In 1971 I was involved in the survey for the southern Africa Lesotho Highlands Water Project, a scheme to build a hydro-electric dam (the Katse Dam) in the Maluti Mountains on the headwaters of what, in South Africa, becomes the Orange River. Others dams were to follow.
Part of the job was to construct an airstrip up in the mountains, at 7,200 feet altitude at a place called Pelaneng; by the junction of the Pelaneng and Malibamatso Rivers.
Two bulldozers were used to level the headland to create the runway, and a hundred or so cattle to compact the soil. Land-Rovers towing the overturned abandoned load-bed of a long gone lorry smoothed the trampled earth, and made it suitable for Lesotho Airways Cessna 206s to land and take off. An attempt to use a team of cattle harnessed to the load-bed failed because the animals were not used to working together.
It was given the identification letters PEL, which it still has. However, since it was built only as part of the surveying stage of the project it has now become defunct and derelict – and replaced by the Katse Dam airstrip near the dam.
Attached are Google Maps aerial views of the airstrip as it now is, and others I took during its construction.
