Rwanqa Pass

Thanks mnt_tiska,

Good tip, I will try it out soon. Hope I don't scare everyone with mega steep looking passes.

not to mention mega-steep looking tents (as in Thlanyaku postings!).

If you shoot any steep pass head on it will often look less dramatic. Try shooting it from the left or right hand banks of the pass with some prominent peaks, rock formations and a person or two nearby to give it scale. The other thing is that extreme wide angle lenses will always make distant features tiny. If you can use the 50-60mm range and then shoot a pan of the scene left middle and right and overlap about 20% you can stitch them together and get a scene which is more what you eye sees. If you really want to be extreme, shoot 9 images 3 bottom, middle and top and then stitch will give you both the vertical and horizontal depth of view. Just have a very fast machine and if you have overlapped enough, it should work.

Here is an example of 9 images stitched together from my Cockade 2011 trip using a 70mm focal length. I have added a screen grab at 100% so you can see the level of detail. The final image size is 225megs and 103x54cm in size. The 3rd image is a 17mm wide angle view from about 100m further back. You can see how the mountains are leaning backward and look a little small and insignificant. The red blob at the bottom lhs is our tent.

Serious tribe wrote: If you can use the 50-60mm range and then shoot a pan of the scene left middle and right and overlap about 20% you can stitch them together and get a scene which is more what you eye sees.

the best tip I have come across in more than 10 years. It makes every sense to solve the mess that a wide-angle makes of the landscape yet include the coverage and detail needed.
Presume light related settings (f and shutter) might get difficult in shady/sunny scenes, esp at the 'stitched' edges.

Photoshop, especially the later versions CS4&5 have got very good photomerge functions and blend the images well so there is usually no problem with shadow and light areas as can be seen on the mega9 image merge.

When you are shooting across wide exposure latitudes you should keep fstop and shutter speed constant, however in the areas that are predominately darker, i do slow the shutter speed down a stop or two or open the lens up as well, as long as i don't go below 1/80 sec and f8 it just helps to prevent to much noise build up in the dark areas when post precessing. Rule of thumb if you don't want shaky blurred images, don't shoot a shutter speed any slower than the focal length of your lens. So if you have a 300mm shoot above 300 of a second or else use a tripod and cable release.

You do get fancy tripod heads that allow you to shoot with the nodal point of the lens directly over the point of swivel when shooting pans, but they are not cheap. It does however make stitching with extreme wide angle lenses easier, however it does not remove the problem of small mountains in the b/grnd.

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On the first weekend of 2020, myself and AndrewP day hiked the Mbundini Abbey Spire. We used Rwanqa Pass as our way of getting to the top. Not because it was a logical choice, but because it was the only Geoseries marked pass I had left at Mnweni.

This writeup will be brief as TonyM has already put a lot of detail up.

We set off from the camp at 2:50AM - which was great considering it was a very hot day.

We hit the Nceda River around first light and were well along on the high approach at sunrise. Not a bad spot to watch sunrise from!



The trail up the river towards Rwanqa Pass was easy to follow for the most part, although we did lose it from time to time.



We stopped for water and shade at the bottom of the pass - since there is no water on the pass.



The pass starts with a steep ramp. This includes a rock band that requires a small amount of thought to get up. You could also skip it to the left, but where's the fun in that



At an obvious point (probably less obvious in mist or when going down - but we were going up in perfect (although very hot) conditions.



The traverse is the hardest part of the pass, the rest of it is just steep. On the traverse, you cross a few side gullies and have to pick your line carefully. There was some vegetation, but it is mostly avoidable.



The summit gully is just steep.



We reached the top roughly 8 hours after leaving the Centre, which I still rate is fairly fast for a notorious pass. It wasn't as bad as I expected - it is long and steep, but the views are good.



We got a summit selfie at the top since that was the last pass I needed to complete the Mnweni Challenge - all 10 Geoseries marked passes at Mnweni, a challenge a lot of VE members have completed. With that, I have now done every Geoseries marked KZN High Berg pass baring a cluster of 4 near Sani (Manguan, Ntshinshini, Mqatsheni North and Mqatsheni South).

Full story at this link.

We bravely endeavoured to undertake Rwanqa pass over the long weekend. We also happened to underestimate Rwanqa pass over the long weekend. So I thought I’d add some information on the pass for future enthusiasts of the Mnweni passes. Just a disclaimer on our rookie error. We have done Ifidi pass from the school to the cave at the top within daylight hours. We’ve done Nguza pass in a day after getting a lift and I have also done Fangs in a day from the MCC, so Rwanqa in a day – considering the Slingsby map gave it a 7 rating – seemed like a long, hard day, but doable.We got dropped off on the Mnweni road where the trail leaves the road and hiked the 12km to where the trail turns up in the valley approaching Rwanqa. We started the climb up the ridgeline just after 1 pm, a good lunch and a last swim. Following the descriptions and the GPX track we ascended the ridge to where it wasn’t possible to ascend it anymore. Then we started traversing – until we almost couldn’t traverse anymore. We were still on the GPX track when we encountered a very steep valley that you either had to descend into and lose about 150m of hard-earned elevation or descend 60m and scramble out the other side.    
It was getting dark, so we scrambled out the other side (Although, in hindsight, these 2 options would’ve probably taken the same amount of time). There were no paths or faint trails, only very steep mountainside overgrown with grass and thorny bushes, always tricky to traverse, especially in the fading light. It was a pleasant evening, but moonless and overcast. Once in the gully, we stayed to the left to avoid unnecessary boulder hopping. In daylight, it is obvious that the gully splits at the top and that you should aim towards the right nearing the summit. This wasn’t so obvious in the pitch darkness, so we ended up scrambling up another steep section of rock and grass in the left (south) gully to finally make it to the top 7.5 hours after starting our endeavour.

I would describe Rwanqa as a sometimes near-vertical grass wall with thorns, and maybe my perception was warped by the 2 hours of climbing in absolute darkness, but the terrain doesn’t get better the higher you go. All of that said the view of the Black and Tan wall, the peek of the Pins and waking up the next morning with the sunrise over the Needles was however worth every hour. So I was wondering if you could start your traverse at a lower altitude than the track in the downloads suggests and skip the valley of the shadow of decisions by passing under it. It was difficult to see, but I believe you will still miss the waterfalls if you start your traverse to the gully around the 2550m contour just above the thick rock band.

Hi

Yes, I think we did something like the yellow line. Or that was the option we would have taken if we didn't scramble out the other end of the obstacle in the way. The red line is what I thought would be the better option. We managed to find a path between the Mnweni river junction and the base of the pass at least. But starting the ridge with the bushes and boulders was interesting.