Drakensberg Toughest Peaks, Toughest hikes

ghaznavid wrote: Is there consensus on what the most difficult rock climbing route in the Berg is?

There is a new generation route on Cowl that I would need to look up. But other than that, probably the North Face route on Giants which goes at about 23/A3. Some may be good enough/brave enough to climb grade 23 in the Berg (not me) but its the A3 that would bother me even more. That usually means a series of aid moves, one after each other, none of them being particularly sound.

Given enough time and, dare I say, enough bolts, you'd get up that Bannerman face. But there's so much to do that it isn't necessary to start bolting things. Most people would either rather climb the classics or get on better quality rock elsewhere (e.g. SW Cape)

Please explain what a 23/A3 means, I have an idea of how the other grading system works, but I'm not familiar with this one.

Here is some material from wikipedia on aid route grading....

The A grading scale (A for 'artificial' or 'aid') incorporates difficulty of placing protection, and the danger associated with falling. The original scale was a closed gradation scale from A0-A5, modern aid climbers have adopted "new wave" grading which compresses the scale but still uses A0-A5. A parallel scale of C0-C5 has been used to describe routes which can be climbed clean.[2][3] Clean in this context refers to routes that be completed without a hammer and the associated pitons even if the route still uses previously installed expansion bolts.
A0 Pulling on solid fixed gear.
A1 Easy aid, no risk of any piece of protection pulling out. Safe falls.
A2 Moderate aid. Short sections of tenuous placements above good protection.
A2+ May include easier A3 moves but is not hard enough to be rated as such.
A3 Hard aid. Involves many tenuous placements in a row.
A3+ May include easier A4 moves but is not hard enough to be rated as such.
A4 Runout, complex and time consuming. Many body weight placements.
A4+ May include easier A5 moves but is not hard enough to be rated as such.
A5 Serious, hard aid with huge falls and possibly lethal results. No bolts or rivets.

The trouble with very hard routes in the berg is the complexity of a rescue and the generally sketchy quality of placements (in reverse order as it were).