Maps

Slingsby Map 1

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The maps you see above were the copyright of the Department of Forestry, which no longer exists. The maps have been discontinued and are therefore out of print. They have been made available in their electronic form on this website with the enthusiastic approval of their cartographer, Peter Slingsby. They have a few blemishes because they were scanned from used hard-copy originals. You can download them to your smart phone, PC or laptop, then view them using your favourite image browser. Their very high resolution allows you to zoom in to see more detail.

Peter recently completed a major project to produce new WGS 84 GPS-compatible maps for the Natal Drakensberg. They are of a similar format to his original ones, being double-sided, and are now available in-store and online. They are fully up to date, having benefitted from the contributions of many Drakensberg hiking enthusiasts, as well as Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife. They include QR codes for direct, on-the-fly access to additional information. Furthermore, the maps are available in digital form as .jpg files for downloading directly to your smart phone, PC or laptop.

The alternative GPS-compatible (Cape datum) maps produced for Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife may still be available at major entry points in the Natal Drakensberg and also from leading outdoor stores in South Africa. However, they have been out of print for some while and are becoming quite scarce. These maps are single-sided, with tourist information on the reverse side, so there are six of them in total versus only three for either of the Slingsby series.

Landlubbers Adventures prefers both the old and new Slingsby maps to the Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife ones because the latter still have more errors than the original Slingsby maps despite several revisions, their colouration makes them more difficult to read than both the old and new Slingsby maps, and they are only single-sided. Novice GPS navigators may also be misled by their use of the Cape datum instead of the now standard WGS 84 datum.

 

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