The Magaliesberg mountains offer excellent rock climbing opportunities, spread across its many kloofs and escarpments. The climbing is mostly traditional, with a small number of sport climbing venues and hundreds of routes across a wide range of grades. The relatively mild climate allows year-round climbing.
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Sclater's golden mole is endemic to southern Africa where it is found in South Africa and Lesotho. Its typical habitat is grasslands at high elevation, scrubland and forested kloofs. There are four subspecies, but the range of each is poorly understood, and they are generally delineated by geographical barriers.
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It is native to central South Africa (where one of 35 native ebony species), Lesotho, Swaziland, the Zimbabwean plateau and Eastern Highlands, Angola, Zambia, Malawi and uplands of tropical Africa. It is found in open or thick bush along stream banks, woodland, kloofs, hillsides, open forest, along forest margins and regularly in sheltered rocky places. It is rare in the lowveld where it is limited to rocky areas, or areas of higher rainfall.
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Locally clayey soils occur in association with weathered shale horizons, and in particular the Cederbergformation. Lithosols (Mispah and Glenrosa forms) are dominant on the steep slopes. They are shallow, infertile, acidic and have minimal B-horizon development, with a low water retention capacity. The soil is deeper at the foot of the mountain in kloofs and along the southern aspects where a fairly deep red-yellow sandy to sandy loam soil occurs (Hutton, Clovely and Griffin forms).
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The plant grows on the northern slopes of arid, rocky kloofs (dry ravines) at altitudes of 1,100 to 1,500 metres. It exclusively grows in a fynbos habitat in the wild, in substrates derived from either sandstone or quartzite. The adult specimens of this protea are killed when they are caught in the wildfires which periodically pass through the native habitat, but the seeds can survive such events. Its flowers bloom in Spring, from August to November, with the peak in October.
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The area surrounding the town is mountainous with kloofs, mountain springs, vlei areas, dams, conservation and heritage sites. It is internationally renowned as a "birders paradise". Due to the high occurrence of high priority wetlands and the proximity to the sources of three rivers, the Vaal, Tugela (via Buffalo tributary) and Pongola, it was declared a National Freshwater Ecosystem Priority Area. It is also a protected area under the Protected Areas Act, which means that mining is generally not allowed.
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This tough little creeper is indigenous to the shady afro-montane forests of the Western Cape, South Africa. Here it can be found from the indigenous woods and kloofs of Cape Town, eastwards as far as the Tsitsikamma Mountains. Cultivated in South African gardens, it is a very useful ornamental plant for growing in deep shade. It will climb up any sticks, pillars or trellises that are available, but if there is nothing for it to climb up, it will simply form a thick, feathery groundcover.
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Map showing the location and extent of the Richtersveld World Heritage Site and the Richtersveld National Park. The Richtersveld is a desert landscape characterised by rugged kloofs and high mountains, situated in the north- western corner of South Africa’s Northern Cape province. It is full of changing scenery from flat, sandy, coastal plains, to craggy sharp mountains of volcanic rock and the lushness of the Orange River, which forms the border with neighboring Namibia. The area ranges in altitude from sea level, to at Cornellberg.
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Welgevonden Game Reserve, (Dutch for well found), is in the Waterberg District, of the Limpopo, province of South Africa. Welgevonden Game Reserve, (Dutch for "well found"), is a 38,200ha game reserve in the Waterberg District, of the Limpopo Province of South Africa. It forms part of the Waterberg Biosphere Reserve which was officially declared by UNESCO in 2001 and currently covers an area in excess of . The reserve comprises mountainous terrain that is dissected by deep valleys and kloofs while flat plateaus characterise most hilltops.
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Erosion by these rivers have carved out nearly of spectacular kloofs and crags, covered with subtropical vegetation. In the gorge, the dense forest on the sandstone slopes is home to various small mammals, while the large leguaans excavate their burrows along the riverbanks. At the base of the cliffs of both gorges the basement rocks are part of the Namaqua-Natal Metamorphic Province, which is over 1000 million years old. The cliffs themselves are formed by Msikaba formation sandstones deposited by fluvial environment about 365 million years ago.
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The Afrotemperate Forest is by far the rarest vegetation type at Tokai, and belongs to the Forest Biome. Afrotemperate Forest cannot cope with fire, consequently it is confined to a few fire-safe kloofs at Tokai, minute pockets compared to the larger expanses in Orangekloof and Kirstenbosch. As forests go, Afrotemperate is the richest forest in temperate regions, however, its species richness pales into insignificance compared to Fynbos: barely 20 species of tree occur naturally in these forests. Animals, mainly insects, abound in these forests and their species diversity is extraordinary given their area.
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About 2 billion years ago, a massive upwelling of molten magma resulted in what is now known as the Bushveld Igneous Complex. The enormous weight of this intrusion depressed the sediments that lay beneath and tilted the sediments along the edges so that the broken escarpments faced outward and upward, and the gentler dip slopes inward. During the same period, these sediments were fractured and igneous intrusions of dolerite filled the cracks. With the passage of time these intrusions eroded, especially on the dip slopes, forming deep kloofs or ravines providing rock-climbing potential to modern man.
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Indigenous Afro-temperate forest still survives in sheltered kloofs higher on the mountain slopes The natural ecosystem of the area is Peninsula Granite Fynbos, a critically endangered vegetation type that occurs nowhere else in the world. Mature Peninsula Granite Fynbos is dominated by large tree-Proteas, such as the Silvertree, the Tree Pincushion-Protea and the Waboom, and a dense underlayer of Asteraceous (daisy) species. Interspersed in the fynbos, rocky scree slopes are home to indigenous trees such as Pock-Ironwood, Kiggelaria, Camphor trees, Maurocenia and Candlewood trees. There are a variety of plant species (some already extinct) which are naturally restricted to this specific vegetation type, occurring nowhere else in the world.
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Strychnos usambarensis is a shrub or small tree up to 15m tall or a 70m long liane of Sub-Saharan Africa, occurring in forest and woodland, mountain ravines and coastal bush, often on rocky slopes and named for the Usambara Mountains of Tanzania. The species is found from Guinea east to Nigeria, from Congo east to Kenya and south to kloofs of the Magaliesberg of South Africa. Bantu tribes from Rwanda and Tanzania produce an arrow poison from the root bark and leaves of this species, sometimes combining it with extracts from other plants. (see Toxalbumin) The leaves are opposite, held in a horizontal plane, ovate to elliptic in shape with a characteristic drip-tip, and glossy dark green above.
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The reserve includes a variety of landscapes including slopes, cliffs, crests, kloofs, rivers, wetlands and valleys. Although the area covers a diverse geological area, it consists mainly of the Magaliesberg mountain complex comprising two geological formations: the Transvaal System and the Bushveld Igneous Complex. These formations contain the richest platinum and platinum group minerals in the world and its varied topography hosts 14 different vegetation types. The reserve contains four important habitats: the Moot Plains Bushveld, characterized by open to closed, low and often thorny savannah dominated by various species of Acacia; the Gold Reef Mountain Bushveld, characterized by rocky hills and ridges with more dense woody vegetation; the Northern Afrotemperate Forest, characterized by low, relatively species-poor forests of afromontane origin; and the Marikana Thornveld, characterized by open Acacia karroo woodlands occurring in valleys, slightly undulating plains and some lowland hills.
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