First navigation of the Fish River Canyon by Canoe, Easter 1971
It was before Easter 1971 that a group of six arrived at the so-called "Outlook" on the rim of the Fish River Canyon. Our accompanying luggage was excessive as it consisted of bivouac material, one week provisions and last but not least of three single-seat collapsible 16 foot Klepper canoes. The night before we had camped in Ai-ais where we deposited a car to later pick up the vehicles parked at the Outlook starting point. We were a mixed bag of immigrants, Erwin Stummer from Austria, Georg W. Brünn from Germany and Walter Bapst from Switzerland. With the exception of a visitor from Germany in the land party we lived in Cape Town and worked in the Clothing Industry there.
Our trip had been triggered by stories circulating in insider circles of the Mountain Club, and the geographical and botanical faculties of the University of Cape Town. They were about the wonders, but also the dangers of the Fish River Canyon in Namibia. It must have been in the late 1950s that a party of a professor and some students had lost all their equipment while camping in the Canyon one night: A terrible roar coming down the valley had awoken them just in time to scamper from a meter-high flash flood for higher ground. It had saved their lives. To that point the Fish River Canyon had been visited only by a few hardy types. In the latter parts of the 1960s a group in a similar combination of nationalities as above proceeded, again in the Easter Holidays, to Ai-ais. As a novelty we decided to start our hike from there and walk up the river. Very much wiser, also a few pounds lighter, we emerged after four days on the rim of what was then called the Outlook. There we had deposited a car beforehand. I vividly remember that we particularly enjoyed climbing up the side of the valley on a late afternoon in temperatures of plus 40"°.
On our first hike the river was not flowing, but to our great pleasure we had encountered a string of pools, some of them quite large. Talking to the Rangers at Ai-Ais we found out, that after normal annual rains the Fish River would be flowing. But in intervals of a few years, and after heavy downpours in the Highlands, the Fish River would come down in devastating floods. At that point the camp at Ai-ais had been rebuilt a number of times already. Based on this information we decided that canoeing down the river under the right conditions in our special collapsible canoes would be possible.
So from about 1968 on we kept contact with the Rangers at Ai-Ais. We realised that our time was running out because we were told that the Naute Dam was scheduled to be finished in 1972. It would be the second largest dam in Namibia positioned just before the confluence of the Löwen River with the Fish River.
In 1962 the Hardap Dam on the upper reaches of the Fish River near Mariental, to this day the largest in Namibia, had been completed. Besides providing vast areas with irrigation and high-quality recreational facilities the dam acted as a buffer: To a certain degree it prevented the Fish River Valley from devastating killer floods which had come down from time to time in the past. However this had not stopped rare floods which originated in the highlands east of Keetmanshoop. They rolled down the Löwen River to join the Fish River well below the Hardab Dam. To the best of our knowledge they were responsible for extensive damages to facilities in Ai-Ais during the 70s. All the above would be a thing of the past after 1972: With the aide of the Hardap and Naute Dams the flow of the Fish River would be completely under control. The obvious result was that irrigation and evaporation would reduce the controlled flow down the rivers considerably. So our chances to navi-gate the Fish River through the Canyon for the first time in history were disappearing with every year and with every poor rainy season.
But we were lucky because just before Easter 1971 the seasonal rains were such that the Fish River carried sufficient water for our purpose. At that stage we also had to tackle another hurdle: The authorities in Windhoek had decided that Easter time was off-season and that entering the Canyon was prohibited. Approached by some mutual friends, a Senator of the Administration in Windhoek very kindly managed to get us a special permit. So the game was on.
There is a 20 minute DVD of the 8 mm film from Erwin Stummer that was taken on this trip. It particularly shows the pleasure we had carrying our numerous bags with gear down the side of the Canyon under boiling conditions to the Sulphur Springs. After inserting the wooden frames into the five-canvas-ply rubber-covers of the three canoes our party split up into a canoeing plus a walking section of three persons each. As we found out later: It was not easy to keep contact or meet for lunch and the nightly bivouacs. On the first section it somehow still worked fine.
The trip through the actual part of the Canyon, roughly speaking from the Sulphur Springs to the north-side of the Four Finger Rock turned out to be extremely demanding and time-consuming. But the landscape was grandiose. I particularly remember a camp below the Zebra Pools: the sunset had turned out to be beautiful. The Namibian sky with its millions of the bright shining stars one never forgets. And the sunrise next morning lightening up gradually Table Mountain in the next bend topped it all. Some of the rapids were so blocked by huge rocks that we had to get out of the canoes to guide them on floating ropes into deeper waters below. It was here that we noticed a steep sandy belt descending from the escarpment above us down the mountainside. It contained numerous tracks. Camping later we found out that huge troops of baboons used them in the late evening and early morning to drink from the pools in the valley. We did not see it, but these tracks must have been used by other game as well. It took us three days to come down the main Canyon as we also had to repair some of the wooden frameworks of the canoes. On top of it we had lost our accompanying party on the second evening. With the help of a fire fed with greeneries we send smoke signals. But the lucky fellow of the walking party plus the two girls in tow only got to our bivouac well after dark. They obviously had expected us to have covered more ground on that afternoon so they had to re-trek. Earlier on it had not helped that our somewhat short-sighted Swiss friend Walter, while trying to get out of his canoe, had put his foot on a partially submerged rock. It turned out to be a king-size leguan. We are guessing to this day who got the bigger fright?
Coming upriver, the Four Finger Rock signals the entrance to the high walls of the actual Canyon. Proceeding from there downwards to Ai-Ais meant different things to our two groups: the walking party had already benefited from various shortcuts like cutting out both the bend around the Kooigoed Heights and the Lost Bend protruding from the Four Finger Rock. As a result they had to wait a few hours on the riverbank near the Soldiers Grave.
In the meantime the canoeing party tackled the extra distance around the Lost Bend. Here we entered a different, wonderful world. We were able to follow a well-defined riverbed with deeper, fast flowing water. Ever so often there were fast rapids free of blocking rocks, which we shot with great delight. The banks were wooded, so we enjoyed having lunch in the shade of a beautiful willow. It seems a pity that this beautiful stretch of river is only seen by those few hikers doing the extra 4-5 km of the Lost Bend and not taking the shortcut past the Four Finger Rock.
The canoeing and walking parties rejoined to the north of the Four Finger Rock near the Soldiers Grave. This is the resting place of Lt. Thilo von Trotha who was killed in action here in June 1905. He had joined the Namas Bethanier-Captain Cornelius for negotiations on behalf of the German Colonial Forces, which were trying to locate them.
From here on the mountains receded and the valley widened considerably. The flat banks of a now much broader river consisted mainly of sand and pebbles. With absolutely no shade available the march back to Ai-Ais turned into a slog for the hikers as the going became quite heavy. In comparison to the earlier parts however more ground could be covered. They were now able to remain in constant contact with the canoeists, who had to pick the few remaining channels through the sandy river bed deep enough to make progress possible.
It was on a stop at Kochas Drift that the wri-ter found a pair of beautifully hand-knitted knee-length woollen socks. His grateful thanks go to the unknown Oma who must have even spun the wool by hand and so produced an unsurpassable quality: Because 40 years on they still serve their new, now old owner after heavy snowfalls in Europe.
On the fifth day around lunchtime six elated but tired travellers plus their three canoes reached Ai-Ais. The cold beer flowed freely, but only for three of us: Three drivers had to fetch the two cars parked on the Outlook. This meant many miles of driving under poor road conditions, as the connection along the rim of the Canyon did not exist in those days.
Our trip had been triggered by stories circulating in insider circles of the Mountain Club, and the geographical and botanical faculties of the University of Cape Town. They were about the wonders, but also the dangers of the Fish River Canyon in Namibia. It must have been in the late 1950s that a party of a professor and some students had lost all their equipment while camping in the Canyon one night: A terrible roar coming down the valley had awoken them just in time to scamper from a meter-high flash flood for higher ground. It had saved their lives. To that point the Fish River Canyon had been visited only by a few hardy types. In the latter parts of the 1960s a group in a similar combination of nationalities as above proceeded, again in the Easter Holidays, to Ai-ais. As a novelty we decided to start our hike from there and walk up the river. Very much wiser, also a few pounds lighter, we emerged after four days on the rim of what was then called the Outlook. There we had deposited a car beforehand. I vividly remember that we particularly enjoyed climbing up the side of the valley on a late afternoon in temperatures of plus 40"°.
On our first hike the river was not flowing, but to our great pleasure we had encountered a string of pools, some of them quite large. Talking to the Rangers at Ai-Ais we found out, that after normal annual rains the Fish River would be flowing. But in intervals of a few years, and after heavy downpours in the Highlands, the Fish River would come down in devastating floods. At that point the camp at Ai-ais had been rebuilt a number of times already. Based on this information we decided that canoeing down the river under the right conditions in our special collapsible canoes would be possible.
So from about 1968 on we kept contact with the Rangers at Ai-Ais. We realised that our time was running out because we were told that the Naute Dam was scheduled to be finished in 1972. It would be the second largest dam in Namibia positioned just before the confluence of the Löwen River with the Fish River.
In 1962 the Hardap Dam on the upper reaches of the Fish River near Mariental, to this day the largest in Namibia, had been completed. Besides providing vast areas with irrigation and high-quality recreational facilities the dam acted as a buffer: To a certain degree it prevented the Fish River Valley from devastating killer floods which had come down from time to time in the past. However this had not stopped rare floods which originated in the highlands east of Keetmanshoop. They rolled down the Löwen River to join the Fish River well below the Hardab Dam. To the best of our knowledge they were responsible for extensive damages to facilities in Ai-Ais during the 70s. All the above would be a thing of the past after 1972: With the aide of the Hardap and Naute Dams the flow of the Fish River would be completely under control. The obvious result was that irrigation and evaporation would reduce the controlled flow down the rivers considerably. So our chances to navi-gate the Fish River through the Canyon for the first time in history were disappearing with every year and with every poor rainy season.
But we were lucky because just before Easter 1971 the seasonal rains were such that the Fish River carried sufficient water for our purpose. At that stage we also had to tackle another hurdle: The authorities in Windhoek had decided that Easter time was off-season and that entering the Canyon was prohibited. Approached by some mutual friends, a Senator of the Administration in Windhoek very kindly managed to get us a special permit. So the game was on.
There is a 20 minute DVD of the 8 mm film from Erwin Stummer that was taken on this trip. It particularly shows the pleasure we had carrying our numerous bags with gear down the side of the Canyon under boiling conditions to the Sulphur Springs. After inserting the wooden frames into the five-canvas-ply rubber-covers of the three canoes our party split up into a canoeing plus a walking section of three persons each. As we found out later: It was not easy to keep contact or meet for lunch and the nightly bivouacs. On the first section it somehow still worked fine.
The trip through the actual part of the Canyon, roughly speaking from the Sulphur Springs to the north-side of the Four Finger Rock turned out to be extremely demanding and time-consuming. But the landscape was grandiose. I particularly remember a camp below the Zebra Pools: the sunset had turned out to be beautiful. The Namibian sky with its millions of the bright shining stars one never forgets. And the sunrise next morning lightening up gradually Table Mountain in the next bend topped it all. Some of the rapids were so blocked by huge rocks that we had to get out of the canoes to guide them on floating ropes into deeper waters below. It was here that we noticed a steep sandy belt descending from the escarpment above us down the mountainside. It contained numerous tracks. Camping later we found out that huge troops of baboons used them in the late evening and early morning to drink from the pools in the valley. We did not see it, but these tracks must have been used by other game as well. It took us three days to come down the main Canyon as we also had to repair some of the wooden frameworks of the canoes. On top of it we had lost our accompanying party on the second evening. With the help of a fire fed with greeneries we send smoke signals. But the lucky fellow of the walking party plus the two girls in tow only got to our bivouac well after dark. They obviously had expected us to have covered more ground on that afternoon so they had to re-trek. Earlier on it had not helped that our somewhat short-sighted Swiss friend Walter, while trying to get out of his canoe, had put his foot on a partially submerged rock. It turned out to be a king-size leguan. We are guessing to this day who got the bigger fright?
Coming upriver, the Four Finger Rock signals the entrance to the high walls of the actual Canyon. Proceeding from there downwards to Ai-Ais meant different things to our two groups: the walking party had already benefited from various shortcuts like cutting out both the bend around the Kooigoed Heights and the Lost Bend protruding from the Four Finger Rock. As a result they had to wait a few hours on the riverbank near the Soldiers Grave.
In the meantime the canoeing party tackled the extra distance around the Lost Bend. Here we entered a different, wonderful world. We were able to follow a well-defined riverbed with deeper, fast flowing water. Ever so often there were fast rapids free of blocking rocks, which we shot with great delight. The banks were wooded, so we enjoyed having lunch in the shade of a beautiful willow. It seems a pity that this beautiful stretch of river is only seen by those few hikers doing the extra 4-5 km of the Lost Bend and not taking the shortcut past the Four Finger Rock.
The canoeing and walking parties rejoined to the north of the Four Finger Rock near the Soldiers Grave. This is the resting place of Lt. Thilo von Trotha who was killed in action here in June 1905. He had joined the Namas Bethanier-Captain Cornelius for negotiations on behalf of the German Colonial Forces, which were trying to locate them.
From here on the mountains receded and the valley widened considerably. The flat banks of a now much broader river consisted mainly of sand and pebbles. With absolutely no shade available the march back to Ai-Ais turned into a slog for the hikers as the going became quite heavy. In comparison to the earlier parts however more ground could be covered. They were now able to remain in constant contact with the canoeists, who had to pick the few remaining channels through the sandy river bed deep enough to make progress possible.
It was on a stop at Kochas Drift that the wri-ter found a pair of beautifully hand-knitted knee-length woollen socks. His grateful thanks go to the unknown Oma who must have even spun the wool by hand and so produced an unsurpassable quality: Because 40 years on they still serve their new, now old owner after heavy snowfalls in Europe.
On the fifth day around lunchtime six elated but tired travellers plus their three canoes reached Ai-Ais. The cold beer flowed freely, but only for three of us: Three drivers had to fetch the two cars parked on the Outlook. This meant many miles of driving under poor road conditions, as the connection along the rim of the Canyon did not exist in those days.
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