Race Across South Africa, part four

Pulling into the Vuvu school, we saw another five bicycles parked outside. Still reeling from my glycogen crash, I just blinked in confusion as Di laughed. "What's this? Looks like a party!"

Four riders from the Monday start group were there, as was Ingrid, the woman racing to Rhodes who started on Tuesday with us, and who I thought was far ahead. A man directed us into a darkened room in the school — like most rural villages, Vuvu had no electricity or running water — where the group was gathered around a small table, telling war stories. The lively conversation was a little too much for me; I had to step outside for some air. Nightfall came fast, like a cold fist over the plateau, plunging the little village into total darkness. Tonight, more than any night yet, I wanted to be alone. It's difficult to explain. I did enjoy the social aspect and camaraderie of the Freedom Challenge, very much so, but my introvert reserve was drained. I had no energy left to invest in this evening, and yet there I was, stuck in a small room with ten other people. 

I probably seemed antisocial that evening. I apologize for that. Eventually the outside chill set in and I returned to the school. I took up a quiet spot in the corner of the room, and treated my wet and chaffed feet while the group told their own stories of the Vuvu Valley, of getting lost on Black Fountain, of spending the night in a hut after being warned by a 12-year-old girl that "you can't be out here after dark. People get murdered here." Eventually my stomach settled enough that I was able to eat some nuts from my supply box, and then dinner came out. For eleven hungry bikers it was a relatively small portion, and by the time I made my way to the table, the chicken pieces and potatoes were gone. I took a heap of rice with thin gravy and felt grateful for that. First world cliches aside, it's hard to ask for more in a place where you see so little. 

After dinner, a woman directed Liehann and me to a circular hut down the street where we would spend the night — somebody's home, temporarily vacated. I asked Liehann where the residents went, but he didn't know, either. The hut had two neatly made single beds and an oil lamp. I asked a little boy about the toilet, and he walked me the rest of the way down the street to a crudely constructed outhouse — basically, a pile of logs that I couldn't quite discern how to sit on or squat over. We had traveled through many villages over the past five days, and it was interesting to actually step inside of one. I had a similar impression to the villages I visited in Nepal three years ago — lifestyles are simple, and hard, but fulfilling, too. But of course I don't know. I can't really know. 

We set our phone alarms and joined the group for breakfast at 5 a.m. The light dinner didn't exactly restock my empty furnace, and I awoke feeling lousy — throbbing headache, raw stomach, still no energy. Breakfast was very thin porridge and a boiled egg, but there was lots of steam bread, and I tried to cram down what I could. The group all took off while we were still packing up, but I was happy to let them go. I already told Liehann that I didn't want to chase anyone up a mountain today. I could do Lehana's Pass, but it would have to be at my own pace. 

The haul over Lehana's Pass ascends more than 1,000 meters in five kilometers — 3,500 feet in three miles. It sounded like a steep hike before I realized how difficult it would be to haul a bike, and the climb out of the Vuvu Valley ushered home the daunting reality of the task. Di and Steve planned to take a race-sanctioned long way around Lehana's Pass on roads, and based on how poorly I'd fared on the bike-carrying portage the day before, Di recommended I consider this as well. But Lehana's is an iconic part of the Freedom Challenge, and I had this sense that Beat would not forgive me if I opted out of the hike.

It was a stunning morning, with rich winter light saturating the dry slopes of the Drakensberg. These are the "dragon mountains," sleeping peacefully with lungs full of fire.

The climb started out not so bad. It was steep, but "wheeling" the bike was doable, and we kept a steady enough pace that we actually caught up to the group of five — John and Richard, Annie and Stewart, and Ingrid. Just as I started to feel comfortable, a heavy breeze picked up strength. By the time we reached the ridge, the wind had increased to gale force. It blasted along the spine with a deafening and ominous roar. Two shepherds were huddled in a squat stone hut, their fire nearly extinguished, and we kept on climbing. 

As the ridge narrowed, the battle become fierce. Rocky outcroppings provided temporary wind respite to balance the physical challenge of bike-hoisting repetitions. But saddles between the rocks were wide open to an intense crosswind. The persistent roar was so loud that shouting was useless even standing within five feet of Liehann. Gusts sounded like a freight train approaching in a tunnel — and ignited a similar fear. Wind speeds are always difficult to gauge and often exaggerated. Indeed, Richard guessed the gusts exceeded 130 kilometers per hour. I don't think quite that, but I base my guesses on past experience with winds in Juneau. There were plenty of times back then when I ventured out in winds that were measured and documented by a nearby weather station, and I began to detect noticeable differences in my ability to stay upright in a 50 mph versus a 60 mph wind. Based on those experiences, my guess for Lehana's Pass would be steady winds of 50-plus miles per hour, gusting to as high as 70 mph at times. Hurricane force.

Photo by Liehann Loots

It was all I could do to stay upright. I eventually decided it was better to walk windward of my bike rather than leeward, to prevent a gust from sweeping the bike into me and knocking me over. As I trudged upward, a particularly strong gust blasted both wheels off the ground, lifting the entire bike into the air like a sail, and knocking me off my feet. The wind continued to hold me down like an invisible board as I thrashed beside the overturned bike, struggling to stand up. 

As we got closer to the pass, I could see the "line" to the summit — a steep slope cut by only a thin ribbon of a sheep trail — hardly a platform at all across the intimidating grade. It looked like one mis-step thrown by the wind could start a long tumble down the mountain, and my knees went weak.

"I'm thinking about turning back," I told Ingrid. "Not to quit, just to take Steve and Di's route. This seems exposed. Dangerous." 

Ingrid shook her head. "It's not dangerous. Just walk with your bike on the outside. If you lose your bike ... then just walk." 

Near the pass, the sideslope wasn't as steep as it had looked from below, but the wind was more fierce than ever. Gusts were so strong that each time one hit, all of us simply crouched down with our bikes turned over, waiting for the blast to pass. John and Richard appeared to be having the time of their lives, howling into the gusts and crouching down to film the action as Annie and I fought our way toward the camera like television weathermen in a hurricane.

At the pass, our work was far from through. We still had two kilometers to push into the wind along the narrow ridge, a farm road to find, another pass to reach, and then a thirty-kilometer ride into Rhodes. Still, the mood was jovial at the top. "I've never experienced wind like that in all my life," Richard said.

We worked our way along a stream with snow clinging to the banks and thick ice in the waterfalls. It was a reminder that there's often snow up here, and I pondered how much tougher that climb would have been in snow. However, if given a choice between a foot of snow and a 60 mph wind, I'd be torn — and probably pick snow.

Liehann made me walk fifty meters up the road on this wind-blasted pass to take this photo. I was quite annoyed about
it at the time, because I just wanted to get the hell out of there. But it is a fun photo, with his puffed-up coat. 

The worst part about the wind is that it didn't even begin to let up when we finally reached the gravel road. It was blowing from the direction we were riding, and the headwind was so fierce that even long descents felt like climbs, and many of the climbs we had to walk. As we neared a plateau that was the highest point on the Freedom Trail — 2,600 meters — the unobstructed wind pummeled us from the side. I was so fed up with pushing that I experimented with leaning as far as I could into the wind and riding at an unnerving angle, just for the privilege of staying on my bike. A gust grabbed the front wheel and sent the whole bike — and me — careening toward a steep drop-off to the left. I corrected at the last second — with the wheels scraping that precarious edge, and heart racing as fast as it had all day. Who knew road riding could be so treacherous? How many of these last thirty kilometers would I have I to walk?

Finally, a reasonably long descent put us at a low enough elevation that the wind became at least manageable. We rolled into Rhodes in the mid-afternoon, and certainly could have done worse. It was a tough day, charged with adrenaline, and it took a few hours of recovery to realize that my arms felt completely dead. Like two over-tenderized lumps of meat, dangling uselessly at my side. Even reaching over a counter in the kitchen to grasp of mug of soup caused a near-failure in the forearm muscles, and I almost dropped the mug.

This seemed like a potentially major physical set-back, but what did I know about it?

Race Across South Africa, part three

It always seems to be the fourth or fifth day of a long tour that the physical wear and tear really starts to set in. Even though our daylight plan in the Freedom Challenge ensured plenty of rest, and nutrition was good, twelve-plus hours of riding and wrestling with a bicycle every day takes it toll. For me, wrestling with the bike caused major strain. I'm well-adapted to turning pedals all day, but I failed miserably in upper body strength department. It's not a natural strength to begin with, and I admittedly did almost nothing to improve it before the Freedom Challenge, reasoning that running would be training enough for the hike-a-bikes. I was wrong. My shoulders and neck ached, and my arm muscles felt tingly and weak. My legs were a patchwork quilt of cuts and bruises, including a swollen and painful bruise over my right knee that formed after I partially flipped over the handlebars on a cattle trail the previous day. The Freedom Trail beats up bodies in ways I hadn't experienced before on a long tour, and I was feeling it. While the crew at Ongeluksnek cooked up our breakfast of dark porridge, eggs, and steam bread, I massaged my numb biceps. 

As the four of us discussed the narrative for the coming day, Di seemed particularly stressed and Steve particularly excited — both of which I interpreted as cause for alarm. Tough nav day, coming up. Steve was talking about finding an old wagon trail early in the day, but Di skipped right to "Vuvu Valley."

"Vuvu Valley," she kept bringing it up. "If we are bumbling around in that valley after dark, we are screwed." Di went on to tell a story about a past year when she and her companions took on a tough portage late, and ended up spending the night huddled in a barn. "I was so cold I thought I was going to die," she said. "I really thought I was going to die."

I was carrying a robust emergency bivy sack and some firestarters, and although I felt confident in the survivability of my system, I wasn't thrilled about the prospect of putting it to use when nighttime temperatures were dropping well below freezing. Before the race, I confidently (and mistakenly) assumed that if nights went late we'd just keep moving, neglecting to realize how navigation can become impossible at night. Darkness was as good as a wall in some places. We might actually get stuck somewhere outside overnight. I hated that I hadn't just planned my system with an assumption that we'd sleep out, and brought a sleeping bag and thin pad. I probably would have been less anxious in the afternoons with a real sleeping system as insurance.

 

Also leaving Ongeluksnek were two Race to Rhodes riders who started one day later, Bruce and Ryan. They disappeared into the first gorge before us, and were already picking their way up the other side as we arrived at the edge of a cliff. "Now we must look for the wagon trail," Steve announced. He located a tumble of table-sized boulders, only slightly less vertical than the cliffs, and started down. "How did people ever get wagons down this?" I pondered out loud. 

"Well you see, the trail was much less eroded back then," Steve answered. "But they had all kinds of techniques; they'd lower them on logs." In the early colonial days of South Africa, wagon trains traversed the landscape via high routes — the reason being that necessary springs and streams were located in the mountains, so they had to stay high in order to travel long distances with water sources. Modern development arrived and roads stayed low. Although the wagon routes fell into disuse, many remnants remain. When David developed the Freedom Trail, he traced these historic routes, which is why public access is allowed through private lands. What exists today is sometimes hardly a trail at all — it's an overgrown doubletrack, or a faint footpath traveled by shepherds, or a string of tracks trammeled by sheep and cattle. A distinct characteristic of the Freedom Trail that I think not many North American mountain bikers would understand (I didn't) is that it's not a real trail. There is no trail development, no government funding, no earmarks for recreational use. It's just a series of points along the Great Escarpment, connected with a dotted line. As a North American, I'm used to routes that have been set aside, developed, and signed, and this simply isn't the case. At all.

We climbed to a village called Black Fountain and proceeded along a broad ridge on a ripple of cattle trails — a sort of "choose your line" adventure on often rocky and overgrown singletrack. It became a tough technical challenge to keep up with Di and Steve, who are both strong riders, especially with my sore shoulders and dead arms that were even more reluctant than usual to pull up over obstacles. I was struggling but determined to stay with the experienced couple, especially after Di's foreboding description of Vuvu Valley.

We aimed for the long way around a peak rather than scrambling up and over. Steve still managed to find a tiger line down near-vertical rock benches, into the village of Ngolilwe, which was slightly off route. This is another aspect of the Freedom Challenge I think many North American bikepackers would find strange. Here, there is so much emphasis on sticking precisely to a route, without any deviations. In the Freedom Challenge, the route is more of a suggestion. Although the portages are mandatory in the race — you can't just go around on roads — it's perfectly acceptable to develop one's own "sneaks" and other strategic offshoots of the established route. Finding the most aesthetic line is the aim of the Freedom Challenge. While this aspect was difficult for me, it's also one of my favorite things about this event.

After a light lunch on the steps of Tinana Mission (mine was the last of the dried cherries and shelled pistachios that I brought from California), we encountered Bruce and Ryan riding out of the village. Apparently they had taken a bad line out of Black Fountain and ended up behind us. The friends from Pietermaritzburg had scouted much of the Race to Rhodes route in training, and informed us they had discovered a great route through the Vuvu Valley — rather than crossing the river multiple times and bashing through endless reeds, they found a high line that involved a lot more climbing, but was often rideable. Di was ecstatic at this prospect, and Bruce and Ryan seemed willing to team up with us. Liehann and I engaged our strong road legs to hold their pace through the rolling hills past several villages, and waited for Steve and Di while guzzling two-liter glass bottles of Coke at a spaza shop.

We veered off the village streets and descended into the Vuvu Valley. Di had gotten me pretty riled up about this thing. The main river valley was fairly wide, and flanked by side valleys that promised confusion about whether one was still on course. Year after year, racers ascend the wrong canyon out of the Vuvu Valley and become terribly lost — finding themselves stranded below cliff faces, spending nights out, and sometimes skipping the checkpoint at Vuvu altogether. Anxiety levels were high, and I had this ominous sense of descending into the Heart of Darkness.

We began bashing through six-foot-high grass, and I quickly fell behind. Amid thick vegetation on steep rolling hills, pushing the bike feels like wrestling a reluctant animal; I simply lacked a necessary component of strength and experience to do something I very much wanted to do, which is keep up with the group and not end up lost and alone in the Vuvu Valley. I wanted this with all of my being, to the point where my heart was racing as I gasped for air, and my shoulders and arms ached. My top limit wasn't good enough — and this was a humbling reality. I scanned my map to get a sense of where we were, but it was readily apparent that I'd either have to invest the time to study the thing and take compass bearings, or throw my own navigational understanding to the wind and race blindly after the group. I knew Liehann wouldn't leave me, but if I fell too far behind, there was a question of whether we'd fail to locate each other.

I bashed over a spur and caught sight of the group, riding along a rocky bench. Their path was something of a trail, but again was a technical challenge of uneven stone slabs hidden in tall grass. Much of it was stuff I normally wouldn't ride — I admittedly have never developed much skill for technical rock riding, and once I start getting bucked around I often get bucked off. I'd already taken a few disconcerting crashes in the Freedom Challenge, luckily walking away with only bruises, but one bad crash wouldn't just force me out of the race — it also would put me in a bad position far away from help. It wasn't worth the risk, and yet — what were my options? I laid into the pedals and hacked my way across the rocks, feeling that rush of exhilaration that one feels when everything is on the line.

Liehann and I did end up both losing sight of the group at one point. We spent some time debating vague suggestions from the maps like "look for the lone tree" before we caught a glimpse of them scaling a steep face across the Tina River. This must be the line out of the valley, but it wasn't quite straightforward — there were multiple spurs jutting out, and I still wasn't sure whether this was the final climb, or whether we needed to descend and cross the river again. My energy levels were tanking but there was no time to eat anything; I fired up the willpower reserve and marched hard.

The climb just continued to steepen, until we were scaling a veritable cliff on a staircase of three-foot-high boulders. A true scramble. I could see the others hoisting their bikes on their backs, but every time I tried to lift mine up, my rubbery biceps and shoulders simply failed — as though I had done too many reps of a heavy weight, and now there was no amount of willpower that would make them work. My ascent was a too-slow process of power-lifting the bike up onto a bench, propping it against the wall, and then using both arms to climb up myself. I watched the group disappear over a crest with an icy feeling of trepidation. In hindsight, the route was fairly straightforward and I would have been fine to work at my own pace until I reached Vuvu. But at the time, I had been so fixated at keeping up with them that my fatigued mind equated abandonment with doom. I was engaging everything I had to race up that mountain.

Toward the top, something snapped. I became extremely dizzy, and the whole valley swirled around as I weakly gripped my bike against the rock face. The cliffs weren't too exposed, but a slip would have resulted in a fall of ten feet or more, and I could see those drops rushing toward me as I teetered on a ledge. It was only fifty or so more feet to the top; I was almost there. And yet, when I turned around to try to lift my bike, the dizziness became more pronounced. I gazed up helplessly at the group waiting at the top. My struggle must have become blatantly apparent, because one of the Rhodes riders (I think it was Bruce, although I apologize that I don't remember exactly) scrambled back down and grabbed my bike, carrying it the rest of the way up. I followed behind him, still teetering as my legs folded underneath me and I balanced on my rubbery arms like an intoxicated ape. I felt both incredibly grateful and ashamed. At the top, I drunkenly stumbled toward Liehann — unable to even hold a straight line on solid ground. He ran toward me with a packet of Hammer Gel.

"I thought you were going to fall of the edge," he said.

"I thought so too," I stammered, and took the gel. Both of my hands were shaking violently as I struggled to open the packet. "I've never had a bonk like this. Never like this."

The last remnants of dusk filled the sky as the group pedaled into the village of Vuvu in full celebration mode.

"Vuvu in the light! We made it to Vuvu in the light! Can you believe it?" Di exclaimed.

My head was foggy and I felt ashamed. Defeated. My empty legs spun the pedals and I slumped over my handlebars, completely spent. Physically, this time. And mentally, too.

"I'm not strong enough for this," I fretted to myself. "I'm just not strong enough."

But this was not the time to give in to despair. I had to turn my mental game around and fast, because tomorrow, we would climb Lehana's Pass.

Race Across South Africa, part two

On the third day, we were still trying to develop our morning routine. Phone alarms went off with their upbeat tunes that were both infuriating and oddly comforting. We'd push aside a crush of blankets in always unheated rooms and rush to pull on clothing layers as quickly as possible — sometimes laundered, sometimes still damp from the day before — and shiver as our warm bodies slowly heated the chilled fabric. Most breakfasts were a quick food-shoveling affair — granola, instant oats, boiled eggs, and instant coffee left out on a table. But at Ntsikeni Lodge, Ncobo (thanks to Liehann for remembering the manager's name) made us a big breakfast spread with eggs, bacon, and a dark porridge. I tried to stuff down as much as possible. 

I refilled my frame bag with supplies from the boxes that Liehann's parents lovingly packed for each support station. Having not understood the extent of the provided meals in the Freedom Challenge, I requested a larger-than-needed amount of supplies. The drop boxes were small — the size of a two-liter ice cream container — but Liehann's parents did everything they could to stuff them full, including opening up packages of electrolyte chews and cramming individual candies in every spare nook. Early in the race, when I still cared, I also spent a few minutes each morning readying the bike — wiping off dirt clumps, cables and chain, applying fresh lube, checking tire pressure and brakes, resetting the devices, readjusting the bags. We had yet to streamline this routine, and on the third morning we were particularly slow to get going. Dawn had already cracked by the time we stepped out the door, and Steve and Di were long gone. 

Liehann was bummed out because his warm pair of socks had been placed too close to the wood stove inside the lodge to dry overnight, and had large holes burned in the heals. Temperatures were again several degrees below freezing; thick ice had formed on the streams and frost coated the grass. We had, by my calculations, about five kilometers of doubletrack before we were supposed to find some manner of offshoot followed by ten kilometers of portaging. Liehann remembered from his 2011 race that this section was tricky, but couldn't recall many specifics. "Those ten kilometers could take five hours," he warned.

I'm not sure I believed him at the time — two kilometers per hour is what I think of as "PTL speed," or about the slowest I'm capable of moving in the outdoors while still retaining forward motion. I had yet to take into full account the reality of fifty-some pounds of food, water, gear, and an awkward mountain bike that's impossible to carry in any efficient manner — especially when such things were never practiced — so it's safe to say I did not yet understand there is a speed slower than PTL speed. Freedom Challenge speed. But ignorance is bliss, and I relished the five wonderful kilometers of doubletrack through the nature preserve in the chilled dawn air.

Kudu ran along the hillsides and wildebeest called out from long distances. The best I can describe a wildebeest call is something like an angry duck — guttural moans that echoed through the still air. I was enthralled by these animal sightings — strange, hulking beasts I recognized from childhood cartoons, that suddenly became real in this radiant wilderness. It was like a fairytale brought to life, and I pedaled along the periphery, fully absorbed.

We hit the point where our cues informed us to pick up "a management track that heads into the hills." We rode back and forth along a kilometer-long stretch looking for a track, but only saw faint impressions in the grass farther up the hill. "This part is mostly bundu bashing," Liehann said confidently. "We just have to head off that way." Anytime the cues called for a track that we couldn't find, my internal alarm sounded, but I admit I saw no better solution. We started hacking up the hill, cutting zig-zagging lines southwest, then south, then northeast. I scrutinized the maps but, as was many times the case, found without a solid reference point I couldn't quite interpret the correlation of topographic features. Yes, my map skills were lacking, and maps were pretty much useless to me unless I already knew exactly where we were on them. "Do you even know if we're going in the right direction?" I called out to Liehann.

"No," he replied.

We stopped to assess the map and he determined that in fact we were walking in the wrong direction, and Liehann traced the right direction to a game gate that ran up the spine of a steep hill. The surface had burned, and what remained was a crunchy surface of charcoaled grass and fine black dust. It was volcanic in appearance, and combined with the barren mountains surrounding us, reminded me very much of Iceland — although brown instead of green. As we walked, clouds of smokey dust swirled around my face and settled in my throat, causing me to cough. The hill was so steep that even pushing a bike, I had to stop every twenty steps or so to catch my breath. "How long are we going to flounder around like this before we just go back to Ntsikeni?" I asked Liehann. "Six hours? Eight?" You can be determined as possible to finish something, but when you're lost — you're just lost. My predominant fear was being lost forever. I made mental bread-crumb markers of landscape features we passed, so at least I could find my way back.

At the top of the hill, we finally had a good view of the land, and were able to draw a more accurate picture from the abstract lines on the map. We also caught sight of the track we were supposed to be following, veering up from a completely different valley. We'd been pushing our bikes on very difficult terrain for nearly two hours for a net loss of forward progress, but at least we landed in the correct place. We sat down for a snack and I told Liehann stories about my running trip to Iceland. "I would love to come back and explore Ntsikeni someday, but without the bike," I said. "On foot. With a GPS."

As we worked our way around the contour of a plateau above steep canyons, we were caught by two Race to Rhodes riders who started one day after us, as well as Steve and Di. Apparently they'd tried one of Steve's characteristic "sneaks" that didn't quite take, and came back to catch the main route where we'd missed it. Despite his experience, Steve's propensity for sneaks as well as winging it on portages made me reluctant to stick with them in the early days in the race. Later, I would realize the wisdom in his thinking and make more of an effort to absorb his sage advice.

The group of four opted to take the "high road" when I was certain the cues directed us to stay in the valley, so I threw a bit of a temper tantrum about following their route, but Liehann and I made an effort to stick with them. Steve and Di, as well as others we rode with, were strong technical riders and much more adept at the on-off finessing of carrying and pushing a bike, and thus were always faster than us on portages. At the time, my bike-portaging strategy was still all pushing, and actually this is much less efficient and more strenuous than carrying much of the time. We lost the group at a saddle, where I was pretty sure they'd disappeared into the next canyon to take the direct route to the other side. I looked across the gorge and announced that I wanted to take the long way around.

"It looks like a scramble," I said. "I don't want to scramble anything with my bike." (Again, I just had no idea what was coming.) "The contour looks short enough and there's even a cattle trail." The trail was worn too deep into the soft ground to be rideable — pedals just hit the side. By the time we made it to the end of an eroded jeep track, it was well after noon.

"Wow, that really did take us more than five hours," I said to Liehann. "You were right."

"I know this place is beautiful and all, but f*** Ntsikeni," Liehann replied. He was joking, mostly.

Still, where Liehann and I faltered on technical portages (I will say this was me more than him — his fork trouble made descending difficult, but I was the weaker uphill pusher), we were often able to make up with our strong gravel road riding. We arrived at the lunch stop in Glen Edward just a few minutes after Steve and Di, just as the Race to Rhodes riders were leaving. "You guys made good time but you don't want to spend too much time here," they told us. "You don't want to get stuck in that valley after dark."

"That valley," in the Freedom Challenge, could translate to "any valley." Valleys were the worst. On top of hills and ridges, the world almost made sense, but quickly descended into a web of confusion and misinterpreted lines in a valley. The cues directed us to do things like "keep the slope on your right" (which slope?) and "head toward the wattle stand" (to which Di joked, "wattles here, wattles there, there are wattle trees everywhere.") We opted to stick with Steve and Di that afternoon, wending our way through a tree plantation maze, into one river valley, up to a spur, and on a faint cattle track into the next valley. "Is this the right trail?" I asked Steve after scrutinizing the cues.

"Doesn't matter. It's a cattle track," he said. "They're everywhere, one is the same as the next. Now, what we must do is go over there." (South Africans have this particular accent on the words "here" and "there," which sounds a bit like "they-air," that I will never forget. These words were said to me so many times, and never seemed to provide any comfort.)

Night fell as we fumbled through the tall grass of the valley. Liehann was pointing to a saddle in a far distance off to the right and speculating that the district road was up "there," and I thought, based on cues, that access must be all the way around a peak and off to the left. Soon we could see nothing except tall grass, hacking through low-lying marshes as Di fretted about getting her feet wet as temperatures plummeted.

Per the cues, we were looking for "two old farm houses" of which we were supposed to turn right and head up the valley "at the top house." A spur blocked our view to what I presumed had to be the saddle we needed to climb toward, but Di wanted to stay out of the marsh so we were further veering away from it. Finally, I just took a hard right and stomped across the marsh, where my headlamp beam just happened to pick up the ruins of two buildings. "The old farm house!" I called out. "Not sure if it's the bottom or top, but it's definitely a farm house."

Di approached to shine her light at the circular building and corrected me. "That's not a farm house, that's a hut."

Her statement bristled a bit. Was she really going to argue semantics right now? We hadn't seen a single other building since we dropped into this valley, and here one was. Hut, house, who cares? We finally interpreted it as the bottom house and cut left along the low-lying ridge, where we came to another, occupied house at the end of the spur. Far above that, I saw a spark of lights that I was pretty sure were the two Rhodes riders nearing the crest of the saddle.

Darkness wore on as we picked our way up to the bench and then down into maze of village roads dropping into the next valley — this one sparkling with lights and civilization. By the time we reached our support station in the village of Masakala, I was spent. My legs felt fine, actually — there had been a lot of walking that day, and a lot of stopping to make map assessments. But mentally, I was shattered. We'd spent upwards of fourteen hours covering about ninety kilometers, and I'd been a tightly wound ball of stress for a lot of it. "Navigation," I thought. "That's the part of this race I can't cope with; I can't just use mind games to shut it out. And the worst part is, I can't just quit because of navigation. Damn it."

The following morning, I had no idea what to expect — only that we should stick with Steve and Di, who joyfully took on all of the navigational challenges. Steve especially. He seemed to love solving the puzzle. I was upset with myself for having such a bad attitude, but I had yet to accept the true mission of the Freedom Challenge: I was not here to ride my bike. I was here to find my way. Day four involved crossing from one hillside village to the next across frosty river valleys. I picked a bad day to wear my shorts, and my legs were bright red and feet numb by the time the morning sun finally started cranking out heat. Steve would stand up on the ridge and point to the village on the horizon, and say, "Imagine a man going to visit his girlfriend in that village. Which path would he take?" For Steve, the simplest route was the right route.

The day was characterized by fumbling through mazes of village streets while interacting with locals — again, all very friendly, but it became tiring to be such spectacles for so many people going about their day-to-day lives. We passed by a school and were quickly mobbed by children. The situation became a bit uncomfortable as they crowded around asking for things and grabbing parts of our bikes, but Steve turned it around by asking the kids to sing the national anthem, which they gleefully obliged.

We worked our way out of the village to a high ridge, where I was introduced to another favorite of Steve's — the "tiger line." Rather than take the contouring track that wrapped around a hill, he opted for a direct push up the steep face, complete with a rock scramble at the top. Beyond the radio towers, we had about five kilometers of blissful ridge riding before we reached the point where we were instructed by the cues to take a left turn. We failed to locate any track, and so we took the tiger line down — more scrambling, which made me nervous. There was actually a fun bit of singletrack through a thickly wooded gully that we had an opportunity to ride. But once at the bottom, we were definitely no longer on route.

Steve kept pointing to a far hill and saying, "Now, we must go over there (they-air.)" How to get there was the question, and Di, who had advocated the loudest for staying on the ridge when she didn't recognize the drop-off point, was also not a fan of "bumbling around." But we had left ourselves few other options. We knew we needed to pass by the Gladstone Farm House, so we would ask locals as we worked our way along the dirt roads about "Gladstone." Predictably, every direction they pointed to was slightly different. Steve, still aiming for the far hill, guided us through a network of farm tracks before we actually did find the Gladstone Farm House, leading to a foot path at the top of the ridge. The whole thing seemed to be quite the hack — foot paths, downhill hike-a-bike, stream crossings — and I was close to cementing an opinion that the Freedom Challenge would be better as a foot race before we even reached the first major portage. At least on foot, it would be easier to pay constant attention to the maps. Bikes require you to pay attention to steering and all that.

We arrived at Ongelusknek with only 61 kilometers on the day — a day that was nearly ten hours long. Night was coming, and it was too late to even consider taking on what promised to be a very long and complicated day five. "Short day," I tweeted. "Spent more time bumbling around and looking at maps than riding bikes. Frustrated, but what a beautiful spot to stop."

Indeed, the nature preserve sat at the edge of the Drakensberg escarpment, with wide-spanning views of the sculpted uplift. I sat on the porch with a cup of rooibos tea and let the day's frustration dissolve in the quiet serenity of the landscape. I was happy to be there, I was. Managing the draining navigation angst — well, that was just going to have to be my hurdle to clear.