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History: Soon after one leaves Graaff-Reinet a road turns sharply to the left from the main road to Middelburg. It passes between the mountain and the Van Rhyneveld Pass Dam and goes in a north-westerly direction to Murraysburg and Richmond. Opposite the dam another road turns off to the left and winds steeply to the top of the 600 metre high mountain. Here, quite unexpectedly, one comes upon the Valley of Desolation narved into the mountain.
The Valley is an interesting geological occurrence. The rocks in the vicinity of Graaff-Reinet belong to the Beaufort Series of the Karoo System. The Karoo System consists of a succession of sediments, mainly sandstones, mudstones and shales with many intrusions of dykes and sills of Karoo dolerite or ironstone. The sills are mostly horizontal and concordant with the sediments, while the dykes cut across them and are usually more or less vertical. The age of these rocks is about 200 million years.
In the Valley of Desolation one of these sills is exposed in spectacular fashion. The dolerite is characterised by cracks and seams and often assumes a columnar form. Weathering takes place more rapidly along the lines of weakness than in the solid rock, resulting in the formation of impressive cliffs, clefts and rock pinnacles.
The dolerite weathers much more slowly than the sedimentary rocks. This results in the formation of erosion relicts in the form of flat-topped ‘table mountains’ and sharp-pointed conical koppies. Spandau Kop just below the Valley is a good example of such a conical hill.
The Valley is not only of geological, but also of botanical interest. The kloof on both sides of the road abounds in ‘spekboom’ or ‘elephant’s food’ (Portulacaria afi-a); between them one sees the darker foliage of the ‘berg pruim’ (Pappea capensis) and the light bluish-green of the cabbage trees (Cussonia sp.). Succulents like the monocotyledon are common.
As one ascends the kloof the ‘spekbome’ disappear and are replaced by Karoo bush and other shrubs. On top of the mountain where it is rocky, a considerable number of fore-runners of temperate forest types occur. On the otherwise barren cliff of the escarpment a few small types of succulents and an occasional fern may be seen. From these heights the visitor has a panoramic view over the wide plains, but the raw scars of erosion on the slopes and in the valleys below where the grass and vegetation once flourished give rise to concern.
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