Recollections gathered from survivors of that first run 25 years ago, as published in the August 1989 issue of the Rand Athletic Club newsletter:
Photo : Sham Singh (Snowflake No 13)
The bell to signal the start had its clappers frozen solid, and not only the bell suffered in that way.
After running some 8k’s we turned off the main road onto a local farm road. The difference was hardly noticeable, the farm roads were really not that much better.
A hand silently pointed us in the direction in which we were expected to proceed. A small path led down to the frozen waters of a tributary of the River Styx. Stark forbidding branches of a long-dead tree guarded the spot at which the waters had to be crossed. A cry rang out. A once-beautiful lady rose, dripping, from the depths. A warning to all. Beware, he who crosses here. The challenge accepted, the waters were crossed.
Onward, upward we struggled. The chirping long stilled. The silence only broken by the cracking of the ice in the river below, as the sun warmed the waters, and by the occasional cry of pain as bodies were mutilated by thorns.
By now the blood was flowing freely down one’s legs, staining the virgin snow bright red. Thoughts of frostbite, gangrene even amputation no longer horrified, but were considered unemotionally, the last mentioned almost with a sense of relief.
"Just one more kay to go to the top". The climb had not yet even begun. That last kay was straight up. "Nearer, my God, to thee". The words of that well-known hymn kept passing through my mind. The chicken-mesh fence by which we pulled ourselves to the top, step by painful step, cut deep into the palms of the hands. Yet the cuts went unnoticed. At times the rocks were covered in a thick layer of ice; at times one was left hanging from the fence with feet dangling over into space. The snow got perceptibly thicker the higher we climbed. "Because it's there" will never again make any sense. There must be better excuses for lunacy.
...to be continued
