Climbing Scholes' Route on Giant's Castle.

On the weekend of 10-12 June, Macc and myself attempted to climb Giant’s Castle via the technical route known as Scholes’ Route.
The weather forecasts in the week preceding the trip had shown the usual variety of delights including snow, high winds, rain and sub-zero temperatures. When the forecast eventually settled it seemed that we were clear of the rain and snow but the cold had remained, thanks largely to a cold front system.

We set off from the car park at about 13:00pm on the Friday afternoon after filling in the register and paying for our permits. We took the Giant’s ridge approach in reasonably warm pre-frontal conditions and passed a group of foreign tourists and a skaapsteker (we think) along the way.
Now I don’t know what it is about mid-afternoon starts but Macc and I agreed that we always seem to have less energy than on a morning or late afternoon/evening start, perhaps it has something to do with the heat of the day but despite not feeling as fresh as usual, we made reasonable time to the contour path and then turned right so as to head towards the pass.
At the first major stream (3rd overall) after the contour path, we turned left off the path and headed uphill – now looking for somewhere to camp. We managed to find a semi-decent spot at about 2400m or thereabouts – so a reasonable distance above the contour path and a slightly shorter walk in for the following morning. We managed to have the tent and everything else set up before the light faded away and after collecting water close by, we had the usual cup a soup and dinner which was followed by sorting out climbing gear for the following morning and then an early night, as we had planned an early start. I somehow managed to get a hole in my mattress and pillow so I ended up a bit closer to the ground than usual but that didn’t turn out to be as bad as the wind which blew all night and gusted enough to change the shape of the tent every time you were just nodding off. A good night’s sleep was had by none!

Despite the poor sleeping conditions, we were up early for a quick breakfast and coffee before setting off up the grass slopes above us at 6am, still dark, cool and windy with a bit of cloud about. The steep grass slopes of the approach are only broken by rock bands and scree and we had to navigate carefully to find a route up and as is becoming tradition, we managed to get ourselves into some unnecessary exposed scrambling/climbing on the approach and we soon realised we hadn’t chosen the easiest line up. We agreed that we’d find a better or “the proper” approach route on the way down. We eventually made it to the base of the climb in about 2 and a half hours and soon noticed that the base of the climb is higher than the top of Giant’s Pass.

Sholes’ route follows the obvious crack/chimney/gully running right to left up to the summit when viewed from the North. The Colli Extendenticum route starts close by and looks rather intimidating. As for the routes of “Lamergeier” and “Land of the Lawless”, well there’s nothing on the rest of that wall that looks like an obvious route to me so maximum respect to Peter Janschek and co.
We didn’t find the RD all that accurate on this route but I will talk more about that on a thread dedicated to the route. By the time we started climbing there was a major build-up of cloud over KZN and the temperature had started dropping. We nearly soloed the first F2 pitch because we thought we were still on the approach and the second pitch of F2 is also pretty easy at its grade and tops out at an interesting wormhole. The third pitch is an unprotected 10m chimney of E3, well you could bring a #6 or larger cam for it but then you’d have to worm your way into the narrowing chimney, place the piece, then reverse out and carry on climbing up – hardly worth the effort - so basically it’s a solo. I battled to get up it at first and even slipped right near the top, but I came back down, pulled myself towards myself, turned around and went back up facing the opposite way - this made it easier. The fourth pitch is an interesting stemming pitch with not much gear but it is very on angle and goes at grade E. Up until this point and despite our serious lack of experience in climbing chimneys, we were managing a very good pace but all good things come to an end and doing things straight forward is boring – ok fine, we misread the RD and went off route!
We were supposed to climb up a bit further at the start of P5 and then move left on an easy C grade traverse which takes you out of the gully and onto an arête of sorts, however we started traversing left immediately, on what was probably the most technically difficult grading of the climb (you’d think that would have been a big alarm bell!) and my stance out on the arête was this very exposed patch with the gear placements all relying on one rather hollow sounding flake. It wasn’t very nice at all and I called to Macc to hurry the hell up so that we could get off that spot! It was at this point, whilst I was belaying Macc into my dodgy stance that I started feeling the cold. The temperature had continued to drop all morning and it was still windy. I was wearing my down jacket, shell, gloves and two buffs. Then it started to sleet. The clouds built up around us and one moment you could see the start and the summit, the next moment it was just a cloud white-out. It remained very cold for the rest of the day and the water in my hydration bag’s mouth-piece froze. We managed to get off the horrible stance and the climbing was easy from there, but we were still off route and it took time to get back on track. After climbing more pitches than is described in the RD and taking a long time to do it, we arrived on the summit to even icier winds and a lot of sleet on the southern slopes of Giants and Lotheni. We found a slightly sheltered spot to have a quick bite to eat and then we were off to find the way down.

Our choices for getting back off Giants, were either to walk down the pass or scramble down the East ridge and rapp off Sherman’s Route. We had left our boots at the base of the climb so the latter option was the best. Now climbing shoes stick really well to rock, but really poorly to grass and sleet so the walk/scramble down the East Ridge was a slow one. After battling to figure out where the rapp points were, we finally found them and rapped off in a hurry. We manged to get back to our boots in the dying light and almost immediately had to turn on our headlamps.

We had hoped not to have to be walking back in the dark but this was now our reality so we had to make the best of it. Having come up via a scramble we were not willing to down scramble in the dark, and not really knowing where the proper approach was, we were left with having to route-find via headlamp and guesstimation. This lead to many dead end cliff bands with serious consequences for a fall. We couldn’t find a way down and so kept moving closer towards the Pass. At one point we ended up with a major drop off to the left and one last narrow gully that looked like it could go – we took it and via a series of minor scrambles and bum slides it got us through the rock bands. From here we traversed back towards our valley, made our way back down the grass slopes to our tent for warmer clothes, soup and supper. Our time out was 13.5 hours.

That night the wind howled even more, but eventually settled down at about two. The temperature at our tent got down to about -5C and by 8am the next morning, ice was still forming in my bladder – in the sun.

We left camp around 9am and made good time back to the Office, satisfied in the knowledge that we were had ticked off another peak and other great mountain adventure.

photos to follow.

The walk in.


The North Face of Giants showing the rock bands.


A zoomed in view showing the route running in the diagonal shadow line.


The clouds brewing over KZN.


A view down to our tent.


The Giants range is probably at it's most impressive from this angle.

The higher approach.


Almost at the base.


White out.


4th pitch.


Sleet up top.


Macc on the summit.