Gamkaskloof Die Hel

Gamkaskloof is a narrow valley inside the Swartberg range where a community of farming families lived from the 1830s, growing fruit and vegetables and carrying produce out over the mountains on donkey paths. There was no road at all until 1962, and once it arrived the isolation that had sustained the community ended it - within thirty years everyone had left, the last resident going in 1991. The name Die Hel came from outside, not from the residents, who disliked it. What remains is a green strip of restored cottages and orchards along the Gamka River, a small museum in one of the houses, and the road in: 37 kilometres of gravel from the Swartberg Pass that dead-ends in the valley, including the Elands Pass descent with hairpins that most people remember better than the valley. You go back out the way you came.

The landscape

• The 1962 road - the arrival that ended 130 years of isolation within a generation.
• The restored cottages - the abandoned farmsteads, some now let to visitors.
• Elands Pass - the hairpin descent into the valley on a dead-end gravel road.
• The name - Die Hel, given from outside and resented by those who lived there.

When to go

March to May and September to November. Two days - the drive in takes two to three hours each way.

What to expect

The road is long, steep gravel and it is a dead end: everything you bring, you carry back out. It takes far longer than the distance suggests. No shop, no fuel, patchy signal. Summer heat in the valley is severe. After rain the road can close entirely.

Nearby

The Swartberg Pass is the way in and out; Prince Albert is on the northern side.