Video: We're No Longer In The Alps

Namibia, a wide open land of extreme harshness and surreal rocks. Three mountainbikers from Austria set out to explore the granite of the “burning mountains” for a rideable trail. A bike adventure into unknown terrain and a story of failure and triumph.


There is still room to further push the limits of mountain biking in terms of technical difficulty, but another line of thought had developed in my mind: To take our bikes and skills and move to new grounds, to a totally different kind of mountain, outside the Alps, outside the familiarity of vert riding technical but mostly well maintained hiking trails.

I grew up in South Africa and I still had vivid memories of Namibia, the wide open, simply vast land, the contrasts of color and light, the dry heat, the night skies. It had hit some resonance in me. Now it was time to return to Africa. We would explore the Brandberg Massive just north of the tropic of Capricorn. The 130 million years old accumulation of granite hosts the highest mountain in Namibia, 2600 meters above a plane savanna. The absolute remoteness and harshness of the environment struck my imagination. How would our experience translate in such a terrain in a remote and harsh environment?


Already during the first hours of hiking, reality kicked in and made it pretty clear that this was indeed no bike terrain and rideable sections were rare. Not because of the topography but because of the lack of a defined path and the abundance of wild vegetation. The rainy season had been good (after three years of drought) and grass and bushes were going strong. We had our first break around noon. The dry heat was not unbearable, but you would rather seek the shade of some of the large boulders. The typical African hiker's diet: Biltong, dried fruit and nuts.

We reached the prominent steep slab with the white stripe that we could see from the base camp already. From the top, the granite started off almost flat and curved down, becoming steeper, ending near vertical in a gully. One would have to make a well defined traverse and exit the slab at a lonely tree. So on the way back, a good length of beautiful riding was ensured. I kept saying: at least something. Not that I had promised Sylvia and Lars a perfect bike park, but hiking the bikes for three days for a ten meter ride, might be putting some tension onto the group.


We reached 'longest poole' campground just before sunset. The last sun rays touched over the silvery grass. It was a near perfect scene, we lit a fire, started cooking a rudimentary dish and talked into the night under the southern cross sky. Colin explained: “In Africa we share everything. We share the food, stories, the mountain. Ah, but we don't share everything, we don't share our wives, that’s the red line. And you should never cross the red line.” We were laughing.


The next day we reached the summit of Königstein. The panorama was full-on. Our heads were turning around to digest the views over the genuine African savanna, the light brownish color of a lion’s back. A cool breeze was blowing on top, we felt victory! Slowly the thoughts of our bikes crept back into our minds.


And what a good surprise: The first elevation drop from the summit to the first plane could be called rideable. Well, it was a hard fight to navigate through the bush in the fairly steep terrain, with a rumble of granite constantly slurring the tire's direction. Nonetheless, it no doubt felt like biking.

The traverse through grass and a deep sand surface that had the odd thorns sticking out. Punctures are the smaller kind of worries on such a trip, I guess. Then we entered a gorge and found a remarkable ride on a solid granite riverbed. Further down the rock transformed into a labyrinth of giant boulders. In the greed for more photos, Hannes, the photographer, and I stayed behind. We started to hurry back to fight the beckoning twilight and at one stage, we realized, we had lost our path. When Colin had been leading the way, it was easy to follow. Now, every little stone on a rock could be taken as clue for the path. So we got ourselves into our first real little bit of trouble, which we got out of ourselves as well. It involved abandoning my bike behind an arbitrary rock in a labyrinth rock garden and scrambling through rough terrain towards the bearing, where we were expecting the camp ground. We made the camp in the very last light of the day.

The only thing was that this second night was not even planned, Colin had expected us to be back down at the base that day. No big deal really, just that the food ration now was a bit tight. After a whole day of hiking, biking and working, we shared one sachet of onion soup between the eight of us. Not to mention a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit for desert. I keep saying, it's amazing how such a dinner could be enough after such a day. But not everybody wanted to agree on the term 'enough'.


Finally, the next day, we reached the granite slabs. It was truly a magical ride. A rough, brittle, but hard granite surface was a novelty for my tires for sure. Riding in to the steep and open surface did induce some feeling of exposure, but at the same time a sincere sensation of freedom. We reached the cars at our base camp with euphoria. Smiley had been watching the parking area and was waiting for us already. And so were plenty of warm cans of beer.

We drove back two hours through the savanna on remote jeep tracks, back to Uis, back to so-called civilization. And back to the Rest camp where we had pitched our tents already. The atmosphere was ebullient, everybody was talking until we remembered we hadn’t eaten for quite a while. As an earnest celebration, we had a communal feast with T-bone steaks for everybody. We talked and laughed into the night, until we realized, we hadn’t slept comfortably for a while either. I cannot remember if I actually bothered to shower that night.

So was it worth it? Are you kidding me? Hell yeah!


'A real adventure is something you only in retrospect call good times ', proverb, origin unknown

Stay tuned for the second part of "Burning Mountains".

- Axel Kreuter