Mafadi - SA's highest point

I’ve been up to my normal game of randomly looking at mountain stats, and found something interesting about Mafadi - SA’s highest summit, 3451m:

  • It is the 54th highest country high point globally
  • Rather comically, though, Mafadi ranks 168th globally in terms of topographical prominence of country high points, even falling behind Belgium
  • South Africa is only one of 55 countries globally where the highest point is not a mountain by the UIAA definition (at least 1000m high and 7% prominence on height)
  • Only Chile has a higher country high point that doesn’t qualify as a mountain summit - and that is on a technicality, as the highest point of Ojos del Salado is less than 1km away and is roughly 5m higher, but is not on the border. Incidentally, the highest mountain summit in South Africa is Champagne Castle

Ironically enough, Du Toit’s Peak is SA’s most prominent mountain, even though it isn’t particularly high.

*google will provide a more detailed explanation of topographical prominence, but the simple explanation: if sea level rises till that summit is the highest point on its own island, how high would it be. E.g. Kili is already the highest point in Africa, and Africa’s junction with Asia at the Suez Canal is at 0m asl, so no need to raise the sea level to change that, therefore its height is its prominence. To measure Mafadi’s prominence, sea level has to be raised to 3340m before it would be the highest point on its own island, meaning it only has 111m topographical prominence.

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These are the trivia I live for :joy:!!
Du Toits Peak might not be the highest but it sure ain’t an easy one to bag :arrow_right: Du Toits Peak - Hiking South Africa .

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It is funny that Du Toit’s is the most prominent peak in SA - seeing as it isn’t even 2000m. We only have 2 ultras in SA (Seweweekspoort being the other), but it is more than any other country in Southern Africa.

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This post is totally interesting but makes my head hurt at the same time…:joy: