10/09/2026
**Day 4: To Hell and Back — The Final Chapter 🏍️🔥**
Nothing quite like waking up in the Karoo. Good breakfast, good coffee and a decision that would save our day before it even started: get to Prince Albert early because word was the Die Hel road had taken serious flood damage and time was going to be tight.
We rode the historic cement road back to Willowmore for a quick stretch, then dirt to Klaarstroom, normally a dirt highway, today a minefield of ruts and washouts from the floods, eyes wide open the whole way. Stopped at the old Klaarstroom Hotel, famous as a filming location for Faan se Trein and that's where trouble found us an electrical gremlin on one bike the kind you almost never win against. Onto the trailer it went.
Lunch on the stoep at the Swartberg Hotel in Prince Albert, always a winner, while the affected rider, Igno fought a losing battle with his bike. Then another rider Johan, nursing a knee niggle offered his own bike to Igno so his ride could continue. Good souls this crew. With the temperature climbing toward the forecast 33°C, we pushed off just after 1pm for the kloof.
Up the iconic Swartberg Pass, Thomas Bain's masterpiece, 1,585m at its peak and for the first time in years of riding it, the legendary Dry Waterfall was actually running. Proof of just how much rain this mountain had taken.
Then the turnoff, Gamkaskloof, better known as Die Hel. This valley has one of the great stories in South Africa, settled in the 1830s, cut off from the world for over a century until the first road was finally carved in in 1962, by which point the isolation that built the community also ended it.
In May this year, catastrophic floods tore that only road apart, river crossings washed out, boulders and mud slide strewn across it. We rode into the aftermath, graded for the first five km, then mud, ruts, deep water-filled holes, sections of loose rock like riding on marbles. Thirty focused kilometres to the top of Elands Pass and the view paid for every second of concentration. Down the other side of Elands pass it got rocky in sections, and right at the bottom, on the approach to the shop, the river had simply taken the road and left one long rocky bend in its place, adrenaline maxed, every rider made it in one piece. The easy part done. The hard part, there's only one way out and it's the way you came in.
Then the support bus went quiet on us. So I had to do the dreadfull thing....gear up and ride back. Found it stuck three-quarters up the pass, one puncture which also shredded the rim, then a second within 300m of first, trailer abandoned on a bend for the next day's problem.
Back at the camp fire, stories of near-misses and a phenomenal dinner cooked by Marinette from Gamkaskloof, part of the original families who've called this valley home since the old days, still living there today
Morning came fast. Piet from Gamkaskloof came through with two spare rims and tyres while riders headed out toward Kobus se G*t where the tour ends. I stayed with the support bus to sort the trailer and on the way up Elands Pass, spotted something shiny off the edge of the road. Heart in my throat until I found the rider standing there, fine, bike hanging on the lip but not over. Relief. We got him out and send him on his way. Further on, another rider hitching without wheels, chain had jumped off, nothing worse. Fixed, refitted, sent on his way. The trailer's rim was too wide for the chassis, so it stayed behind with a stranded bike and three hours later we finally rolled into Kobus se G*t where breakfast and coffee never tasted so good.
Riders said their goodbyes and headed home. My day wasn't done, back in George by midday, hunting spare rims and tyres, then straight back into the mountains in the Amarok to recover trailer and bike, finally home by 9:30pm. One HELL of a day, in every sense.
Four days, lots of passes, flood damaged road, fallen bikes, broken hoses, lots of laughter, incredible people and a valley that's earned its name a hundred times over. To Hell and Back — done and dusted.
