Living Life Freezing - Bannermans to Langalibalele

Sliverthorne joined witchiwoo and myself for a hike to check out the previous weeks snow falls and we decided on the standard route up Bannermans and down Langilalbele overnighting in the hut and Bannermans Cave.
By the contour path we found plenty of snow and a mountain guide returning from Bannermans with a client having got to within about 100 m from the top and turned back because of icy conditions. We reached the hut uneventfully and found this inscription on one of the windows, which kind of summed up the rest of the trip.

The next morning was bright, cold but windless and we set off at 8 am to see how far we could get up the pass, with the fall back plan of overnighting in Spare Rib Cave on the pass in mind. We followed the previous groups trail which made the going a bit easier up to the cave and then reassessed the situation. We decided to push on with packs and try to get to the top, based on the current conditions and rate of progress.


It was from this point that it gets much steeper and the whole gully was just one big icy snow sheet that required chipping foot holds to progress, which became increasingly difficult as the snow became more iced.



Within about 50 m of the top the snow became too hard and steep to cut footholds and we were forced to traverse accross to the right hand side and climb up onto a ledge and traverse across to the last section of the gully.The climb out involved scrambling up two sections of icy rock each about 5 m in height.Thanks to Silverthornes sturdy piece of rope, and his encouragement and help with witchiwoo at the rear while I was finding our way up.My rodeo skills, lassoing an anvil shaped piece rock above,allowed us to haul ourselves us up the last "pitch" which would have been impossible any other way. We found ourselves looking up at two impossibly steep snow banks on either side of rocky outcrop in the middle of the pass with its own more do-able looking gully. By this stage there was now no going back down! Sorry no pics of this section of the climb as we were too busy surviving. We traversed across the ice once more to the middle and went slowly step at a time up. Silverthorne took this pic right at the top of the gully.

And then we were on top !

Our tracks can be seen to the left of the outcrop which was the top of the gully.

Now we just had to get down !

Our route up the final gully of the pass

Nice work the Millers,

How deep was the snow in the shade in the gully?

How deep was the snow in the shade in the gully?[/quote]

More than 1 m, this pics shows it quite well.

Stijn wrote: Great pics diverian! Looks like you had an even more epic time of it in Bannerman Pass than we had in Langies. On what dates did you do these passes? We were there Sat/Sun so it's a pity we didn't bump into you.. Perhaps you were able to use our tracks coming down Langies?

Hi Stijn, we went up Bannermans on Sunday and came down Langies on Monday, yes we did use your tracks we stayed in the gully due to very strong winds and followed them out of the gully and down the last decent to the waterfall as the gully became too difficult.

It took us 6,5 hours to get up the pass so after a quick lunch we walked the short distance, in deep and slippery snow, to the cave with the sun still shining and settled in for the night.






By sunset the forecast storm and snow showers were building and a thunder storm broke around 10 pm and started dumping snow, a lot more than the 3 cm forecast. We were fine in the cave where the temp hovered around the zero degree mark. Next morning was clear and sunny but the wind was blowing pretty hard and the fresh powder was blowing everywhere which made the descent of Langilalbele interesting, we stayed in the gully to a point that we could see the trail and some tracks, but when we climbed out it was too windy and slippery to follow the trail on the steep exposed slope. Witchiwoo and I both did rather spectacular slides back into the gully, mine being more or less involuntary with witchiwoo following me and getting some air when getting a bit sideways and hitting a "mogul" formed by a boulder under the snow! No injuries just some bumps and bruises. We continued down till we saw tracks leading out of the gully and followed them out and down to the waterfall and finally out of the snow and back to Giants for a hamburger and glass of red wine!