Hitting The Wall

Trekking the Namib Desert - Oct 2014

By Johnny Graham

May 16^th, 2017

It’s cold, and my choice of a thin layer shirt is ingrained by a mix of sea-spray & sand being applied by a head-on gale more reminiscent of a Scottish Winter.

This would normally not be a problem for a Scotsman... but I am in the African desert whose very name translates into 'Vast Place' and we have already made our first mistake.

The Desert can kill you in a day we were told before embarking on the trek

It's only the first day and I am already looking for a towel to throw in and it's only the first dune we are traversing. The Namib Desert is the world's oldest desert and its sand has taken full advantage of this time to produce the finest grains. This means soft sand... which means every step you take is a game of one step forward, a few steps back. This is exacerbated by us ridge walking and the exposed but marginally firmer back-slope being an 100 metres steep drop into the rolling angry surf of the South Atlantic.

Langewand, Namib-Naukluft National Park, Namibia.

Trekking the the first dune, Namib-Naukluft National Park, Namibia.

To make matters worse when it's my turn to follow the ridge past the peak I am then presented by the grueling sight of an endless series of serrated dune ridges fading into the distance of the coastline, for we are on an area of the Namib's Skeleton Coast called Langewand that translates as Long Wall. It lives up to its name. Oh did I forget to mention the Namib has some of the World's tallest dunes, the 100 metres dunes we are trekking are the babies of the Namib. The mistake: we've chosen to make the traverse coinciding with high tide and so the easy coastal route is cut off and we're having to trek some of the toughest terrain we'll encounter on our five day trek midway through day one.

It’s the cliche baptism of fire.

Rewind a year and after a bereavement of a close friend and a promise to follow my passion and take my photography abroad on adventure a chance encounter with an old friend throws the interesting proposition of going on a 100 mile trek in the Namib Desert to raise funds and awareness for the Michelle Henderson Cervical Cancer Trust. A charity ran by ex Rangers and Scotland football legend Willie Henderson. I was intrigued, then they told me I could take my camera with me, I was hooked.

Cue a year of fundraising, training and preparing my camera kit and here I was. Two hats on. Trekker and Photographer.

Golden Hour, Namib-Naukluft National Park, Namibia.

Jump forward and after a grueling 10km+ energy sapping frustrating ridge crawl that takes the best part of an entire afternoon we finish just before dark. Tired and defeated we head inland and up yet even higher dunes til we reach camp in the fading light and find out just how cold and quiet a campsite can be in the Namib Desert when 14 trekkers have hit the wall on day 1. Slowly hot food and fire thaws the life back into our aching bodies and after a nights fretful sleep we wake up and restock and pull our sand gaiters back on and find out just how much a cure trekking among arguably the most beautiful dunes in the world can be when the morning mist parts and the golden hour of dawn paints the landscape.

Cue walks over untouched dunes, trekking by massive colonies of cape fur seals and pass the shipwrecks of old tug boats like the Shawnee or giant cargo ships like the Eduard Bohlen so surreal and out of place a mile inland it might as well be dragons bones and now home only to jackals and hyenas. The next 4 days are tough and we had many more battles both as a group and personal to overcome but none of those four days where ever quite as bad as that epic first day when we literally hit the wall, the Long Wall. With hindsight the most amazing introduction we could of had to the Namib.