Mlambonja Buttress North Pass

In late April, Serious Tribe and tonymarshall did a six day hike at Didima, walking in to tent at Mlambonja campsite on the first day, and ascending Mlambonja Buttress North Pass on the second day. 

Mlambonja Buttress North Pass is an unmarked pass to the south of Mlambonja Pass, initially going up the gully of the stream coming down from the top of Mlambonja South Pass, and then following a network of grass slopes up the slopes of Mlambonja Buttress. We have given the pass this name as it tops out on the northern end of Mlambonja Buttress. Andrew P has done this route, a descent, which he didn’t write up. The map below shows the passes south of Mlambonja Pass, Mlambonja South Pass (red) and Mlambonja Buttress North Pass (blue), and it’s interesting that the obvious way to do them results in them crossing each other.  

 

I have also shown Mlambonja Buttress South Pass on the map, and this pass tops out to the south of Mlambonja Buttress. I had no part in naming this pass, but it did seem suitable since there was a south pass on Mlambonja Buttress, to also have one with north in the name, and the one topping out north of Mlambonja Buttress was an obvious match. The only thing these passes have in common (other than the similar names) is that they both top out on Mlambonja Butttress, the approaches and lower sections of the passes are totally separate and unrelated. 

Serious Tribe has kindly provided some of his photos for me to use in this write up, and all of the photos with the annotation Karl Beath© are courtesy of Serious Tribe. 

We started out by using the path of Mlambonja Pass, going quite far up, until turning off left at the stream we needed to go up, at about  2500m. The stream section had a lot of large boulders with grass inbetween.  

 

The steep sides of the gully require the stream bed to be used, and there were a few easy scrambles to get over some of the large boulders.  

 

The water in the stream was coming down the gully of the upper section of Mlambonja South Pass, and joined the valley of Mlambonja Buttress North Pass at a pretty waterfall. Note the mist appearing.  

 

There were several small caves downstream of the waterfall. The one behind me in the photo below was not that good, but the one on the other side of the stream seemed to be a good shelter, although the floor was probably damp.  

 
 

Unfortunately as went higher we got into the mist/cloud, with very low visibility, and we couldn’t take photos of the pass and scenery, so we decided to descend this route again after spending two days on the summit at spots for Karl to do photography. We had planned to come down Mlambonja Pass, which we had both done several times, so this plan worked well, and we came down in clear weather and could get photos. Most of the photos below are from our descent, although I continue to describe the pass in ascending order. 

Above the waterfall we passed or crossed Mlambonja South Pass, and continued up the grass slope. In the photo below the stream of the top section of Mlambonja South Pass is at the left, with the lip of the waterfall just visible, and the ‘saddle’ of Mlambonja South Pass is up the slope to the right.  

 

At the top of this grass slope, the route flattened out a bit with a traverse on grass before ascending to the col that marks the final section to the top of MBN Pass. Looking back in the photo below, we came past the two large rocks on the grass slope and then traversed along the slope through the centre of the photo, where there was a trail in places. The peak in the background is Twins.  

Since we were in the mist when going up, the next section was quite a big uncertainty for us, as we couldn’t see where to go, or where we were (although of course we were not lost, we just didn’t know precisely where on the route we were). We knew we had to go up to the col, but there are two cols and we had no idea which one we were approaching. We left our packs behind, and went ahead without packs, and were able to determine that we used the route with the lower col once we were through that section. Karl stayed behind while I went further ahead, close to the top of MBN Pass, and confirmed that we were spot on. We saw some baboons on a nearby spire and were astonished at their climbing skills, and that some of the spires had cairns on them.  

 

We managed to make our way back via the upper col to collect our packs, and then went forward with our packs through the upper col. This was quite draining going up the steep slope to the col with heavy packs after the exploring without packs! The photo below shows the view ahead from the traverse with the grass slopes up to the two cols, the lower on the left and the upper on the right. So we did the routes through both of these cols.  

 

From the other side, the cols are shown in the photo below, with the upper one on the left and the lower one on the right. There are actually two lower cols, a short way apart, as the photo shows, with a low point between them, and a trail between them. It is hopefully evident how we were a bit uncertain of where we were with the mist blocking visibility.  

 

The section between the two lower cols with the trail.  

 

The photo below, which I took from the lower col, shows Karl at the second col, with the grass slope to the top of the pass in the background.  

 

On the final stretch to the top of the pass, Karl spotted quite a nice overhang below the cliffs and we went to look at it. We returned to it again on our return route for another look, and estimated that with a bit of work it could accommodate four people. The amount of shelter in rain or wind is unknown, and we decided not to name the cave.  

 

The view up the final grass slopes to the top of the pass.  

 

We took a photo on our return trip near the top of the pass, as we had been unable to take a summit photo in the mist on the original ascent.  

 

On our return descent, we didn’t go back down the lower section of MBN Pass below the waterfall, but instead went through the saddle and down the lower section of Mlambonja South Pass.

Hi Tony,

This is in the same vicinity, we went up on the left side of the butress and to the right of Xeni. Check it out..
www.vertical-endeavour.com/forum/drakenberg-trips-cathedral-peak/56513-teseke-cockade-mlambonjabuttress-pineapple-hike.html?start=10#73987
 

Thanks to Tony for the write up.  Here are some pics from my big camera which only comes out on the tripod at begining and end of the day.  These were from the entire 6 day trip.  Please enjoy.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Hi ASL-Bivak#

Thanks, I read that post in 2018 already, and refer to it in my own 2018 write up of Mlambonja Buttress South Pass, and again refer to the south pass in my write up on this thread.

The hidden passes in this area are amazing.

I'm not sure if you guys had a Mlambonja Buttress North Pass in mind when you named Mlambonja Buttress South Pass, but in certainly struck me at the time that there may be a north pass on Mlambonja Buttress, and indeed there is!