The upcoming hikes thread

More snow predicted for Fri Night and Saturday, so Ships prow may not be a great choice, Intrepid....

After a snowy night at the base of Ships Prow Pass, sharing a campsite with Stijn, there wasn't much response in our tent when the alarm went off at 5 am! A little later I clambered out of our tent, thickly frozen over with snow on the outside and ice on the inside, and surveyed the 5km of boulder bed leading to the pass. The boulders were either covered with snow or with a soapy layer of frost - not good. When my tent mates finally emerged from the frozen tent we sat and debated whether we should still try get up. We were totally up for the long and arduous battle through the thick snow in the pass itself, but the boulders... besides wanting to spare our own ankles, we had promised to bring our young Berg apprentice, Ruan, back home safely. And we really wanted to dry out in the sun a bit. So by the time we were dry and a lot of snow had been burned off the boulders, it was too late to make our way up Ships Prow...we were not up for arriving way after dark. Somewhat disappointed, we set off along the counter path to check out our other objective - Apes Pass. Even steeper, it was totally filled with snow. We made Junction Cave our base and still set out the next morning to make a go of it, leaving most of our gear in the cave. The closer we got to it, the more we again realised we'd probably run out of time. We spotted a ridge and gully system below The Ape which looked more direct and had less snow, and tried to get up that. We landed up on a spectacular knife ridge directly beneath the buttress of The Ape:



A half-meter wide ledge blocked by an Erica bush was the turning point for my friends. I carried on a little further but turned back again because of time and cause I was not convinced there was a guaranteed way up. Again disappointing, but we did get to explore a "forgotten" valley, had some great views and scouted future pine-hacking work to be done in the area. "We will be back..."

It was really fun to see about 5 groups of hikers in the Injisuthi area that had members from this site. Anthony, great chatting to you, and it's great to see you go out hiking with your whole family. Briefly met graemeka who had managed to get up Leslies - well done and please post some pics.

Walked up Giants Ridge on Saturday Morning, it started snowing from about half way up and all the way to the campsite at the bottom of Giants Pass, where we pitched our tent at about lunchtime and took shelter until the next morning. After all the wind and snow overnight, woke up to a stunning morning and set about going up Giants Pass. Got to within 300m of the top where we were forced to turn around by very deep snow drifts on steep terain which just didn't feel safe to cross.So it was back down to the campsite again.

Our orignal plan was up Giants to the Tent and and back down Langilalbele, so the next morning we set off along the contour path to try our luck at Langilalbele Pass (I am sure I have the spelling wrong)
and despite a few icy patches on the path made it up quite easily for a late lunch, a look at the Carbineers grave and all the snow. Spent the night there, temp got down to -7 C, and retuned to Giants camp on Tuesday morning having sort of achieved our goals having done an "extra" pass.

Looks like Witchiwoo didn't quite get the VE logo right, but it was a good try.

PS was nice meeting BergAttie

diverian wrote: Looks like Witchiwoo didn't quite get the VE logo right, but it was a good try.

Well I still got a good laugh out it, thanks! By the way, I saw some of your handy-work on the walk out from Junction Cave yesterday, the pines were definitely dead! To fill everyone else in, diverian and Witchiwoo spent some of their camping holiday at Injisuthi over Easter cutting down pines. Kudos to you!