Separating Little and Great Karoo Fynbos
The Drakensberg is higher, the Cederberg more inviting, and the Soutpansberg significantly wetter. But what makes the Swartberg so impressive — monumental stature aside — is that it separates the temperate fynbos biome from the sun-tempered Little Karoo and thirst-wracked Great Karoo realms.
Stand on the summit and look south then north; you can almost hear the rocks heaving and groaning like a lithographic Hercules as Africa awakened and wrenched itself free from Gondwana. The twisted, contorted, bunched-up bands of sandstone and shale in the Swartberg Pass reveal how the edge of the continent bent and warped as one plate pushed under another. When it happened, these mountains stood 7 km high, but now all we see are the eroded bases.
You can hardly imagine that the surface mantle of our planet, what to the touch seems so iron-solid and immutable, is in fact so soft and pliable; when kneaded by time and the immense power of earth's internal tension, its play-dough structure allows continents to be moved around. The Swartberg is geology in the living flesh, so to say. Just don't sneer at those 2000-m peaks, because they can throw at you some lessons in extreme weather if you go ill prepared.
Hidden inside a narrow valley, folded away within the Swartberg Mountain massif, is Gamkaskloof. Literally, this translates as ‘Lion’s R...