TAKE FIVE
Long Tom Pass links Mashishing (Lydenburg) on the Mpumalanga escarpment with Sabie in the Lowveld. Your drive might start off sunny, with views of grassland and pine plantations, but there's a good chance you'll soon be enveloped in mist. Long Tom is 26 km long and its summit is at 2 150m above sea level. From there, it loses 670 m in altitude as it snakes down the slopes of the northern Drakensberg.
Just think how inaccessible these mountains must have been in the 1840s, when transport riders drove their ox-wagons through the bush to Delagoa Bay (Maputo).
And long before then, between 1500 and 1820, the Bokoni people crossed these mountains on foot. They lived between present-day Carolina and Ohrigstad and farmed using terraces. On some of the farms in the area you can see the ruins of their stone kraals, like faded tattoos in the grass.
Remnants of the ox-wagon routes are also still visible next to the R37, as are marks left during the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902).
I'm exploring the pass with historian Gerrit Haarhoff, author of the book, Forgotten Tracks and Trails of the Escarpment and the. We've just departed from Mashishing. After 17km we notice two signs close together: One indicates the highest point on the pass; the other reads, “Mauchsberg”.
