SOUTH AFRICA AND LESOTHO: Local Knowledge

Web address: www.snow.co.za
Distance from airport: Twelve-hour drive from Cape Town, seven-hour drive from Johannesburg.
Rideable acres: Four
Lifts: Five surface lifts

“The Mountain Kingdom of Lesotho.” Sounds like a snowboarder’s dream, doesn’t it? Compared to the desert and rainforest terrain that covers the majority of Africa, this tiny landlocked principality in the south of the Dark Continent is exactly that. Bordered on the south by the Drakensberg Range and in the north by the Maluti Mountains, a large percentage of Lesotho’s land area lies a few thousand meters above sea level. During the winter months, huge cold fronts march across Southern Africa, and the Lesotho highlands are transformed into a winter wonderland.

But there is more to boarding in Africa than just Lesotho. In fact, over the past decade the scene has grown considerably, and other riding locations have been uncovered in the region. Southern Africa may not provide the multitude of runs that Europe and the States do, or the amazing mix of obstacles in their snow parts, but for the small population of dedicated riders that call this land home, any snow is enough snow. Committed, passionate, and quite frankly desperate is the best way to describe this crew totally in love with snowboarding yet tormented with only a mere two feet of natural snowfall a year. (If we’re lucky!)

Snow sports first gained popularity about ten years ago, when South Africans woke up to the fact that Lesotho regularly receives decent dumps and started trekking into the tiny country to get their snow fix. Around the same time, Tiffendell, South Africa’s lone ski resort, opened. Suddenly, there was an actual scene, and from there, well, it all kinda snowballed. Every mountain group was being explored and monitored for possible slopes, and before long, snowboarders could be found in the Matroosberg and Cedar Mountains of the Western Cape, Sani Pass and Black Mountain in KwaZulu-Natal, and eventually even hitting street spots in Johannesburg with man-made snow.

Being an African snowboarder isn’t easy. Most of the spots are incredibly remote and require nightmarish four-by-fouring expeditions to get to. Accommodations are often rural mud huts or rustic, dilapidated shacks. At Oxbow in Lesotho, the lift is a Nissan car engine rigged up inside a trailer. Each day the owner tows the lift to the slope, rides down as far as the rope will allow, secures a pole with another wheel in the snow, and voila!—a lift. At most of the other spots, a long torturous walk back up the slope after each run is the norm. Lovely. So, while the rest of the world looks to South Africa for diamonds of the usual sort, the shredders of this region are content to mine the area’s black diamonds, flawed as they may be and save “de beers” for après.