FKT: Jaco Van den Berg, Ian Burger, Thomas Miller, Wim Steenkamp - Auas Mountain Traverse (Namibia) - 2019-10-20

Route variation
Standard route
Gender category
Male
Style
Self-supported
Finish date
Total time
9h 23m 42s
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The route runs along the ridge of the Auas Mountains. The has no trails, contains endless and relentless spiky rocky scrambles, stick to the contour of camber contour lines and you find loose rocks slamming and slipping your ankles, stick to the ridge and you find narrow sharp boulder rocks with steep drop offs left and right.
Many ascents and descents involved 4 points of contact. Towards the last 8km of the trail there were more visible animal trails that one could follow.

We started with a mixed group of 6 people at 6:00 at Farm Voigtland. Thinking that we could do this and finish before 14:00, but the technicality of the route was insane.
2 of the participants dropped out 4 hours into the run and evacuated down to safety. In their words "they had an full adventure experience up here" and they weren't sure if they would be able to finish. There are no real evacuation points, so we had to make the call rather sooner than later.
It was quite the disappointment for us, as we planned on doing this as a team and finishing it as a team, no matter the circumstances. On the bright side, the 2 of them did make up for an awsome support team.
The 4 of us carried on for the remaining 20km of route, going really slowly and tagging the route and peaks as we go along.
Stephanie and Wim made an amazing water drop point the previous day, as it was super hot 35 degrees Celsius.
Upon reaching the end of the traverse we went on to finish down a tar road for another 1km and end the satelite station base entrace.