Brandberg

28 September 2023

Next month, I’m headed on another adventure:
The Brandberg Traverse in Namibia

I have a habit of committing to things without really knowing the full details and/or what I’ve signed up for. But I don’t think that’s entirely detrimental – it gets me quickly out my front door before too much contemplation and negation.

I’ve never really been to Namibia – only just inside its border with South Africa, to canoe down the Orange River. So when this opportunity came up, I thought why not – I’ll only be away for 5 days.

I fly into Windhoek where I’ll be joining Nyati-x as an Adventure Tester. This means I’m a ‘travel loving, trail running enthusiast who wants to adventure with the Nyati-x team to explore new countries, new trails and build new adventures’. I think that sounds really cool.

Now that I’ve committed, I thought I best research exactly what I’ll be traversing (and summiting):

The circular Brandberg (“Burning Mountain”) Complex is about 350km NW of Windhoek. It rises up from the surrounding desert plains and is crowned by Namibia’s highest point, the 2,573m Königstein. The mountain has an approximate circumference of 140km. We’ll be circumnavigating about 74km of this, before heading inland to summit Königstein, and then down and across to our near starting point. All in all, about 100km over 3 days.

I’ve been told to expect runnable and rocky terrain, soft sand, burning sunsets, magical skies, spectacular San rock paintings, desert elephant, black rhino and copious amounts of scorpion. I’ll be shaking out my sleeping bag obsessively.

Here’s hoping I’ll have a beautiful adventure to share with you at the end of next month.

(And here it is Burned by the Berg published 26 October 2023)