The Spitzkoppe is a group of bald granite

Granite

Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...

 peaks or bornhardt

Bornhardt

A bornhardt is a dome-shaped, steep-sided, bald rock outcropping at least in height and several hundred meters in width. A type of inselberg, bornhardts are typically composed of granites or gneisses, though occasionally formed in other rock types such as dacite, norite, limestone, sandstone and...

s located between Usakos

Usakos

Usakos is a city on the banks of river Khan, 140 kilometres north-east of Swakopmund in the Erongo Region of Namibia. It is located on the B2 , the main road between the Walvis Bay and Johannesburg. The town has 3,000 inhabitants and owns of land...

 and Swakopmund

Swakopmund

Swakopmund is a city on the coast of northwestern Namibia, west of Windhoek, Namibia's capital. It is the capital of the Erongo administrative district. As a seaside resort, the weather is cooler here in December to January so the territorial administration moves to Swakopmund for these months...

 in the Namib desert

Namib Desert

The Namib Desert is a desert in Namibia and southwest Angola that forms part of the Namib-Naukluft National Park, the largest game reserve in Africa. The name "Namib" is of Nama origin and means "vast place"...

 of Namibia

Namibia

Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia , is a country in southern Africa whose western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and east. It gained independence from South Africa on 21 March...

. The granite is more than 700 million years old and the highest outcrop rises about 1784 meters (5857 feet) above sea level

Sea level

Mean sea level is a measure of the average height of the ocean's surface ; used as a standard in reckoning land elevation...

. The peaks stand out dramatically from the flat surrounding plains. The highest peak is about 700m above the floor of the desert below. A minor peak – the Little Spitzkoppe – lies nearby at an elevation of 1584 metres above sea level. Other prominences stretch out into a range known as the Pontok Mountains.

Many examples of Bushmen

Bushmen

The indigenous people of Southern Africa, whose territory spans most areas of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, Botswana, Namibia, and Angola, are variously referred to as Bushmen, San, Sho, Barwa, Kung, or Khwe...

 artwork can be seen painted on the rock in the Spitzkoppe area (see below "Bushman Paradise").

History of ascent

Any ascent of the peak involves exposed and delicate rock climbing

Rock climbing

Rock climbing also lightly called 'The Gravity Game', is a sport in which participants climb up, down or across natural rock formations or artificial rock walls. The goal is to reach the summit of a formation or the endpoint of a pre-defined route without falling...

 of a high grade. While the standard route up the peak is not severely difficult in modern technical terms, it presented quite a formidable undertaking in the earliest days, owing to the isolation of the peak, the heat of the desert and the total lack of water.

Before the First World War what is now Namibia was German South West Africa. It is possible that the main peak was summited as early as 1904, when a soldier of the Imperial Schutztruppe

Schutztruppe

Schutztruppe was the African colonial armed force of Imperial Germany from the late 19th century to 1918, when Germany lost its colonies. Similar to other colonial forces, the Schutztruppe consisted of volunteer European commissioned and non-commissioned officers, medical and veterinary officers. ...

 supposedly soloed the peak and made a fire on the summit. What he may have burned remains a mystery, as there is absolutely no natural fuel of any kind on the upper parts of the peak. The legend suggests that he never returned and that his body was never recovered. Certainly, no proof of his conquest is available today. The first documented conquest was made by a team of climbers from Cape Town

Cape Town

Cape Town is the second-most populous city in South Africa, and the provincial capital and primate city of the Western Cape. As the seat of the National Parliament, it is also the legislative capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality...

, led by S. le Roux. The next party – O'Neil, Shipley and Schaff – pioneered a route up the northern extremes of the peak, after having failed on the southwest ridge. They gained access to the gully now known as the "scramble" but ran out of time to attempt the final faces. Four days later they made another attempt but finally gave up. Some of the earliest climbers, defeated by an extraordinarily smooth band of granite only about 3m high, resorted to carving steps into the rock with a hammer and chisel.

A few months later Hans and Else Wong and Jannie de Villiers Graaff arrived and they reached the summit at noon, in November 1946. For the next quarter of a century the mountain maintained its reputation of presenting a two- or three-day struggle to potential climbers. (There are accounts of these ascents in old volumes of the Journal of The Mountain Club of South Africa – one of which can be found at scanned extracts from MCSA Journal).

This era came to an end in 1971, when the peak was climbed in four hours by a party led by J. W. Marchant from the University of Cape Town Mountain and Ski Club. Included were the talented South African climber Gabriel Athiros and Oliver Stansfield from England [2 June 1971]. This team scaled all of the lower pitch

Pitch (vertical space)

-Climbing:In rock climbing and ice climbing, a pitch is a steep section of a route that requires a rope between two belays, as part of a climbing system...

es without ropes and got through the difficult band without using the artificial steps hacked into the granite. They descended from the peak in two hours and as they reached the base rain began to fall for the first time in over a year.
The modern era commenced. E. Haber, together with A. Lombard, C. Ward and Holding completed the first direct ascent of the South West Wall. They began their endeavours in 1977 but did not succeed in finishing the route before 1982. M. Cartwright and M. Hislop freed the route in 1988, giving it a grade of 22, which was later revised to 24. C. Edelstein and G. Mallory left their mark in 1983 by completing "Royale Flush", another monster route that was freed only in 2000 by J. Wamsteker and S. Wallis. During 1991 M. Cartwright, K. Smith and M. Seegers put up a difficult route named INXS graded 24 left of the South West Wall route.

General development and history

In 1896, a trading post was built by the German Colonial Society. Later it was transferred to the Farmer Jooste and a police station was built (the foundation walls are still under Pontok 4 chroma noise).

In 1964, under the so-called Odendaal-plan of the Odendaal Commission for the creation of home territories (Home lands) for the black population, the farm was expropriated with compensation. In 1970 they moved multiple Damara

Damara

Damara may refer to:* Damara , breed of sheep* Damara , Namibian people* Damaraland, a region in Namibia* Damara , landlords of ancient Kashmir* Damara, Central African Republic, town...

families here, which were in fact a village with a church and school development. Since 1998, the municipal campsite and the area was declared as Gaingu Conservancy on 7 September 2003 around the Great Spitzkoppe. Unfortunately, a Hollywood film company erected a high game fence which cuts off the entire area between the large Spitzkoppe and Spitzkoppe Pontoks. This represents about half of the camping places which ceased to exist, access to many climbing rocks and also the normal route to the Great Spitzkoppe barred. The popular Circumnavigation of the Great Spitzkoppe (1 – 1.5 hours) is no longer possible.

"Bushman Paradise" made accessible through a gate with chains, has lost its attractiveness, as almost all of the 2000 – 4000 year old prehistoric rock paintings have been destroyed. Around the foot of the Great Spitzkoppe you can still find good drawings, especially at the "Rhino Rock".

External links

• Travellers Voive Magazine Spitzkoppe Namibia's Rocky Eden
• Klettergebiet Spitzkoppe in Namibia