Khulu Challenge

I thought you crazy hikers and trail runners might like this - www.mountainbackpackers.co.za/description-and-rules.html

It could be done in 6-8 hard weekend hikes.. maybe..

Nice! If I wasn't writing honours I would definately take part, I classify myself as a pass-bagger, peak-bagger and cave-bagger (although I am not that big on cave bagging it is the area I am most successful in)...

Oh, one other thing. Thanks to vertical-endeavour for helping with some of the GPS co-ordinates used for the challenge. We've duly given thanks.

An old thread - but with the climbing honours roll debate, perhaps a list of people who have completed the 3300+m khulus is in order.

For the sake of completeness - John and Christine Pickup won this competition in 2012.

Since then, the following people have completed this challenge:
- Chris Sommer 2014
- Jonathan Newman 2015
- Andrew Porter 2016
- Tony Marshall 2016
- Mike van Wyngaard 2016

There may be others who have completed the list, so if anyone else has done the 26 summits - please let me know.

I'm not sure if anyone else got all the 3300 m peaks in 2012 when John and Christine won the challenge, it might be worth trying to confirm this, as there could be others who also achieved this, just over a longer period.

That's quite an interesting coincidence that Hobbit's first 3300 m peak is also my last outstanding one. And to think how many times I have been past it, within 500 m of the summit.

No one else finished all the peaks during that competition. Two other people had completed several of them but they gave up once the winners had been declared. There was a lot of snow around at that time and some of the peaks were very difficult.

Over the June long weekend Lorinda and tonymarshall ascended Gypaetus Pass and descended Judge Pass, doing several of the khulus nearby, including Sanqebethu, the last 3300 m + khulu I needed to do to complete the Khulu challenge.

Here we are on the summit of Sanqebethu, which didn't have anything high enough to get some background in our photo.


Tony at the summit cairn with a snow clad Mafadi ridge in the background.

List updated above. Mike/Hobbit completed this on 23 December 2016. He is by far the youngest to complete the Khulu Challenge.