Rhino Peak Challenge

On World Rhino Day, the 22nd of September 2015, a small group of South Africa’s finest Trail Runners were asked to ascend the iconic Rhino Peak in the Southern Region of the Maloti Drakensberg World Heritage Site.

While establishing new FKT’s (Fastest Known Times) for the Rhino was a partial objective the main focus was to raise awareness, in a unique way, to the plight of Rhinos as well as the other endangered habitant of the Rhino Peak itself, the Bearded Vulture. These two very different creatures are a powerful symbol for South Africa’s threatened species and having these elite runners doing something special on the only Peak over 3000m in the world that resembles a Rhino sent an unprecedented message on behalf of the conservation community.

While the 2015 event was relatively low-key it garnered a significant amount of interest on Social Media and other platforms and it became immediately apparent that the Rhino Peak Challenge had genuine traction and the potential to make a real difference. In light of this it was decided to make the Rhino Peak Challenge an annual event and to elevate its status significantly from 2016 onwards.

This year, on the 22nd September, 12 of South Africa’s top Trail Runners together with 12 influential people from all walks of life have and will be invited to take part in the Rhino Peak Challenge. The plan is to raise, not only awareness, but funds as well through the participation of these 24 people. All 24 will be asked to leverage their own significant Social Media profiles to generate pledges that will be linked to the time it takes them to complete the Rhino Peak Challenge. The pledges will be multiplied by the number of minutes that each of the 24 is under their goal time. The elite runners will have set cut-offs but the 12 ‘VIP’s’ will be able to set their own cut-off times.

In 2015 Johardt van Heerden and AJ Calitz managed an FKT for the Rhino of 2 hrs 45 min and Tracy Zunckel and Su Don-Wauchope pulled off a FKT of 3 hrs 25 min. This year the idea is to set a cut-off of 3 hrs 30 min for the men and 4 hrs for the ladies. Each pledge that every runner receives will be multiplied by the number of minutes they are under the respective cut-off. So for instance, if AJ ran a 2 hrs 45 min again then all his pledges would be multiplied by 45 (minutes).

Each runner and VIP will have their profile uploaded to the website and their pledges will be visible on their own Pledge page.

The Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) is the official beneficiary of the event and all funds raised will be divided on a 50/50 basis between their EWT Sniffer Dog Programme that detects Rhinos and the EWT Bearded Vulture Captive Breeding Programme. The reason that the funds will be divided in this manner is that the Rhino Peak itself is home to some of the last Bearded Vultures in the area and the species is now critically endangered. It is believed that the concept of two threatened species working together to save each other will capture the imagination.