Hanging Valleys Pass

I also wanted to ask, in terms of location, is the grassy ramp on the extreme right Manxome Pass?

Biomech wrote: I also wanted to ask, in terms of location, is the grassy ramp on the extreme right Manxome Pass?

Yes - this photo shows it better, with Pins Pass to the right (partly around the corner).

Since reading AndrewP’s write up on Hanging Valleys Pass, I had been interested to try it, and planned to do it in 2018, but the weather didn’t play along on that occasion. 

Vivo101 has also done a very good write up of Hanging Valleys Pass in the Mini Hiking Reports topic, it’s on page 46 of the thread on 28 August 2020, and this reminded me that I still needed to do Hanging Valleys Pass, although I now had a bit of uncertainty about the pass, and decided to try to get a better look at it before I try to do it. Last year, 2022, I managed to look at it when I descended Mnweni Buttress Pass; from the top of Hanging Valleys Pass I could look down, during the descent of Mnweni Buttress Pass good views of Hanging Valleys Pass are visible, and at the bottom the stream coming from Hanging Valleys Pass is visible. My mind was made up, when I come to Mnweni again, I will do Hanging Valleys Pass. 

So in June, with excellent weather and hardly any snow having fallen so far this winter, I was at Mnweni to do a solo ascent of Hanging Valleys Pass, and after walking in from the Cultural Centre I tented upstream of ChiChi Bush camp near the bottom of Manxome Pass. The next morning I headed into the cutback, past the bottom of Manxome Pass which I planned to descend after my ascent, and followed the Mnweni River to the bottom of Mnweni Buttress Pass. At the waterfall where the gully coming down from Mnweni Buttress Pass joins the Mnweni, I could see the chockstone mentioned in the other write ups, a prominent landmark near the bottom of Hanging Valleys Pass. It is just to the right of the centre of the photo below, and at the centre of the photo is another chockstone, which isn’t mentioned in the previous write ups, and I believe is a result of the flooding in the last few years. Both these chockstones required quite dodgy scrambles to get around on the left (true right), some exposure with poor holds, the footholds in places just being patches of mud on the sloping rock below.  

 

On my 2022 descent of Mnweni Buttress Pass, and again at the start of Hanging Valleys Pass, I failed to see the large boulders with the hole underneath mentioned in AndrewP’s post, even though I was specifically looking out for this, and could clearly remember going through the hole underneath the boulders when we descended the Mnweni cutback in 2018. It is clear to me that the river has changed after the flooding, and this was also borne out by the lack of bush in the riverbeds. Although the terrain adjacent to the rivers was very bushy, the river beds were totally clear of bush, and easy to negotiate, and I just followed the riverbed, without having to avoid bush and do the climb up the bushy slope and downclimb back into the valley that AndrewP describes. The photo below is a view upstream from just above the chockstone, showing the bushy terrain, but the river bed devoid of bush.  

 

Heading upstream, I soon went through a narrow gorge, keeping to the boulder bed.  

 

A bit further on, the first scramble at a waterfall presented itself (the first of many), shown in the photo below. I went up onto the big rock, and then around on the rock side on the left (true right). It would have been possible to scramble up the waterfall, but the risk of the rocks being loose and coming out was just too high and unnecessary to take so early on the pass.  

 

A view up Hanging Valleys Pass.  

 

A view back down the lower section of the pass with an interesting iced over pool in a rock.  

 

Another waterfall scramble, again with the rock slope on the left to easily get around the waterfall, which would prove to be typical of many of the waterfall scrambles.  

 

The views across to Mnweni Buttress Pass were spectacular, even with Mnweni Buttress Pass in the shade, and were just as impressive as the views of Hanging Valleys Pass from Mnweni Buttress Pass.
 

Soon I had my first view of the notorious chockstone waterfall, which required using the exposed grass slopes on the right (true left) to bypass it. I was quite surprised at how high up the pass this was, at just under 2900 m, as I had expected it to be lower down, just an impression I had from the other write ups. In the photo below, the chockstone waterfall can be seen in the background, with another scramble in the foreground.  

 

I took a morning break below the chockstone waterfall, at a suitable point to exit the main gully onto the grass slope on the right (true left) of the waterfall. The photo below shows the view down the grass slope, with the exposed drop off into the gully, and the steep slope.  

 

A view up the grass slope.  

 

I only had one ‘chimney’ climb on the grass slopes, then I got back into the main gully. Looking up, the scrambles in the gully looked no worse than many I had already done, so I chose to go back into the main gully, I suspect a bit lower than AndrewP and vivo101’s groups had. The photo below shows the place where I got back into the main gully, with another scramble on boulders immediately ahead.  

 

A view back down the pass from above the chockstone waterfall and above where I got back into the main gully.  

 

Higher up there were a few more boulder scrambles, and just below where the final grass slope started there was a lot of ice from seepage down the cliffs on the sides of the gully.  

 

A short grass slope led to the top of Hanging Valleys Pass, with the view down from the top of the pass in the photo below.  

 

I was very relieved to be up the pass with no unexpected issues, and although I had brought a rope with to haul my pack if necessary, I ended up not taking my pack off at all (except when I took my morning break), and this pass certainly lives up to it’s reputation of one of the hardest berg passes. Some of the scrambles were tough, many people may consider them climbs and not scrambles, and there were many scrambles on the pass, but my lasting impression is that the scrambles to bypass the chockstones right at the bottom of the pass were the dodgiest. It was also good to be in the sun after what seemed like an age in the shade, although I hadn’t felt cold. I enjoyed a few moments celebrating completing Hanging Valleys Pass, and also completing all of the known passes at Mnweni, taking some summit photos with Mnweni Buttress Pass in the background, although it was hardly visible in the shade. In the photo below the peak on the left is Mnweni Outer Buttress, the 3024 m peak on the hiking maps, with Mnweni Buttress Pass in the shade to the right, and the peak on the left is Mnweni Buttress, with part of the Rockeries and North Saddle in the background.  

 

Although it was just after 11 o’clock, I had an early lunch near the top of the pass because there was a pool of water there in the trickle that was forming the ice near the top of the pass, to save carrying some water, as the rest of my afternoon route would have no water until I got back down to the Mnweni River at the bottom of Manxome Pass. After lunch, it was up to the top of the ridge out of the Hanging Valleys area to the ‘highway’ path, which I followed for a while, then I went past the top of Pins Pass and down Manxome Pass. 

Special thanks to AndrewP, Stijn and vivo101 for their write ups, photos and information which assisted me tremendously with my ascent of Hanging Valleys Pass. As vivo101 said in his write up, it made a huge difference knowing that this pass does go, and that you won’t be forced to descend all the scrambles you had gone up if you came to a point where you would have to turn back.