The Roggeveld Mountains (Rye-Veld Mountains) (Afrikaans: Roggeveldberge) is a mountain range situated mainly in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. The range forms the western escarpment of the eponymous Roggeveldplateau, and separates it from the lower lying Tankwa Karoo to the west. Its highest peak is Sneeukrans (1,739 m), situated northwest of Sutherland.
Unmarked on many regional maps, it occupies an extensive but remote part of the Northern Cape, seldom visited by tourists. It extends from the vicinity of Calvinia in the northwest, past Sutherland in the south, where it terminates in the Klein-Roggeveld range. Several road passes ascend the plateau from the south and west. From the south they are the Komsberg Pass, Verlatenkloof, Ouberg Pass[1] at an altitude of 1,404 metres, Gannaga Pass[2] and the Bloukrans Pass which ascends its northern promontory, the Bloukrans Mountain.
The range receives about 200mm of rainfall in an average year, its higher elevations are amongst the coldest places in South Africa, as attested by temperature statistics kept for Sutherland, which is perched on the Roggeveld plateau at 1,500 m.
South Africa occupies the southern tip of Africa, its coastline stretching more than 2,850 kilometres from the desert border with Namibia on the Atlantic (western) coast southwards around the tip of Africa and then northeast to the border with Mozambique on the Indian Ocean. The low-lying coastal zone is narrow for much of that distance, soon giving way to a mountainous escarpment that separates the coast from the high inland plateau. In some places, notably the province of KwaZulu-Natal in the east, a greater distance separates the coast from the escarpment. Although much of the country is classified as semi-arid, it has considerable variation in climate as well as topography. The total land area is 1,220,813 km2 (471,359 sq mi). It has the 23rd largest Exclusive Economic Zone of 1,535,538 km2 (592,875 sq mi).
The Eastern Cape is one of the provinces of South Africa. Its capital is Bhisho, but its two largest cities are East London and Port Elizabeth.
The Northern Cape is the largest and most sparsely populated province of South Africa. It was created in 1994 when the Cape Province was split up. Its capital is Kimberley. It includes the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park, part of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park and an international park shared with Botswana. It also includes the Augrabies Falls and the diamond mining regions in Kimberley and Alexander Bay.
The Anare Mountains are a large group of mainly snow-covered peaks and ridges along the northern coast of Victoria Land, Antarctica. The group is bounded on the north and east by the Pacific Ocean, on the west by Lillie Glacier, and on the south by Robertson Glacier, Ebbe Glacier and Dennistoun Glacier. Kirkby Glacier, 20 miles (32 km) in length, drains the central Anare Mountains and flows northwest to the sea 3 miles (5 km) from Cape North, and just north of Arthurson Bluff, northern Victoria Land. The mountain range is situated on the Pennell Coast, a portion of Antarctica lying between Cape Williams and Cape Adare.
The Karoo is a semi-desert natural region of South Africa. No exact definition of what constitutes the Karoo is available, so its extent is also not precisely defined. The Karoo is partly defined by its topography, geology and climate, and above all, its low rainfall, arid air, cloudless skies, and extremes of heat and cold. The Karoo also hosted a well-preserved ecosystem hundreds of million years ago which is now represented by many fossils.
The Garden Route is a 300-kilometre (190 mi) stretch of the south-eastern coast of South Africa which extends from Witsand in the Western Cape to the border of Tsitsikamma Storms River in the Eastern Cape. The name comes from the verdant and ecologically diverse vegetation encountered here and the numerous estuaries and lakes dotted along the coast. It includes towns such as Knysna, Plettenberg Bay, Mossel Bay, Great Brak River, Little Brak River, Wilderness, Sedgefield and Nature's Valley; with George, the Garden Route's largest city and main administrative centre.
Sutherland is a town with about 2,841 inhabitants in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. It lies in the western Roggeveld Mountains in the Karoo.
Tankwa Karoo National Park is a national park in South Africa. The park lies about 70 km due west of Sutherland near the border of the Northern Cape and Western Cape, in one of the most arid regions of South Africa, with areas receiving less than 100 mm of average annual precipitation, moisture-bearing clouds from the Atlantic Ocean being largely stopped by the Cederberg mountains. Other low areas receive little more, as the Roodewerf station with 180 mm of mean annual rainfall. In the hottest areas of the park, the mean maximum temperature in January is 38.9 °C, and in July the mean minimum temperature ranges from about 5 to 7 °C. Before this Park's proclamation, the only protected area of Succulent Karoo was the 2 square kilometre patch of the Gamkaberg Nature Reserve. Succulent Karoo has, together with the Cape Floral Kingdom, been declared a Biodiversity Hotspot by Conservation International.
The Cape Fold Belt is a fold and thrust belt of late Paleozoic age, which affected the sequence of sedimentary rock layers of the Cape Supergroup in the southwestern corner of South Africa. It was originally continuous with the Ventana Mountains near Bahía Blanca in Argentina, the Pensacola Mountains, the Ellsworth Mountains and the Hunter-Bowen orogeny in eastern Australia. The rocks involved are generally sandstones and shales, with the shales persisting in the valley floors while the erosion resistant sandstones form the parallel ranges, the Cape Fold Mountains, which reach a maximum height of 2325 m at Seweweekspoortpiek.
The Great Escarpment is a major topographical feature in Africa that consists of steep slopes from the high central Southern African plateau downward in the direction of the oceans that surround southern Africa on three sides. While it lies predominantly within the borders of South Africa, in the east it extends northward to form the border between Mozambique and Zimbabwe, continuing on beyond the Zambezi River valley to form the Muchinga Escarpment in eastern Zambia. In the west, it extends northward into Namibia and Angola.
The Tsitsikamma mountains form an east-west mountain range located in the Garden Route region of the southern South African coast in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces. Tsitsikamma means 'place of much water' in the Khoekhoe language.
Romulea is a genus of flowering plants in the family Iridaceae, first described as a genus in 1772. It is distributed in Europe, the Mediterranean, the Arabian Peninsula, and Africa.
Explorers Range is a large mountain range in the Bowers Mountains of Victoria Land, Antarctica, extending from Mount Bruce in the north to Carryer Glacier and McLin Glacier in the south. Named by the New Zealand Antarctic Place-Names Committee (NZ-APC) for the northern party of New Zealand Geological Survey Antarctic Expedition (NZGSAE), 1963–64, whose members carried out a topographical and geological survey of the area. The names of several party members are assigned to features in and about this range. All of the geographical features listed below lie situated on the Pennell Coast, a portion of Antarctica lying between Cape Williams and Cape Adare.
Thomas Charles John Bain was a South African road engineer. As a prolific road building pioneer, Bain was responsible for the planning and construction of more than 900 km of roads and mountain passes, many of them still in use today, over a career spanning from 1848 until 1888. These passes through the mountain ranges between the thin coastal plain and the interior of the former Cape Colony in South Africa, played a major role in opening up the vast hinterland of South Africa.
Grootrivier Pass, is situated in the Western Cape province of South Africa on the R102 regional road. The Grootrivier is one of various mountain streams that over millions of years have cut through the coastal plateau towards the sea.
Ouberg Pass, is situated in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, on the regional road R63, between Graaff-Reinet and Murraysburg.
The Bloukrans Pass of the Onder-Bokkeveld region, is located on the R355 road between Ceres and Calvinia, in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. It navigates the lower slopes of the Bloukrans Mountain on its eastern shoulder, and has the Nuwewater se berg on its western side. The Bloukrans Mountain is the northern promontory of the Roggeveld Mountains.
The Roggeveld is a plateau in the Karoo region of the Northern Cape, South Africa. Its name comes from the wild rye once plentiful in the area. The Roggeveld Mountains, west of the plateau in the Northern Cape, are named after it.
The Steenkampsberg is a mountain range situated south of Fraserburg in the Northern Cape, South Africa. It was named for Willem Steenkamp, an early settler in the area. The mountain constitutes a section of the central Nuweveldberge in the Great Escarpment. Its highest point is Salpeterkop, which reaches 1,852 metres, and overlooks the Teekloof Pass. Salpeterkop is composed of prominently inclined sheets of dolerite. The Steenkampsberg and Klipkraal-se-Berg enclose a basin which is drained by the Soutrivier.
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