The first day on the Krakadouw Pass is brutally hot; Erin and I have not yet acclimatised and our packs are heavy. The path follows the course of a stream before ascending the eastern flanks of the kloof. The incline is moderate, but the heat relentless. 
Close to the start of the trail on a vantage point with views up and down the pass we come across
the remains of an Anglo-Boer War blockhouse. Erin disappears through a breach in the walls – she’s an archaeologist, and her first impulse is to search for artefacts.
At the start of the 20th century, Boer commandos led by the likes of Jan Smuts infiltrated deep into British-held territory in the Cape, through passes such as this one. The British built these remote blockhouses as their first line of defence.
Standing beside the ruins, I think of the contrast between my modern, lightweight hiking gear and the Boers’ Mausers and heavy bandoliers. Whereas we’re carrying balanced meals rich in protein and carbohydrates, as well as hydration bladders and titanium sporks, they ate whatever they could shoot, plunder or scavenge from the veld. 
By late afternoon we reach the head of the pass, Krakadouw Poort. Beyond the crest of the saddle a sandy track winds seductively into a realm of rock and cedar. The air is filled with the burbling chatter of European bee-eaters; their bellies flash aquamarine as they catch insects in mid-flight.
About 4 km on we pitch the tent beneath a waboom and set off to fetch water from the Heuningvlei stream. There’s a pleasant ache in our limbs from the hard day behind us. 
To the east, over the Karoo, lightning flashes from a steelgrey sky, and all night long the tent is buffeted by the downdrafts of thunderstorms chasing to the north.

Mist rises through the Krakadouw Poort as we set out early in the morning. To the north and east, jagged eruptions of rock break the surface of the hills. Among these rock outcrops are living cedar
trees, some of which are close to 1000 years old.
We reach the Boontjieskloof Hut below Klein Koupoort by lunch time and spend the rest of the day reading and listening to the wind rustling in the reeds as clouds drift past the open doorway. Thunderheads continue to prowl the Tanqua Karoo and they flush pink as evening falls. 
The Cederberg has long been a place of refuge. In its folds are unique rural communities that evolved out of the cultural mélange of missionaries, indigenous peoples and slave fugitives that originally settled here. 
In the morning, Erin and I set off in the direction of one such settlement, Wupperthal, via the satellite communities of Grasvlei, Agtervlei and Kleinvei, each of which is no more than a handful of
dwellings with plots of vegetables and rooibos. 
Our lunch stop is on a causeway over the Dassieboskloof River just past Kleinvlei. A ramshackle cart drawn by two white ponies and two russet donkeys rattles past. The four men on board, clearly in the Christmas spirit, wave and cheer as they lurch across the causeway and disappear in a cloud of dust up the hill on the far bank. 
Alone once more, we watch small cigar-shaped mountain fish (Cape galaxias) feed on insects
drifting in the current and whirligig beetles skittering across the surface.

We descend to Wupperthal under a darkening sky. 
The wind picks up, swaying the bluegums in the main street. The approaching storm lends an air of expectancy to the mission town, which is preparing to celebrate Christmas Eve. From the town hall come the strains of a brass band practising. 
The two women behind the counter in the Mission Store are cashing up and we’re just in time to buy meat for our Christmas Eve braai. 
“Is this your first time in Wupperthal?” asks one of the shop assistants. 
“No,” I reply, “I’ve been here many times before. Do you remember Oom Bard Valentyn and Worgie Meyers?” 
Her eyes light up: “They both passed on many years ago.” 
Worgie was a cantankerous old gentleman who knew how to rob honey from wild bees and read your soul, something frowned upon by the more conservative Wupperthalers. 
Oom Bard used to tell stories of smuggling wine hidden in a bag of chaff over the Kouberg Pass. This was during a time of strictly enforced prohibition, and transgressions like this could result in banishment from the community. 
We check into one of the thatched cottages near the old church for the night. The Palmhuisie has views of Singkop and walls five foot thick. 
At 3.30pm, the stormbreaks and a warm, soaking rain starts to fall. Singkop looks newly washed, a burnt sienna against the white clouds. 
Later, sitting in church, Erin and I listen to the timeless Christmas story that is being told in cities and cathedrals and far-flung villages like these around the world. 
It is dark by the time the service has ended and another storm is sweeping through the valley. A group of children holding candles and singing carols files out of the church. As they pass the Mission Store, a bolt of lightning strikes close enough to illuminate their faces, the bluegums lining the road, the horses grazing in the paddock and the whitewashed cottages against the hillside. 
The children shriek with laughter as they struggle to relight their candles. 
Back at the cottage, our tired bodies are soon lulled to sleep by the sound of more rain on the thatch roof.

It is Christmas Day and a steep climb out of Wupperthal awaits us as we head towards the Skerpioensberg and into the heart of the Cederberg. But first we have to double back 4 km to the settlement of Kleinvlei to pick up the trail. 
Here, a heady fragrance of fresh rooibos and wood smoke lingers on the still air. A lone figure tends a vegetable patch on the commonage and children play in the muddy street. One of the boys pushes a wire car. 
An old man sitting on his porch tells us that these are his grandchildren. I ask him if they will celebrate Christmas in Wupperthal this morning. 
“No, we won’t go into Wupperthal today,” he replies. “We will hold our own klein diensie (small service) later.” Yes, Kleinvlei has a dominee, and its own church. 
Two of the children show us the way to the trailhead behind the graveyard. 
In the late afternoon, after a hard climb, keeping to the ridges above the Dassieboskloof River, we arrive in the Vogelslang Valley at the foot of the Skerpioensberg. 
Our campsite is in the saddle below Turret Ridge. Four klipspringer watch from a cliff. To the southeast, layers of shadow and light drift over nameless sandstone ridges. 
Something wakes me at 4 am. 
The wind has dropped and the moon is out. White swathes of mist have slipped between the  rocks and cedars, muffling all sound. There is movement outside. 
“Listen,” I whisper to Erin. 
There is a dull thud of hooves against sandstone. Clipclop, clipclop – first one the one side, then the other. The klipspringers have surrounded the tent. Every so often one of them emits a sharp nasal alarm cry. Before long they have retreated into the night. As I drift back to sleep I imagine  these hardy antelope in the mountains, silhouetted by mist, fur edged in moonlight.

By morning the mist has lifted and the vast bulk of Sneeukop looms briefly through spiralling columns of vapour. We shoulder our packs and head over the saddle. 
The trail winds over hillsides covered in restios and ericas, and through cold, clear streams. More cedars grow here, contorted into arabesques and leaning at acute angles. 
Everything is bejewelled, glistening with dew, shining in the early morning light. It feels to me as if we’ve stumbled through a portal to the Cederberg’s inner sanctum. 
Near Crystal Pool we see the klipspringer again, momentarily frozen between curiosity and fear.
Engelsmanskloof is the northern gateway to the high Cederberg. From Crystal Pool it is a short, stiff climb to the shale band below Shadow Peak. 
The story goes that a Boer commando passing through Engelsmanskloof was stopped by a lone Englishman without a gun. 
Failing to appreciate the danger he was in, he insisted the Boers turn back. His persistence or foolhardiness must have tested their patience – they shot him. 
At first this incident strikes me as slightly comical, but then on this morning, surrounded by the cedars and watched over by klipspringer, its brutality is suddenly jarring. 
It’s an easy hike to the shale band at the top of the kloof, and we set off at an unhurried pace towards the Sleeppad Hut, where we will sleep tonight. 

Erin is staring across at Tafelberg brooding beneath a layer of heavy cloud. Bars of light sweep across its towering ramparts, which rise sheer and unbroken to the summit. 
“Is this absolutely necessary?” she asks. 
At 1964 m, Tafelberg is the second- highest peak in the Cederberg after Sneeuberg, culminating in a flat-topped parapet bounded by cliffs over 100 m high. At some point in the past a portion of the parapet collapsed, leaving an isolated outcrop on its southern end known as the Spout. I am not expecting the climb to be especially risky, but I too am taken aback at how steep it appears from this angle. 
By late morning we find ourselves at the top of Welbedachtkloof directly below Tafelberg, where a path turns upslope towards Consolation Peak. From here it’s a short walk across a gentle plateau before a final push up a scree slope brings us to Spout Cave. 
Abandoning our packs, we follow the cairns through the jumble of boulders that lie between the Spout and the summit massif itself. 
On the eastern flank of the mountain a giant sandstone obelisk balances on a ledge off the sidewalls. Below us the land drops sharply away towards the Doring River. Beside the obelisk, a steep, boulder-jammed passageway indicates our route to the summit. 
We climb over and slide under the boulders. The head of the passage culminates in a cleft, which we scramble up with the aid of a chain, emerging into a honeycombed rock-world. Blasted by gusts from an easterly wind, it feels as if we are standing on the surface of an asteroid hurtling through  space.

In the morning we tumble off Tafelberg and head down Welbedachtkloof. A fire raged through this kloof in recent months, claiming many cedar trees. 
Earlier, I had asked Ed February, a botanist at the University of Cape Town, what he thought the fate of the cedar might be. 
“The Clanwilliam cedar will probably be extinct by the end of the century,” he’d replied. 
Occurring only above 800 m in these mountains, this tree is not really a cedar at all, but a cypress. Throughout much of the 19th century, cedars were harvested for furniture and building materials (its richly scented wood was much prized for its resistance to rot). By the 1880s only a few trees remained in high, inaccessible places. 
Having survived harvesting, the species now faces new threats. Fires have burnt with unusual intensity in the Cederberg over the past three decades, killing several generations of trees – something Ed thinks may be due to climate change. 
As we walk through Welbedachtkloof, there appears little reason to doubt Ed’s words. All the young trees perished in the fire. It burnt so hot that it shattered shards of rock off the surfaces of boulders. 
René Spamer of Driehoek farm told me that in some cases the cedars had burnt to their roots, with only a hole in the ground marking the place where a living tree once stood. 
Another fire that raged just across the valley was caused when a baboon was electrocuted on overhead power lines. 
By mid-morning we have descended the kloof and crossed the Driehoeks River. We continue at a cracking pace across the valley toward Sneeuberg, our route following the Uitkyk Pass road for some way, where we choke in the dust of a steady stream of cars. 
At Cederhoutkloof we leave the road and are relieved to find ourselves back in the mountains. It is a long, steady climb to Sneeuberg Hut, where we plan to spend the next two nights.

Early in the morning of the second day at the hut I watch the sun’s first rays touching the ridges of Sneeuberg (at 2026 m it is the highest peak in the Cederberg). Somewhere on the uppermost slopes is the snow protea. Even though it’s early in the season (they flower in February), there’s a chance that at least one is in bud. 
The path from the hut towards the Maltese Cross turns off at a steep angle. A stiff two-hour climb brings us to the saddle immediately below the summit. 
Right there in the bowl of the saddle is a snow protea bush – a magnificent specimen, probably 2 m across, bearing giant white flower heads. 
This rare protea is found only on the highest peaks of the Cederberg between roughly 1700 and
1900 m. Like all alpine plant forms it is adapted for high winds and low temperatures. It grows close to the ground, hugging the soil where temperatures can drop well below freezing and snow blankets the mountains in winter. 
From the saddle, it is another hour’s climb to the summit. The climb is a little more challenging than Tafelberg, with a great deal more exposure and requiring some tricky scrambles through
several chimneys. 
The sensation of altitude on the summit is breathtaking. We’re standing more than 1 km higher
than the Driehoeks valley immediately below us and about 2 km higher than the coastal plain to the west. 
The 360-degree view encompasses the Swartland and the Sandveld to the south and east and the ‘Rooi’ Cederberg and Hantam Karoo to the west and north.

By the afternoon, I find myself on a rock outcrop at the foot of Sneeuberg overlooking a field of torch lilies. Male sugarbirds are calling from every stem. Beyond the Maltese Cross, which stands like a dagger stuck in the earth to the hilt, thunderheads build once more over the Karoo. 
Behind us is over 100 km of mountain wilderness. 
Our awareness has been heightened by the discipline invoked through walking, by the need to pare down and shed familiar trappings. Sitting beneath the shade of a tree on a hot day, crossing a river (pausing to glance at the clouds and wonder when the rains might come), white thatched cottages in a mountain stronghold, the resinous scent of pelargonium crushed underfoot, klipspringer calling in the mist, cedars etched against a blue sky – these are the moments that have set the pace of our lives for the past 10 days. 
The following morning we leave the Maltese Cross behind. Grey rhebok, six of them, bound easily up the valley slopes. In the late afternoon we unshoulder our packs for the last time at Kromrivier.