Tseketseke pass

Davidtrickey wrote: We ... took lots of pictures

Looking forward to the writeup with plenty of photos

My attempt at a writeup for our most recent trip Attached.

Hi all
I'm planning to do a 3 day hike up the berg this weekend. the route that we had planned was to go up Tseketseke Pass, Sleep on the escarpment and then hike down organ pipes.
With Mikes pass being closed, what are the options, should we look to hike to the Camp site in Tseketseke pass and then summit on day 2? or should we try to get to the top in 1 day?
we will be parking at the Cathedral peak parking lot. Then going up Via Ribbon falls. I'm just worried that to try do that all in one day might be too much...
if someone has the GPX file for the Tseketseke pass I'd really appreciate if you could please send it to me.
it will be our first multi day hike in the berg for a VERY long time and I'm just worried that I've bitten off too much with the route selection.

thanking you in advance

thanks a million

Going up Tskeketseke pass takes a full day. Doing the entire circular route over three days may be a push. I would recommend doing it over 4 days.

Yeh... 4 days would have been perfect. We certainly bit off more that we could swallow. we realised we where on a hiding to nothing when we reached the campsite at the bottom of Tskekesteke, so we decided to summit on day 1. the first section going over the boulders is hectic on tired legs. We only summited well after 6pm. it didn't help that we got lost with the myriad of other unmarked trails on the way to Tskekesteke.

Day 2 we hiked to Organs and down to Fire Hut. Saving us a shorter day 3.
Just note there is no water from the last drips at the bottom of Organs right through to the old staff accommodation if your cutting back to Mikes Pass.

Total hiking time over 20hours and around 37km. just a little too long for 3 days. If we had taken 4 it would have been perfect.
We did however see Eland, Mountain Reedbuck, Oribi and a whole host of other wildlife.

A team of 8 of us came down Tseke this weekend. AndrewR will do a hike writeup soon I'm sure...

Anyway - my thoughts on the pass are as follows:

The top and bottom sections are easy. 70% of the pass is beautiful and navigation is easy, provided you have a bit of Berg prior experience (i.e. do some trail-less passes before you do this one). The remaining 30% requires careful navigation and has 2 obstacles.

The 2 obstacles are (top to bottom):
- A series of a 3m waterfall followed by a 2m waterfall. Sounds very easy, but the only viable line through the lower falls is directly in the water course. We lowered packs and used a rope and belay (anchored off a large boulder above) as a backup for climbers going down.
- The lower main waterfall, must be about 15m high. From the top I could spot 1 viable line down, but it ends in a deep rock pool. There was a possible traverse to the true right, but when I scouted this, it seemed to get dangerous quite quickly, heavy exposure and slippery scree. We opted for a traverse on the north slope - this plan has worked for me many times before, but on this occasion we ended up being unable to find a ledge to traverse on and ended up doing a dangerous descent onto what ended up being our overnight spot (yes, we finished this dodgy traverse in the dark).

So in summary, my thoughts are as follows:
- Don't take a large group, it will take too long to get through the obstacles
- Only use this as an ascent route, unless you are sure you know what you are doing, I'm sure there was an easy way to climb the lower waterfall, but we couldn't pick it from above
- The trails in the pass are mostly pre-washaway, so they often lead to big drops. Don't trust them
- Allocate a lot of time to the route

Funny enough, I rate this pass as a really good one. I rate Stijn's rating of 6/10 would have been pre-washaway. IMHO, the route is a 7/10(R) - difficulty largely due to route finding in the riverbed, and the amount of boulder hopping, and rock rating as I rate packs have to be hauled on either or both of the waterfalls. I do not see a safe way around these.

There is a camp site near the base of the pass (2 tents, 3 at a real push), and Tseke Hut looks entirely useable thanks to the effort of Intrepid and co. I would allocate at least 8 hours to getting up the pass.