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  1. Be warned that this is definitely not a factually accurate account, rather a roller coaster tale of emotion and sentiment from an oxygen starved old brain that saw the race through a pair of badly bleeding eyeballs. This one was truly my ride into Hell and very possibly the worst day I have ever spent on a bike! It is all too easy to talk about a rough day on the bike, but keep in mind that I’ve had days that ended with broken bones in the claws of the orthopaedic surgeons. Deciding to ride the two-day To Hell and Back mountain bike stage race, was very easy, because my gnarly old roots lie deep in the folded rock layers of the Swartberg Mountains. Doing it with Beattbox was equally logical, because we did enough races together, as team Pain or Shine, to know that we are compatible. To Hell and Back is the oldest stage race in South Africa and this year was the twenty first edition, somewhat of a milestone for a small laid back race in the middle of nowhere. The five hour drive from Cape Town to the start was great, registration was quick and easy, we camped 50 metres from the start line at De Hoek, on the Oudtshoorn side of the pass, and were ready with time to spare before the gun set the whole adventure off and we eagerly flew down the road early on the Saturday morning. Before I get too far ahead of myself, let me shift to an easier gear, and tell you about the history I share with those mountains: I grew up in the beautiful and sleepy little town of Prince Albert, nestled into the foothills of the rugged Swartberg Mountains that forms the divide between the Little and Great Karoo. From there my favourite road leads into the Swartberg Pass and over the spectacular mountains where it snakes upwards along incredible hairpin bends and at near impossible gradients along death defying drop offs and through seemingly impenetrable kloofs with high cliffs towering above. The pass is an artwork of nineteenth century construction, with beautifully handcrafted dry stone walls keeping the road from cascading into the chasms below. It dates back to a time before dynamite, bulldozers and cars existed. Deep in those same mountains, there lies a hidden valley called The Hell, but its real name is Gamkaskloof, meaning valley of the lion in the language of the ancient locals. It got its nickname, The Hell, from outsiders, because the locals saw it as paradise. For more than a century the only way in or out, for the dozen or so families that lived and farmed there, was a two day trek on foot or by mule. The Road to Hell was only built in the 1950s and it turns off the much older Swartberg pass to snake its way across, around and over many a steep and rocky mountain ridge until it suddenly descends down into the fertile valley. This last part is called the Elands Pass and it drops 500 metres in just 3,5 kilometres with the steepest gradient about 25%. The distance from the Swartberg Pass junction to The Hell is only 40 km, but it still takes two hours to negotiate in a modern four wheel drive vehicle. The road to this Hell is certainly anything but wide, straight and easy! To be continued.
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