Is This the World's Worst Service Route?
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FEW tasks falling to cross-country vehicles can be as exacting as the transport service over the Drakensberg mountains of Natal in South Africa into the highlands of Basutoland maintained through snow, rain, ice and slush by Land-Rovers, operated by Mokhotlong Motor Transport. These vehicles provide a 24-hour service over a 50-mile stretch of road designed as a bridle-path for mule trains.
Day and night they face the challenge of the Sani Pass, a narrow track hewn from the rocky sides of a gorge rising 9,000 ft. into the Drakensberg range. This pass is formidable but one of the most beautiful in the world. The service operates from Himeville, a small Natal village and the centre of a farming community, in the foothills of the Drakensberg.
The Sani Pass commences 12 miles from Himeville. The first three miles up to the Police Post on the Basutoland border, present little difficulty to a four
wheel-drive vehicle. Then begins a tortuous two-mile climb to the summit of the pass itself. Only low gear, low range, is used on this section.
Here the vehicles are confronted with fantastic gradients, often 1 in 3, on loose, rock-strewn surfaces, and corners shaped like arrow heads, some of which involve 350 turns. Many of these unbanked corners overlook a sheer drop of hundreds of feet into a boulder-packed riverbed at the bottom of the gorge.
On the sharpest of the corners, the Land-Rovers often have to be reversed as many as three or four times before they can continue up the pass. In the three years that the service has been operating, the highly skilled drivers have developed a cornering technique designed to give maximum safety in all kinds of weather —a technique which results in great stress on the vehicles.
When a corner is to be negotiated, the vehicle is taken as far into the corner as possible on the first run-in. The hand throttle is opened wide and leaving the vehicle in low range, low gear, the driver allows it to roll back to within a few inches of the edge, using the foot brake and with the clutch disengaged,
_The clutch and foot brake are then released simultaneously; the truck moves forward a few yards, and the process is repeated until the corner has been cleared. The hand throttle is a major asset in this shuffling as it leaves both feet free for clutch and brake.
The entire descent of the pass is made either in low gear, low range, or in reverse gear. On the down trip, the Land-Rover is halted 20 yards from the corner. The driver changes into reverse. and with the hand throttle open and the clutch depressed, he inches down the track until the bonnet appears to be suspended in mid-air.
As . before, clutch and brake are released together and the vehicle is backed up against the side of the gorge to start another traverse. Using this method, a runaway could be checked in a matter of seconds simply by releasing the clutch.
Once over the pass, the track winds its way gently through the mountains of Basutoland to a point over 10,000 ft. above sea level. Then begins the tricky descent through the Sehonghong Valley, the Basuto name for " One that Twists and Turns."
The Basutoland terminal of the transport service is Mokhotlong—an isolated outpost in the eastern corner of Basutoland. In dry weather, a time of five hours for the journey from Himeville to MokhotIong is considered reasonable—an average of about 10 m.p.h. In winter and during the wet summer months, when snow and rain turn the bridle path into a quagmire and wheels have to be heavily chained, the average drops to 3-4 m.p.h.