We have just been told that, due to unusually heavy rains in the local area and in neighbouring Namibia, water is still running onto the Pan so work on the track is still suspended. If this situation persists, Andy Green and Richard Knight, the Project's Communications Director, will be postponing the visit currently scheduled for 23rd May.
Conditions can change quickly in this environment, however, and we have asked our friends at the Northern Cape government for historic weather information so we can better understand what's going on. We hope to know more next week and will keep you posted.
(Those of you familiar with our previous LSR ventures will know that Richard Noble is something of a rain god, so we should, perhaps, be pleased to be getting this phase of proceedings out of the way early!)
Whatever the outcome, there is, and will be, plenty of work to be done to prepare the track so ample scope for volunteers to go out and get their hands dirty.
We will keep volunteers updated on local conditions and let you know when the desert is dry enough to work on.
To our surprise, Google Earth has been updated the photos of the pan recently as the tar road indicated has never been there before. See the Google map below which is centred on the entrance to Hakskeen Pan. The exact map co-ordinates are 26°45'0.90"S 20°11'7.19"E.
Jules Tipler and Rudi Riek - April 2011
