Mzimude Passes: how not to train for a GT
15 Jan 2016 22:32 #66502
by ghaznavid
Mzimude Passes: how not to train for a GT was created by ghaznavid
Mzimude Passes: how not to train for a GT
When you work in tax, things can alternate between rather boring to very interesting rather quickly. 2015 promised to end without too much trouble – until the man who has to sign off on all legislative changes is fired, and his replacement too is fired. Sometimes it is nice to leave to world of worrying about devaluing currencies and changing finance ministers aside and just take a hike!
For many years I had promised Hobbit that I would take him on a GT. In 2014 I took him on a 7 day hike, and we agreed he wasn’t ready yet. So in October 2015 when his Christmas plans fell through, I suggested that a summer GT was a good idea. Everything was in order for us to leave before the 16th public holiday, Papa Dragon’s team even offered to help with our resupply. Then it occurred to me – last time Hobbit carried an overnight pack was on Bollard Pass, more than a year earlier.
So I decided to delay the start of the GT, and schedule an overnight hike just before the GT. It became a head-start + 2 day, to be followed by a day trip up Bollard Pass. This would then give us 2 days off before we started the GT. Perhaps a bit tight, but my last few months had been training for the 5 day GT (mostly with Hobbit anyway), followed by doing the 5 day GT, when I got back, Hobbit was writing exams. So this was the earliest I could fit the hike in. The timing was so close that I completely forgot about doing this writeup when I got back from GT!
Anyway – at 2:30PM, we left Garden Castle. We had a tent, so I wasn’t stressed over not reaching our target of Curtain Cave. I saw no point in going light in a training hike for a GT.
Hobbit had never been to the Hidden Valley before, so upon reaching Puffadder Rock, we had to stop for a break. That turned into close to a 1 hour stop for a swim. In such hot weather, that was most needed. Anyone who knows me well will know how hot it must have been for me to actually get into the water!
As the sun was going down, we stopped to was off in another rock pool before exiting the Hidden Valley by the top end (where the valley narrows). We reached Curtain Cave around 7PM, it was still light, but as always – when you are nearing a pass, the sun sets much earlier.
Curtain Cave was great, as usual. The large river flowing 5m from the sleeping area also turned out to be very helpful. Aside from the occasional roof drip, it is actually a really nice cave in summer.
At around 4:45 we were woken by daylight. This wasn’t going to be a long day – we did the 13km walkin the day before, so we hadn’t planned to get up this early. We procrastinated a lot, but were out of the cave just after 6.
We decided to try a different line out of the cave, going to the right of the large rocky outcrop, rather than the left. This provided some interesting views, but my hopes of avoiding my usually foot-killer side traverse into Mzimude Pass was replaced with having to drop well over 100m extra to hit the river. Sometimes you have to put it down to “bonus training”.
It was a beautiful sunny Day of Reconciliation – and a good thing it was! Looking at North Mzimude Pass (our planned return pass), I realised we needed to switch the route around. So we filled up our bottles, knowing our next water would probably be on the escarpment (which it was), and began to climb the side of the bank north of the river.
This was followed by a surprisingly easy traverse into the gully, which we entered around 2500m. Dave Gay’s route follows the gully till about 2700m, before using the true left slope to avoid the almost vertical wall in the gully.
We climbed till about 2750m, struggling to find an exit to the right (true left). I scrambled up a few bits, but they were horribly steep and slippery. We eventually took the much easier true right side. In retrospect, I would use this slope for the entire pass, no real need to use the gully.
Our progress was very slow. By now it was already midday, and we had barely done 6km. Not a good showing for a team about to attempt a GT! The day was also very hot. We found a nice little shelter (no use for sleeping in, but it had enough shade for 2 people to sit under. It was dripping, but the wet rock below wasn’t much use for filling bottles.
We continued up from here, this section of the pass was my favourite Drakensberg Pass terrain – steep but stable grass – so I progressed well, although I had to wait for Hobbit quite often. I rate he was possibly slightly dehydrated – very easy to get into that state on such a hot day.
Anyway – we traversed back into the gully just above the massive wash-away near the top of the pass. From here you are forced into the gully, which has thorns and a bit of scree, but is really fine.
From the top of the pass, we went inland to find water. We had both run out by now. The drought strikes again – the best we could do was stagnant water near some grazing cows. We had some soup and tea before filling our bottles and adding iodine pills.
A friendly local – the only one I have ever seen in the Mzimude Valley – came to say hi. He didn’t ask for anything before he left us. He was tending to 5 cows, the only livestock I could see in the valley. I have always wondered why the clear signs of livestock are always present in this valley, yet I rarely see any livestock and, prior to this, had never seen any people either.
We spent the night in Mzimude Cave – by now I am on a first name basis with the cave.
The following morning we headed to the middle gully of the south Mzimude Pass – the only Mzimude gully I had left, for that matter, the only pass that starts in the Hidden Valley I had left (although its status as a separate pass from the south gully of the south pass is disputable). The gully included a short 3m scramble, which was easily down-climbable by passing packs down, traversing true right for 2m and using a rock staircase from there.
Around 100m vertically from the top, the pass joined the south gully of the south pass, and 100m vertical further, all 3 become one. We followed the riverbed down from here, stopping at a nice pool just below the cliff at roughly 2000m.
We tried to follow the trail (shown on the map as going past Curtain Cave, but Curtain Cave isn’t in the valley that the map shows it in), this resulted in a rather high traverse below some interesting caves. We found at least one usable cave in this valley, although it lacked signs of prior use and is very far from water.
Seeing as we were already so high, we took a slightly exposed foot-crushing traverse to find our way onto the top of the ridge that separates the Mzimude River from the river that flows past Curtain Cave.
We dropped down a rather steep slope on the south side, passing the first cave I ever slept in (we thought it was Curtain Cave at the time, as it met the map specs, but we subsequently named it “I’m sure it’s not a” Cave). Funny enough – we slept in the worst part of the cave back in 2010, there is a great, flat sleeping area by the entrance. I would say you can get up to 4 people into it comfortably (we were a team of 3 back in 2010).
We stopped for another swimming break at Puffadder Rock, before motoring it out back to Swiman Hut – our accommodation for the night.
While the hike included no khulus, it did include a pass I hadn’t done, a variation I was missing on another pass, and some really beautiful clear weather in my favourite escarpment valley. And you can do a lot worse than spending 2 nights in caves!
So my thoughts on the 5 Mzimude based passes – discussed N-S:
North Mzimude Pass (Dave Gay’s pass, not on the maps): the hardest of the 5, stay true right the entire way and you should be fine. Not good to come down, not great for wet weather. Difficulty: 7/10
South Mzimude North Gully (with the cave at the top): good pass, grassy the entire way, with the occasional mini-scramble. Worth the effort. Difficulty: 5/10
South Mzimude Middle Gully: if you are very pedantic or are running out of gullies in the area, use this one. Otherwise it is rather arbitrary. Difficulty: 4/10
South Mzimude South Gully: the best and easiest of the gullies. Highly recommended. Difficulty: 4/10
Walkers Pass Mzimude Approach: turn off at the fissure before the waterfall. Corn Cob Cave is at 3050m on the pass, quite a nice cave! The pass is highly unusual and worth doing for various reasons. The view isn’t bad either. Difficulty: 3/10
Note: all difficulties assume you do the walkin on a headstart day and are fresh as you start. From the car park to the top in a day is very hard mostly due to the distance.
Photos to follow soon. GPS track will probably also be uploaded into downloads – if it isn’t there and you’d like it, PM me. Otherwise go to Dave’s website (www.berg.co.za) to download his track.
When you work in tax, things can alternate between rather boring to very interesting rather quickly. 2015 promised to end without too much trouble – until the man who has to sign off on all legislative changes is fired, and his replacement too is fired. Sometimes it is nice to leave to world of worrying about devaluing currencies and changing finance ministers aside and just take a hike!
For many years I had promised Hobbit that I would take him on a GT. In 2014 I took him on a 7 day hike, and we agreed he wasn’t ready yet. So in October 2015 when his Christmas plans fell through, I suggested that a summer GT was a good idea. Everything was in order for us to leave before the 16th public holiday, Papa Dragon’s team even offered to help with our resupply. Then it occurred to me – last time Hobbit carried an overnight pack was on Bollard Pass, more than a year earlier.
So I decided to delay the start of the GT, and schedule an overnight hike just before the GT. It became a head-start + 2 day, to be followed by a day trip up Bollard Pass. This would then give us 2 days off before we started the GT. Perhaps a bit tight, but my last few months had been training for the 5 day GT (mostly with Hobbit anyway), followed by doing the 5 day GT, when I got back, Hobbit was writing exams. So this was the earliest I could fit the hike in. The timing was so close that I completely forgot about doing this writeup when I got back from GT!
Anyway – at 2:30PM, we left Garden Castle. We had a tent, so I wasn’t stressed over not reaching our target of Curtain Cave. I saw no point in going light in a training hike for a GT.
Hobbit had never been to the Hidden Valley before, so upon reaching Puffadder Rock, we had to stop for a break. That turned into close to a 1 hour stop for a swim. In such hot weather, that was most needed. Anyone who knows me well will know how hot it must have been for me to actually get into the water!
As the sun was going down, we stopped to was off in another rock pool before exiting the Hidden Valley by the top end (where the valley narrows). We reached Curtain Cave around 7PM, it was still light, but as always – when you are nearing a pass, the sun sets much earlier.
Curtain Cave was great, as usual. The large river flowing 5m from the sleeping area also turned out to be very helpful. Aside from the occasional roof drip, it is actually a really nice cave in summer.
At around 4:45 we were woken by daylight. This wasn’t going to be a long day – we did the 13km walkin the day before, so we hadn’t planned to get up this early. We procrastinated a lot, but were out of the cave just after 6.
We decided to try a different line out of the cave, going to the right of the large rocky outcrop, rather than the left. This provided some interesting views, but my hopes of avoiding my usually foot-killer side traverse into Mzimude Pass was replaced with having to drop well over 100m extra to hit the river. Sometimes you have to put it down to “bonus training”.
It was a beautiful sunny Day of Reconciliation – and a good thing it was! Looking at North Mzimude Pass (our planned return pass), I realised we needed to switch the route around. So we filled up our bottles, knowing our next water would probably be on the escarpment (which it was), and began to climb the side of the bank north of the river.
This was followed by a surprisingly easy traverse into the gully, which we entered around 2500m. Dave Gay’s route follows the gully till about 2700m, before using the true left slope to avoid the almost vertical wall in the gully.
We climbed till about 2750m, struggling to find an exit to the right (true left). I scrambled up a few bits, but they were horribly steep and slippery. We eventually took the much easier true right side. In retrospect, I would use this slope for the entire pass, no real need to use the gully.
Our progress was very slow. By now it was already midday, and we had barely done 6km. Not a good showing for a team about to attempt a GT! The day was also very hot. We found a nice little shelter (no use for sleeping in, but it had enough shade for 2 people to sit under. It was dripping, but the wet rock below wasn’t much use for filling bottles.
We continued up from here, this section of the pass was my favourite Drakensberg Pass terrain – steep but stable grass – so I progressed well, although I had to wait for Hobbit quite often. I rate he was possibly slightly dehydrated – very easy to get into that state on such a hot day.
Anyway – we traversed back into the gully just above the massive wash-away near the top of the pass. From here you are forced into the gully, which has thorns and a bit of scree, but is really fine.
From the top of the pass, we went inland to find water. We had both run out by now. The drought strikes again – the best we could do was stagnant water near some grazing cows. We had some soup and tea before filling our bottles and adding iodine pills.
A friendly local – the only one I have ever seen in the Mzimude Valley – came to say hi. He didn’t ask for anything before he left us. He was tending to 5 cows, the only livestock I could see in the valley. I have always wondered why the clear signs of livestock are always present in this valley, yet I rarely see any livestock and, prior to this, had never seen any people either.
We spent the night in Mzimude Cave – by now I am on a first name basis with the cave.
The following morning we headed to the middle gully of the south Mzimude Pass – the only Mzimude gully I had left, for that matter, the only pass that starts in the Hidden Valley I had left (although its status as a separate pass from the south gully of the south pass is disputable). The gully included a short 3m scramble, which was easily down-climbable by passing packs down, traversing true right for 2m and using a rock staircase from there.
Around 100m vertically from the top, the pass joined the south gully of the south pass, and 100m vertical further, all 3 become one. We followed the riverbed down from here, stopping at a nice pool just below the cliff at roughly 2000m.
We tried to follow the trail (shown on the map as going past Curtain Cave, but Curtain Cave isn’t in the valley that the map shows it in), this resulted in a rather high traverse below some interesting caves. We found at least one usable cave in this valley, although it lacked signs of prior use and is very far from water.
Seeing as we were already so high, we took a slightly exposed foot-crushing traverse to find our way onto the top of the ridge that separates the Mzimude River from the river that flows past Curtain Cave.
We dropped down a rather steep slope on the south side, passing the first cave I ever slept in (we thought it was Curtain Cave at the time, as it met the map specs, but we subsequently named it “I’m sure it’s not a” Cave). Funny enough – we slept in the worst part of the cave back in 2010, there is a great, flat sleeping area by the entrance. I would say you can get up to 4 people into it comfortably (we were a team of 3 back in 2010).
We stopped for another swimming break at Puffadder Rock, before motoring it out back to Swiman Hut – our accommodation for the night.
While the hike included no khulus, it did include a pass I hadn’t done, a variation I was missing on another pass, and some really beautiful clear weather in my favourite escarpment valley. And you can do a lot worse than spending 2 nights in caves!
So my thoughts on the 5 Mzimude based passes – discussed N-S:
North Mzimude Pass (Dave Gay’s pass, not on the maps): the hardest of the 5, stay true right the entire way and you should be fine. Not good to come down, not great for wet weather. Difficulty: 7/10
South Mzimude North Gully (with the cave at the top): good pass, grassy the entire way, with the occasional mini-scramble. Worth the effort. Difficulty: 5/10
South Mzimude Middle Gully: if you are very pedantic or are running out of gullies in the area, use this one. Otherwise it is rather arbitrary. Difficulty: 4/10
South Mzimude South Gully: the best and easiest of the gullies. Highly recommended. Difficulty: 4/10
Walkers Pass Mzimude Approach: turn off at the fissure before the waterfall. Corn Cob Cave is at 3050m on the pass, quite a nice cave! The pass is highly unusual and worth doing for various reasons. The view isn’t bad either. Difficulty: 3/10
Note: all difficulties assume you do the walkin on a headstart day and are fresh as you start. From the car park to the top in a day is very hard mostly due to the distance.
Photos to follow soon. GPS track will probably also be uploaded into downloads – if it isn’t there and you’d like it, PM me. Otherwise go to Dave’s website (www.berg.co.za) to download his track.
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