At the end of April 2022, the 3rd ever Karoo Roadbook Camp was held in the Karoo, a vast semi desert region of South Africa. This event has become the training and proving ground for Dakar hopefuls and Dakar veterans alike. Willem Avenant arranged the event, and was there to give a first hand account of how things went down.
The Karoo Roadbook Camp was born out of a training weekend that was put together for the KTM Cape Town Rally team in preparation for the Kalahari Rally that was canceled due to COVID in 2020. Starting out as a small group of riders wanting to hone their navigational skills, it developed into an event that introduces new riders to roadbook riding, and gives veteran navigators a chance to practice their skill in a new and unique environment.
The 2022 edition saw an interesting group of people come together. A truly international event, there were riders from India, the UK, Zambia, the US and South Africa present. Stuart Gregory (3 time malle moto Dakar competitor) and Charan Moore (Dakar rookie) joined in the fun to share their experiences with the riders. Mark Johnston, Kalahari malle moto winner 2021 and bike builder extraordinaire was also present. There was a good mix of rally newbies and veterans, all hungry and excited to ride some roadbooks.
End of April is a great shoulder season for traveling in the central part of South Africa. The days are always perfect and the trees are just starting to turn. With day time temps not being too hot or too cold and little chance of rain this is a great time of year, the only drawback being the cold nights, with some nights dropping below freezing.
The event is based in the small rural town of Murraysburg in the north western most corner of the Western Cape, in the Great Karoo.
The encyclopedia Brittanica describes the Karoo as follows:
“Karoo, also spelled Karroo, arid to semiarid geographic region of Eastern Cape, Western Cape, and Northern Cape provinces, South Africa. The Karoo is best defined by its vegetation, which consists of assorted succulents and low scrub bushes spaced from one foot to several feet apart. The area is devoid of surface water, and its name is derived from the Khoisan word meaning “land of thirst.” Its subregions include the intermontane vales of Little Karoo and Great Karoo in the lesser-elevated areas of Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces and the main Karoo (or Upper Karoo) spanning the vast highland plateau of Northern Cape province to the north and east of the Great Escarpment. Altogether the Karoo occupies about 153,000 square miles (395,000 square km), about one-third of the total area of South Africa.”
This vast area of land has been divided and fenced up for ranching and is the main region for producing mutton (Karoo Lamb), wool (Merino) and mohar (Angora) in South Africa. What makes mutton from this area so special is the fact that the sheep feeds almost exclusively on the aromatic Karoo bossies (low growing indiginous shrub), and so their meat becomes infused with the tastes and fragrance of the veldt.
Riders started trickling in on the Wednesday afternoon to the local “fairgrounds”.
In South Africa most small towns have “showgrounds”, a place farmers built in the past for them to get together when they need a place to socialize or “show” their animals, host events, etc. Most of these “fair grounds” around the country have fallen into disrepair, but Murraysburg’s are still functioning.
Entrants camped out around the building, with a kitchen, bar and ablutions inside the building.
Evenings were spent around a fire, preparing food (mainly Karoo mutton) over an open fire, the South African tradition known as “braai’ing”. Socializing while preparing food around an open fire with a cold beer is an integral part of South African culture just as sharing stories under the night sky around the fire is part of the culture.
Stage 1 was designed as a “getting your toes wet” stage. The entire day was 370 km, and traversed 3 provinces (similar to states) in one day, on mainly wide open dirt roads. The day had one short technical special, but consisted mostly out of liaison / adventure style routes, passing through the tourist town of Nieu Bethesda (which houses the famous Owl House), and then criss crossing the Sneeu (Snow) Berg Nature Reserve, and then circumnavigating the highest point in Southern Africa outside the Drakensberg massif, Kompas (Compass) Berg, reaching 8,209 feet into the sky.
Thursday night Stuart Grecory gave an in depth talk about what it takes to get to Dakar, and then how to get back again(in his case, 3 times) once the bug has bitten. He imparted wisdom on training, how to ride the race (Dakar), what to focus on, what to not worry about, etc.
The camp is designed to increase in difficulty and technicality each day while being low key and informal. The idea is to learn from each other and from actual practical experience while out on the bike.
Stage 2 was 230km but the level of difficulty was stepped up, tricky navigation, tight jeep tracks, rocks, and riverbeds were at the order of the day. One deep mud pit was especially challenging, holding some riders back for a while as they tried to get through it.
It is also known as the “Gate stage” with 97 gates on the entire stage. This year, there was a team of gate openers and a closer, which enhanced the experience of riding greatly. Opening and closing 97 gates is more work than riding 230km!
By 14:00 only 6 riders had reached the passage control point. At the end of the day only 5 riders managed to ride the entire stage, with the balance retiring the stage at various points.
Friday night Charan Moore did a tear down of his rally bike for the class, and talked about what it's like in the thick of it during Dakar. I am not sure if it was the difficulty of the stage, the fact that everybody was amped up for Dakar, or the fact that Charan’s go to introduction is “My name is Charan and I like to party”, but for some reason, the evening developed into one helluva party that lasted into the early hours of the morning.
On Sat morning not all riders lined up for the final 250 km of stage 3, a result of the late night partying no doubt.
Stage 3 was the crown jewel of the event. The day started off in a 10 km rock garden in a river. The rocks were smooth, wet and slippery, any riding through it, it felt like it would never end. Just as you think you can’t take any more of the rocks, the river opens up and becomes wide and sandy. This is some of the best wide open riding around, while you still have to navigate through the different tributaries of the river and dodge wildlife, the riding is pure ecstasy as you pin it, flat box down a wide river bed with the rising sun at your back.
Once you exit the river the stage moves into the pans. The pans are a true test of navigation, the route is designed to confuse you with lots of criss-crossing and masked waypoints. This becomes exceptionally difficult when there are no visual reference points and loads of tracks everywhere.
If you managed to get out of the pans, the infamous Wolwekop awaited, a massive mountain that is pretty much solid rocks for the last 40km.
Crossing this mountain was the last challenge, the last piece of the puzzle to unlock this navigational trial.
The Karoo is normally a semi desert, very similar to Arizona. The area of Murraysburg is more representative of Southern Utah, lots of mountains, rocks, and scrubland. It's a dramatic, hard landscape, with hard and unique people living there. After a 5 year drought, the drought was broken this season, with a lot of rain, the likes of which has not been seen for many years, and this resulted in a very difficult course. The rain caused lots of mud holes to form, and the resulting grass and brush growth made it nigh to impossible to find some of the previously very visible tracks.
Due to these factors, there was not a single entrant that started and finished each special of the event without missing waypoints, thus technically, we did not have a single finisher. Other than the gate openers and sweep, there was only one entrant, Eugene Beetge, that actually started and finished every single special, and thus Eugene was crowned the overall best rider/navigator for the event.
Saturday evening was the “wind down” of the event. Many new friendships were made, and many many stories were added to the memory banks. From burnouts in the bar, to crashes in river beds, to sliding on slippery rocks, or being stuck in the mud.
As tough as it was, everybody there shared a bond, a bond that reached beyond mere acquaintance or friendship, they shared the bond of doing what they loved, the bond of adventure, the shared the love for traversing unknown terrain at speed, but most of all, they shared the bond of a collective experience and suffering, the bond of the rally fraternity!
While being a very challenging course, the 2022 installment of the Karoo Roadbook Camp was one for the books.
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