Down Van Zyls Pass Towing Trailers and Caravans: Patrol, Cruiser, and Jimny

[DCTheron]

Hi Stan

Good suggestion. Thank you.

Below is the link to our channel where viewers will be able to view all the videos. My brother-in-law will probably be posting more content from the trip in the days to come.


https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr8...cTUT8CcEKFDK_w

Cheers

H

I watched them all last night, loved it thanks a mill for all the effort to edit and post online.

I travelled along, the only part I did not envy you was getting bogged in the riverbed

Looking forward to te remaining videos.

[tjoppie]

Respek en baie ysterballe vir julle met daardie waens agteraan. Ek kan dink dat jy dit nie weer gaan doen nie.

In 2012 is ons met 7 GSe en bystand-4x4 daar deur. Skrikwekkend maar, oooooooo, so lekker.

Foto van die eerste step na die uitkykpunt.

Well done vir daai trip Johan.
Dis ook iets wat ek nog wil doen. 'n GS 1250 deur VZP.

[HKirby]

Hi Stan

Good suggestion. Thank you.

Below is the link to our channel where viewers will be able to view all the videos. My brother-in-law will probably be posting more content from the trip in the days to come.


https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr8...cTUT8CcEKFDK_w

Cheers
H

This is one my other favorite clips of the trip that has been posted this far

https://youtu.be/XNxs82Dr6Ak

This was the longest day where we got seriously stuck 3 times and I lost one of Maxtrax in the Ugab whilst recovering our vehicles. What is not mentioned is that there was a fresh lion kill just up the river from where we got stuck. The flesh on the carcass was still pink.

Beautiful scenery while driving through the reeds. A day we will never forget.

Cheers
H

[Henniev]

Hi Guys. Pretty awesome video. Have done the pass twice but not towing. This pass is not for a novice as things can go wrong easily. As you went through most of the spots came back in memory and and i cannot help longing to go back. Maybe one day. Keep on posting your video is so good to watch.

[HKirby]

Hi Guys. Pretty awesome video. Have done the pass twice but not towing. This pass is not for a novice as things can go wrong easily. As you went through most of the spots came back in memory and and i cannot help longing to go back. Maybe one day. Keep on posting your video is so good to watch.

Thanks Hennie. I've just updated the comments section of the YouTube video to include a statement to clarify why it's not "easy" if someone is not experienced. One of the guys on the Patrol forum pointed out this comment could be misleading to the novice. I guess one forgets of the experience that it takes to become experienced.

[Makro]

I also enjoyed that Van Zyl's video a lot. Have not done it myself yet, and after watching this again, is has moved up a few spaces in my bucket list ! Will skip the towing part though ! Well done on an awesome video ! Looking forward to watching the rest, I have subscribed to you channel as well, to make sure I do not miss any new videos !

[Cats]

WOW !!

Super Cool video to help us all get a bit out of this current Covid19 lockdown blues. Thanks for sharing.

Really make me miss getting out there again, although my current vehicle setup I think wont be suited to this trip. Missing my old Pajero :-(

CATS

[tomthomas]

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[MartinJS]

Uitstekend en op my bucket lys.

[Prune]

Excellent videos, great perspective of Kaokoland. I have done it on a bike and hope to be doing it on four wheels with my wife later this year. She watched your vids with me and said best she has seen to date.

[Johann_4x4]

Hi Hugh, stunning video and I watched all the other content of your trip that is just as good.

Well done!

Cheers
Johann

[Danie Pienaar]

Great video! Thank you for sharing! Van Zyl's is definitely on my post-lockdown bucket list.

[JohanMaree]

Hi Stan.

What I can say is that I will never tow down Van Zyls again now that I've done it. Towing added a lot more stress to the journey and that part where you get pushed down the pass by the trailer was very scary. White knuckle stuff I assure you.

If I remember correctly, the drive from Van Zyl's Camp to the bottom of the pass took us about 4 hours whereas the vehicles behind us who were not towing did it in almost half the time.

This is very true.

But one should take note of the 100-odd kms leading to the Pass (VanZyl's Camp). That took us two days with the bikes and I doubt if it will be much quicker with four wheels. Not forgetting the plenty paint scratches a vehicle will endure.

[Tedx2]

Hi Stan

Good suggestion. Thank you.

Below is the link to our channel where viewers will be able to view all the videos. My brother-in-law will probably be posting more content from the trip in the days to come.


https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr8...cTUT8CcEKFDK_w

Cheers
H

Hi Hugh, wonderful videos, Swambo and I watched all of them earlier this morning and loved them all. We are currently in Australia, the virus interrupted our 2-3 year Southern African tour in our BushLapa Baobab. We travel solo and don't have the 4x4 skills that your family has so are not as adventurous. We did Namibia for 5 weeks last year and had a fantastic trip, your videos bring back many memories, Once the virus threat has passed we will return to pick up where we left off.

I am very keen on still photography, mainly animals, using 2 x Canon 7D MK II with various lenses, but your videos have made me realize we are missing opportunities by not creating additional memories using video. However when we take videos our equipment seems to bounce around far more than your videos do to the point of being not watchable. Please advise what equipment you use (dashcam/Gopro/DSLR) to take your videos, any advise would be greatly appreciated. Thanks John

[OLi4 Chris]

Good Morning All

Last year July the family did a 6500 km round trip from Cape Town up to Epupa Falls and back.

I towed my Conqueror Comfort with my Patrol, my brother-in-law towed his Bushlapa with his Cruiser, and my parents-in-law followed in their Suzuki Jimny.

If you consider the vehicles and the trailer and caravan we towed I'm sure you'd agree that we created a great platform to compare arguably some of the most discussed 4x4 vehicles as well as caravan and trailer brands in South Africa.

Before we did the trip we probably watched all the content we could on YouTube about the trip and specifically the Van Zyl's Pass so in my opinion I believe we have created one of the best quality videos of us descending the pass using various camera angles to view the descent from different sides of the vehicles and get a really good idea of how challenging it is to descend while being pushed down the hill by your caravan or trailer.

Some points about the descent:

- The Conqueror had a busted leaf spring at the time and still made it down without a hitch. You'll notice some squeaking in the video attesting to the broken component.
- I pulled up the handbrake of the Comfort before the descent to help reduce the amount of pushing, but that didnt help that much once the auto-reverse kicked in, which disables the brake. My brother-in-law couldn't use his handbrake on the Bushlapa because it's one of those brakes which is either completely on or off.
- The grinding noise heard from the Bushlapa during the descent is the sounds of the front right corner of the chassis being dragged across the rocks. The difference in distance between the Patrol's rear axle and Comfort vs. the Cruiser rear axle and Bushlapa is 800mm where the Cruiser is longer, which played a significant roll in traversing terrain with severe acute and obtuse angles.
- Both my brother-in-law and I had our feet 100% on the breaks while making the descent at the steepest part despite it looking as if we came down too fast. Brakes and tires dont mean much at all when you've got 1.5T of load pushing you from behind on loose gravel on a rocky surface.

Here is the link to the YouTube video of the event https://youtu.be/_BvpDqax80c

Feel free to take a look at some of the other content of the trip.

Cheers
Hugh

Nice video we also had a great trip last year on VanZyls we passed a green Landcrouzer & a Toyota DCab that rolled down that section with our experiance the most inportant on that section is as slow as possable & tire pressure most important 1-1,2Barr as to get maximum traction as it is quite slipery rocks

[OLi4 Chris]

Time we past there last year the Toyota looks like a Namibia Rental 4x4 still had some parts of tent & aulm steps radiator lying next to viecle the wheels were already taken off hope the inshurance did cover all , still not a nice experiance specially when it could be tourist ‘ allone & longway from home.
We will love to go again but want to do it slower with more sleep overs as to enjoy more senery its wery dry now but still worth going

[HKirby]

Hi Hugh, wonderful videos, Swambo and I watched all of them earlier this morning and loved them all. We are currently in Australia, the virus interrupted our 2-3 year Southern African tour in our BushLapa Baobab. We travel solo and don't have the 4x4 skills that your family has so are not as adventurous. We did Namibia for 5 weeks last year and had a fantastic trip, your videos bring back many memories, Once the virus threat has passed we will return to pick up where we left off.

I am very keen on still photography, mainly animals, using 2 x Canon 7D MK II with various lenses, but your videos have made me realize we are missing opportunities by not creating additional memories using video. However when we take videos our equipment seems to bounce around far more than your videos do to the point of being not watchable. Please advise what equipment you use (dashcam/Gopro/DSLR) to take your videos, any advise would be greatly appreciated. Thanks John

Hi John.

Thanks for the compliments. I'm glad you and your wife enjoyed our content. I gave my brother-in-law my hars drive with my raw content this afternoon so I'm expecting a new release to be made available soon!

We used 2 x Go-Pro 6 and then some footage from my father-in-law's Garmin Dashcam. We also had a Sony and Panasonic handycams but the image processors are so old that the colors look washed out compared to the GoPro quality. I'm very impressed with the image stabilizing capabilities of the GoPro. Those cameras were fixed to the windscreen or roof rack and the stabilized image makes it look like they we mounted to something else other than a car. To make food use of a GoPro I would recommend at least one of those suction cup mounts that you can to mount almost anywhere on your car including inside your windscreen as well as a handheld mounting stick. I've got one of those that float so I can also jump into water with the GoPro if I feel like it or just walk around filming. It's also a good idea to buy one of those GoPro mounts that has a fold away tripod so you can position it and film some drive by shots. We used that on the outside corner of the Van Zyls pass to film while I had the handheld GoPro.

We are probably going to buy 2x GoPro to get some more footage as well as microphones. Maybe a SLR for some good still photography and B footage to use as fillers on the content.

The content creation is all new to us and my brother-in-law is doing a fantastic job at figuring this all out. I'm just the voice and eye candy in the shots :-)

[HKirby]

Time we past there last year the Toyota looks like a Namibia Rental 4x4 still had some parts of tent & aulm steps radiator lying next to viecle the wheels were already taken off hope the inshurance did cover all , still not a nice experiance specially when it could be tourist ‘ allone & longway from home.
We will love to go again but want to do it slower with more sleep overs as to enjoy more senery its wery dry now but still worth going

Hi Chris.

Thanks for pics of the Toyota. I knew I saw something in the Top Gear review of the new Defender.

We were there early July 2019. When did you go? That will help narrow down when the accident happened.

[tjoppie]

Hi Hugh, wonderful videos, Swambo and I watched all of them earlier this morning and loved them all. We are currently in Australia, the virus interrupted our 2-3 year Southern African tour in our BushLapa Baobab. We travel solo and don't have the 4x4 skills that your family has so are not as adventurous. We did Namibia for 5 weeks last year and had a fantastic trip, your videos bring back many memories, Once the virus threat has passed we will return to pick up where we left off.

I am very keen on still photography, mainly animals, using 2 x Canon 7D MK II with various lenses, but your videos have made me realize we are missing opportunities by not creating additional memories using video. However when we take videos our equipment seems to bounce around far more than your videos do to the point of being not watchable. Please advise what equipment you use (dashcam/Gopro/DSLR) to take your videos, any advise would be greatly appreciated. Thanks John

Hi. As Hugh mentioned, the main footage comes from 2 GoPro action cameras. We make sure to enable the stabilization setting on both and have it mounted in a position to capture scenery and vehicle. There were 100Â’s of gigabytes footage that we couldnÂ’t use due to wind noise and voice quality. Some videos we saved by using some video stabilization function on the editing software.

We have learnt a lot during editing and realized that we need a bit more equipment such as microphones and at least 2 additional action cams plus a DSLR or Mirrorless Camera.

We find this very entertaining in our family and canÂ’t wait to start out next tour journey after lockdown in SA.

[OLi4 Chris]

Hi Chris.

Thanks for pics of the Toyota. I knew I saw something in the Top Gear review of the new Defender.

We were there early July 2019. When did you go? That will help narrow down when the accident happened.

We passed down Van Zyls in 19 Nov 2019 last year & as we could check from far as we were already late passing down & didnot want to spend time walking around as we still had to cover another 90km before dark as to setup camp it look as if the accedent was aprox a week before our trip as i think there would have been more stuff stripped down if it was longer