Dragon Tales
“A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.”
Tim Cahill
ULTRA-TRAIL® DRAKENSBERG
presented by Running Man Adventures, 25-27 April 2019
TALE 1: TRIPLE WHAMMY
by Deon Braun
IT wasn’t looking good. I was spread-eagled on a rock, hanging on for dear life.
Two metres below me, a torrent of water after recent storms had me in no illusions that if I fell, my adventure could be over. Best case: a sprain. Worst: broken bones, a head injury, or unpleasant tumble down the pumping river, which right now felt like an aggressive slobbering dog waiting for me to fall into its jaws.
How the hell did I get into this situation? I felt like a spider monkey hugging the nose cone of a Jumbo Jet. This was ridiculous! I took a quick glance downstream over my left shoulder, and scanned the steep sides of the Gxalingenwa gorge for signs of an approaching runner.
No-one! It could be 20 minutes or more before someone appeared. I’d got up here on my own before on other occasions. And everyone else seemed to have made it OK. So what was the problem today?
My hands, in water-soaked full-finger gloves, were only just clutching onto two slight blobs of rock on the shelf above my up-stretched elbows.
Below me, out of sight, my drenched shoes were desperately seeking purchase on the vertical rock face, but there wasn’t enough of anything to push off against. My toes were just keeping my feet in place, but upward motion was not happening. I was hyper-aware that the next few seconds were pivotal moments. Time stood still.
“Stuff it up, and it’s going to be bad!” my Inner Tragedy warned.
