Epic Day Hikes

ghaznavid wrote: We bagged Walkers Pass Peak (3091m, 51m prominence) – Mike’s 99th khulu

Correction/update: after a recount, it was found that this was actually his 96th. Mike will have to wait till exams are up before he can bag his 100th.

Disclaimer. If it takes me 14 hours to knock off only 44km then maybe it is not a good idea to try this at home. Or alone.

I have wanted to do Hilton Pass for a while now. The way was always always obvious. Do a day trip from the car that includes Injasuti Pass. And, then in December I saw an extra light.

I left the mountain register at 4:17 which got me to Lower Injasuti Cave by 6. Boulder hopping in the dark is not fun but not really much worse than daytime. Either way it is hard work and you get lost in the bushes. I even pulled out gaitors for a while.

I will give a more complete account of the pass in the proper pass writeup but I climbed through one iced up waterfall and dodged another by some conventional rock climbing.

I spent a short time on top and then started a never ending boulder hop down Injasuti Pass. I reached the split to Leslies by midday. With all that time left I could now get down to business.

So I made my way up Ape Pass. Not the one north of Ape as listed on this forum but the one south if Ape as shown in the gov.survey maps. It is rather tricky and i got lost once. Mist at the critical height of 2800m also blocked a view of which gully to actually take.

I crawled to the summit about 14:30 and decided enough of the silliness. I ambled across to Leslies for the easy way out, returning to camp for a trip of just under 14 hours

Could only be AndrewP who would do something like that

I doubt many other people (if any) on this forum have done 4 different proper passes on the same day. But, just a heads up - if you haven't done 6 in a day by late September, Hobbit and myself may have a go at beating you to it *

* yes, Langalibalele, both Hlubis and the 3 Jardings are in fact proper passes

Myself and Hobbit set out with a rather ambitious goal on Friday night - basically 90km in 30 hours - and ended up bailing due to fatigue and difficulties navigating through the snow in the dark. I'm not going to bother with a proper hike report, but seeing as it is part of our prep for the back to back GT's, here's a very brief summary. My 12^th and 13^th time doing Langies, and Mike's 10^th and 11^th.

We left the car park at 5:03PM on Friday
On top of Langies at 8:02PM (pb for both of us, 2h faster than our previous best)
9:30 top of Sanqebethu ridge
10:30 Mike was struggling to stay awake and we agreed to bail - also lots of snow around, mostly solid and difficult to walk over - this made navigation tricky (note that it was new moon)
11:30 100m vertically down Bannerman Pass we hit a massive ice block and realised we couldn't get down it safely and had to go back up
Midnight: a barely awake Hobbit slips and cuts his leg quite badly on ice. Trying to get to him to help with first aid, I take a 6m slide across about a 10 degree slope on ice, amazing how quickly you accelerate! Hits cuts were long but not deep, and a few plasters do the trick.
1:15AM we reached Bannerman Cave
8:00 we finally got up and spent the next few hours chilling in the sun
11:25 we left the top via Langies
12:58 while jogging a flat bit just past the Giants Ridge turnoff, a rock rolls under my foot, it isn't particularly sore so we keep going
1:16 we hit the car park (pb for both of us: 1h51 vs previous of about 3h
6:45PM as I get home I realise that I must have sprained my ankle. I applied lots of ice, and it is still sore today, but not badly and I can walk on it again (last night I couldn't).

A lot of lessons learned, and our plan for the 4 day GT in December is back to the drawing board. Our pace is getting to where it needs to be, but our strategy of 2X35h sections with a 10h break in the middle won't work. Now to up our fitness to pull this off...

The Watered Garden

Since completing the khulus around the Chain Ladders, I have been left with the task of banging some widely spaced khulus. Some rather optimistic trips have resulted in no progress on this front, and thus my final 8 continued to remain unbagged.

The three easiest and closest khulus I had left were Random Peak, Verkyker Buttress and Verkyker Pass Peak. The first two had been added to the list by myself many years ago, and Andrew had since audited them and suggested that they will come off the next list, the latter was added by him. But a peak being on a list isn’t the only reason to do it, so a hike takes shape…

On Saturday morning at 5:27AM, in some light drizzle, Mike and I left off from Hermitwood Campsite at Garden Castle. The walk to Pilar Cave was very wet and cold, but otherwise uneventful. The river was very low. We hit the cave in 1h01, so not a bad start.

After a short break in the cave, we continued along. We were between two layers of mist, but found ourselves back in the mist low down on the pass.

Our progress up the pass was reasonably slow, you can’t motor up Mashai Pass like you can up Langies (well, I can’t). Mist doesn’t help either. So at 9:07AM, 3h40 into the hike, we found ourselves leaving the mist and entering a moderate wind on the escarpment. Rhino was entirely in the mist, but the peaks we had our eyes on were in the sun.

We had planned to knock off the peaks and then head south to some 3400m peaks, but the wet start had resulted in some chronic apathy. This at least meant we had time to chill and enjoy being above the mist.

By 10:15 we had Random Peak, with some spectacular views of Wilsons Peak and the free standers below it. With 39m prominence, this peak is actually more prominent than the likes of Trojan Wall, and has a great view. It is worth the effort.

From here we headed down to a bone dry river behind Rhino, but fortunately found some flowing water flowing down from Verkyker Buttress. This peak had been added to the khulu list on the grounds that you can’t reach it from any nearby khulu with less than 1km of walking. The views were great, including that spire that John Hone wrote about in his book, but I rate the best view would be towards Rhino, and that was completely hidden in the mist.

We proceeded up Verkyker, taking a norther breach that I haven’t used before, and bagged the khulu at midday. The view was, once again, quite well obscured by the mist, and the wind was picking up. There was also a massive storm on the way. Around this time, Mike decided that he wanted to head home early. This meant we needed to get back to the car park by 3:40PM to pay for our permits. This resulted in a significantly shorter lunch break.

We shot up Verkyker Pass Peak, agreeing with Andrew’s reading of 50m prominence. Somehow the peak felt smaller than it was, perhaps the running is paying off.

From here we motored back over the Verkyker Ridge – funny, seeing as we were at the top of Verkyker Pass, which neither of us had done. But doing a pass without a trail or GPS track, in the mist and knowing the walkout from the base – this wasn’t the time to do it.

At 1:31PM we found ourselves enjoying the rainbows at the top of Mashai Pass. Rhino was still hidden in the mist. We knew it would be cold and wet once we get off the top, so Mike put his raincoat on, although we were both about to learn that leaving our fleeces off was a bad idea!

I think a meme best sums up the next bit:


We still got down the pass pretty quickly, with the occasional slips and falls along the way. We passed Pillar Annex Cave at 2:46PM – but knew it would be an uphill battle (downhill battle?) to get from here to the camp that quickly.

We continued to up our pace, and at 3:15, about 1.5km from the finish, I allowed Mike to run ahead to pay for our permits. At 3:39PM, I reached the campsite, cold and wet – but finishing a hike knowing that you have bagged every non-technical khulu in the Southern Berg, at least it was a case of “objective achieved”.

Final stats per my GPS:
Distance: 27km
Altitude gain: 1851m
Average moving pace: 3.5km/h

Going for a picture report again - but the short summary: myself and Michael R (not to be confused with Mike/Hobbit) went up Giants Pass Peak and Giants Castle via Giants Pass yesterday. I also hit the non-khulu Sur the Gable - which is the easternmost point on the Drakensberg Escarpment.