Casper Nek Pass

Casper’s Nek Pass looping off it through the Mountains, to join the R36 North of Ohrigstad. It is 1404m at its highest point! This old Pass is still in use over this part of the Drakensberg. Way back in the 1840's, when the independent-minded Voortrekkers had settled at Ohrigstad, their mission was to find a route to the Harbour at Delagoa Bay (now Maputo), where they could trade free of British control. Casper Kruger, went out scouting on horseback and found this route through the mountains which connected to the Blyde River Valley. The fact that it was not too high or too steep for ox wagons laden with trade goods to navigate, making it a good route. Later on, Andries Potgieter trekked over Casper’s Nek Pass in the Winter of 1844, with 28 men from Potchefstroom, setting up a trade route to Delagoa Bay. The following year, Carolus (or Karl) Trichardt led a party of wagons loaded with goods to trade in October, but the Summer rains had already set in and malaria-carrying mosquitoes were rife. The trip was a disaster; most of their cattle and horses succumbed to disease carried by tsetse flies, and provided a grim echo of the fatal trek of his father, Louis Trichardt, in the previous decade.