Vaal at Schoemansdrift and into the Transvaal to meet President Kruger at Waterval Boven and persuade him that the Boers should keep on fighting even though Pretoria had been occupied by Lord Roberts and the British Army.

Second, it was at Schoemansdrift that De Wet sent his wagon train on a diversionary route to mislead the British while his commando escaped intact. This marked the moment when the war turned decisively from from pitched battles to guerilla tactics.

The 20th century would witness many such wars, where mobile fighters ambushed regular troops only to melt away into the landscape. De Wet set the pattern - but also provoked a genocidal response by Kitchener, who resorted to a scorched earth policy. Boer farms were burnt and families rounded up by the thousands to be dumped in the century's first concentration camps to die of disease and starvation.

If the war prefigured things to come, so did the Bergland itself. Here geologists figured out that the mountains were formed by a massive meteorite impact, creating the biggest visible crater and the most celebrated such site in the world. It is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, after decades of scientific debate about it's origins.

Aside from wars and rocks, the Bergland is a botanical treasure. Tagged as "Bankenveld" this peaceful, varied landscape plays host to grassland, forests, windswept crests where only hardy plants survive. The ridges, or “banke” in Afrikaans, mark a transition zone between typical veld and montane ecology.

Red Ivorywood (Berchemia zeyheri) grows especially on the rocky ridges and kloofs, along with wild olive, karee, rock figs and other Bankenveld woodland species.

The Bergland is truly like nowhere else on Earth and it is worth spending time here to take it all in.

* Guided Dome Drift day trips with picnic lunch. Contact +27 84 245 2490 https://vdome.co.za

ADVENTURE AT THE 'GREAT BEND'
How we muddled through the Gorge

The Orange River Gorge is a moody and changeable, broken-up set of river channels situated below the border village of Onseepkans in the Northern Cape. Here the world's oldest desert, the Namib, flanks the north bank, with Bushmanland to the south.

There's nothing like starting big when you're trying something and you don't really know what you're doing. That's what three of us did in 1977, bombing down brutal rapids in fragile fibreglass kayaks of ancient design. We survived, somehow.

Our university kayak club had previously tackled easy runs on mild rivers like the Great Fish near Grahamstown. We learnt little about the real challenges of full-on expeditions down uncharted waters but thought we were pretty hot anyway.

I suppose the thing that spurred me to stick a pin in the Orange River map was Willem Van Riet's decision to get a ride around the gorge on his pioneering trip down the full length of the river. He was warned about it. His classic record of adventures by water, Stroom Af in My Kanoe, was a school setbook that got me going.

If he didn't do it, we would.

This is not the well known Augrabies Gorge with its spectacular falls. The Orange Gorge cuts through an eerie moonscape of smooth granite shoulders and chaotic, tumbled boulders, as if its steep sides have been detonated by a vast explosion. There is also a major waterfall here - the Ritchie Falls, more recently known as the !Gariep Falls (with a click), !Gariep being the new name of the Orange River itself.

When it's run today by various commercial operators the hazards are known and things are organised. Not so with us.

The name Onseepkans comes from the Khoi word for "great bend in the river". But when we first arrived, one of us theorised differently about its origins. "A man who'd struggled across the desert for days and was filthy with dust and sweat had tried to shave without water. But the shaving cream dried up on his face. Finally he reached the river where at last he got a chance to unsoap himself."

In Afrikaans: On-seep-kans.

That's the nonsense you dream up on an exhausting river trip in the blistering sun.

At the lip of a now-famous drop called Little, or Mini, Falls, I capsized.

Suddenly under water and facing what I thought was certain death over the falls, I told myself not to panic but did anyway. Wriggling violently I tried to remember the technique of the Eskimo Roll which we had all practised back in the Rhodes Olympic pool till water came out of our every or***ce.

My drinking buddy and partner in adventures, John Moss, watching from high rocks on the bank, said afterwards: "The crowd gasped and came to its feet."

Some crowd: it was only two, Denis Riordan being the other one, but point made. We were all lecturers at Rhodes University, academic goons on a holiday jaunt.

Just above the falls is a pointed rock in mid-current that has become notorious among scores of river-runners since those first days. It snags the adventurous spirits who dare to run the drop. Now the paddlers are cheerful clients of commercial operators.

Old Pointy can knock you off course or toss you out of your boat. Today there's a guide with a throw-rope to drag you to safety - and it's all part of the fun. To us then, the falls was one of the unknown terrors awaiting us in the Gorge. To our knowledge, only an SA Navy expedition had run the Gorge until then. What the Navy was doing there, so far from the sea, beats me. Maybe laying mines to keep out freedom fighters?

The only mine in that turbulent channel was the pointed rock.

Hanging upside down in my whitewater kayak, this was a live-or-die moment. I made several increasingly desperate attempts to roll and somehow got upright, only to fall backwards and sideways over the drop.

Rolling up from a capsize was a strange and mysterious art in those days, as indeed was the whole of whitewater kayaking. We had little idea how to "read the river" (deciphering its hidden dynamics from what you can see on the surface). Our paddling was rudimentary, with no distinct strokes for technical moves, and the boats were prone to cracking up on the rocks that we frequently slammed into.

To paddle out with a smile and stay cool was the thing. My companions decided the wiser course was to walk around.

Still, our little party completed the Gorge run somehow without doing away with ourselves. We knew a lot more about rivers at the end of it than we had at the beginning.

There was the carry down the gorge side to the churning water below, managed without the roping methods now routinely used by rafting groups. There was the frightening descent of the noisy, steep, boisterous rapid that would be named Big Bunny in years to come. There was the narrow passage between two large rocks where the whole river funnelled through a deep channel, with some of it going under a massive boulder, posing the risk of sucking you in.

Big Bunny was to get its name in the eighties when one of our first rafting clients, a very keen German, kept asking when our expedition would reach "Ze beeg rabbit" that we'd told everyone about. The narrow crease between the rounded granite boulders inevitably got named Dolly Parton.

That's the way rapids get tagged. The names stick. Every hazard builds up a lore of epic tales and miraculous escapes, as if the river itself plays the game and really cares about delivering excitement.

It's all so distant and comical in retrospect, 50 years ago. In those five decades, South African rafting has emerged from the Stone Age. Now operations on the Gorge are slick. The food is scrumptious, the riverside camping spots are carefully chosen for their scenic value and fishing, and (most of) the professional guides know what they are doing.

Those who don't will learn the hard way.

As we did.

SUNDAY RAFTING
Sign on for an exciting ride

The Vaal River rapids near Johannesburg are legendary for family fun and wild - but not terrifying - runs downriver.

So join The Riverman this coming Sunday for a funday.

After lots of rain the weather is forecast 24deg and mostly sunny. This is the end of the summer season. The river is consistently up and so are our spirits.

Today's photo shows the whitewater blast! It's not all like that, with placid pools and wonderful islands, forests and mountains. Come see for yourselves!

084 245 2490

KIDS LOVE RAFTING!
Mild easy flow with parents in tow!

Join us for a family adventure in the beautiful Vaal just an hour from Johannesburg.

O84 245 2490