Hill Training

Depending on how you count, I got between 19 and 23 khulus on Saturday. It is a very strange list, so a story is in order.

To perfectly honest, I had no idea what was possible. I wanted to start at midnight and go for a full 24 hours. I knew it was a matter of “when rather than if” I would get tired on the endless succession of hills.

I started out with an A route – I can do 5km and hour for 24 hours following the gentle valleys and paths of the speed GT route. Knocking off khulus is obviously a lot harder. Lots more up and down, and a distinct lack of paths. I tweaked the route to include 2 significant cutoffs/shortcuts along the way that would allow me to get back if I was going too slowly.

Then those dreaded 4 letter expletives entered the equation: desk and work. I only escaped Jo’burg at 7pm Friday night . I settled for a short sleep and set off at 4am. My plans were completely nuked, so I followed a simple strategy for the day, to go for new peaks and experiences.

As it turned out, the weather was either 100% right or 100% wrong. I was lucky and was above the cloud all day, getting the promised sunshine. Anyone at one of the berg resorts though would have had cloud all day.

I started out by turning west at the chain ladders and heading for the Free State khulus. I have never been here before and was pleasantly surprised. It is a peaceful section of escarpment, has a good number of buttresses and gullies to look at and at this time of year, plenty of streams, pools and waterfalls. The stream immediately west of Tongue is particularly pleasant. As I passed underneath Flat Top, I found a lovely section of path that takes a shortcut below the top of the escarpment in a similar way to the Elephant shortcut further south. I went as far as Namahadi Ridge before turning round. Namahadi Ridge might actually be 2 khulus, 1.2km apart. Flat Top is very well named and I am glad I had no mist while up here trying to find the summit. The summit plateau is enormous. The location of the khulus in the area by my reconing is below. (I am not sure of the sequence of Namahadi Y/Z)




From here, I magically teleported to Pins Buttress. The magic involved 4 hours of hard work and sweat through the Lesotho valleys. The Khubelu valley is lovely. The horses especially were rather skittish so I doubt that many train runners or hikers pass through it. The upper reaches of the valley definitely receive vehicle access as witnessed by a proper jeep track. At this time of the year, kraals are visible from miles away as a patch of very green grass. I could thus dodge them easily but still found plenty of good paths to run on.

While in the Mnweni cutback area, I checked out 2 possible route variations for the speed GT (neither of them will work for me) and grabbed all the khulus in sight. Having bagged everything in the area, I now see that 12 Apostles Spur is only 735m from Cutback Highway. 12 Apostles Spur has no real historical importance, and it does not have a lot of prominence so I feel it should be removed from the khulu list.

Heading up the hill to get to Rwanqa Peak, it became very apparent that I was now very tired and that there are a lot of ridges to grind over to get home. (My initial plans would have done the route in reverse, allowing for a much easier trip home) As I passed over Rat Hole Peak, I fortunately entered mist. I know approximately where Mbundini Abbey is, but also know there are several other bumps in the area. Not being able to see properly gave me a good excuse to skip one hill. The mist typically cleared half way up towards Stimela Peak so I had no excuse to not skirt off to the side to get Mbundini Buttress. I bagged Stimela Peak and then lost a good 10 minutes by trying to go too steeply down the other side only to hit a very long cliff band.

Caboose was clearly going to take more than the 12 minutes I needed a few weeks ago, so with approaching darkness I gave that a skip as well. I went out of my way though (not much, lets be honest) to get Icidi Buttress. With fatigue well set in, I tried hard to break my nose while scrambling up the final rockband, but somehow escaped unharmed.

I stopped for only my second sit down rest all day on the slopes of Icidi Crown. I could see my way through the rock bands up the Ifidi Ridge and used the last few minutes of light to put on some warm clothes, eat some munchies and get out my headlamp.

Once darkness set in, I got very lazy and despite passing very close to several Khulus, I stopped Khulu bagging. I made it back to the carpark just before midnight for a time of 19h51. I covered just over 85km, and got in about 4600m altitude gain. 13 of the khulus below are khulus I have not previously summitted, so it was a pretty good day out.

Khulu List in the order I bagged them
1. Long Buttress
2. Namahadi Pass Peak
3. Namahadi Z
4. Namahadi Y
5. Tonque
6. Namahadi Ridge A
7. Namahadi Ridge B (* are they both khulus)
8. Namahadi Peak
9. Flat Top
10. Pins Buttress
11. Mnweni cutback
12. Cutback Highway
13. Mnweni Buttress
14. Sur Twelve Apostles (* This is actually only 735m from Cutback Highway)
15. Black and Tan Wall
16. Rwanqa
17. Rwanqa Spear
18. Rat Hole Peak
19. Mbundini Buttress
20. Stimela peak
21. Stimela ridge(* not really a khulu, as the ridge keeps having higher and higher points on it)
22. Icidi Buttress
23. Ampitheatre (* not really a khulu, not enough of a saddle between it and Crows Nest)

Very impressive Andrew, thanks for sharing

Man, that's a big day out! Well done Andrew.

I can only shake my head in absolute awe......well done Andrew

my legs hurt just reading this thread ... you guys are crazy

85km's with 20+ ascents......in less than a day...I wanted to say good going but that will do unjustice to it.

Think my longest day in the Berg was around 48km (also just with day pack) and around 35km with multi day pack. I remember the 35km with multi day pack being particular hell (did include a good number of high khulu's around Central Berg/Injasuthi, but nowhere near these numbers above).

But 85km, nee nee nie vir my nie.

Andrew! Respect!!

For about a decade, I have been thinking to myself that if it is possible to do the Mnweni Marathon in under 6 hours, then surely you can do a bit more. Most people can see straight away that this is just silly. I somehow got hooked to the idea.

The idea took various shapes and forms, one of which even became: "how many passes can you do in 24 hours?" Answer - you really do not want to know. Strangely though, in all of this, one thing has remained constant. I am going to do this properly in the Mnweni area.

I decided to head up Mbundini Pass and down Rwanqwa. I have not done either, but figured they would be suitably long and demanding. At that point I would make a call, and either try sneak in Pins/Manxome, neither of which I have done before, or I would "cheat" by getting onto the Mnweni/Rockeries route I know so well.

I set off from the visitor center at 5am with low cloud above. I broke through the cloud midway up Mbundini Pass, so at least got a decent view of it. I started up the ridge from the Fangs river junction, following that all the way up to the rock band and then contoured all the way into the valley itself (to collect the water I had not collected 300m earlier) and then boulder hopped a long way to the summit.

Once on the escarpment, I used the break in the weather to finally bag Mbundini Abbey. This is the northern most khulu I had not yet bagged, so was grateful for the opportunity. I also found Rat Hole cave. Now that Ghaz and Hobbit are well on their way into their GT, it is safe to say that I left a Christmas cake for them.

The rivers on the escarpment there are rather dry so I needed to take a fairly big detour to collect water.

Rwanqwa Pass turned out to be quicker and easier than expected. It took me 3 tries to get onto the correct ledge to traverse along to reach the ridge to descend. Once I was on the ridge though, I could run all the way down into the river bed, where I found the path easily enough and followed that all the way to the Mnweni river. It took 81 minutes to get from escarpment down to the patch of trees where you join the path heading up Mnweni!

By now the sun was out in full force, so I took it relatively slowly up the Mnweni valley until I found a waterfall and pool for a swim. That swallowed me for a good 30 minutes and by the time I emerged, my motivation to hack my way up Pins Pass had vanished.

So, I did Mnweni Pass instead, which considering it was now early afternoon and in direct and hot sunshine was maybe not so clever. I went down Rockeries Pass really quickly and was pleasantly surprised that my knees did not cave in. In fact, my legs held out for a time of 2h20 min from summit to visitor center, which is about a 6 hr Mnweni Marathon pace.

Will I try do 4 passes in a day again? Definitely. But not next week

Andrew you beast!

In case any newcomers to this forum interpret Andrew's easy-going writing style to mean that 4 Mnweni Passes in 12 hours is a fair doddle... please get a second opinion!!