Grays and Ships round trip Oct 2014

This past weekend (17 - 19) October 2014, 4 of us (myself, my wife (Sanet) and two newbies (Herman and Charles) did an awesome roundtrip starting from Monks Cowl campsite to Keith Bush camp on day 1, then up Grays and down Ships day 2 and on Sunday from the camping spot at the bottom of Ships back to Monks Cowl campsite.

I'll be sending the report in sections, as I find time to do parts of it I will submit it for your reading pleasure. For some reason I am unable to upload images to the website, could I send the images and text in a Word doc to the administrator to be uploaded please? I'll quickly try uploading one image now, but if this doesn't upload then I can't get it onto the website any other way as described before.

A while back I started thinking about doing a 3 day round trip in the Champagne Castle area. I’ve done Injasuthi in the South and Mnweni in the North before, so Champagne Castle was logically the next in line. On a June hike with ASL he said that I would enjoy doing Grays pass. However, if I do Grays up, where will I then come down? I prefer not to do the same pass up and down on the same trip (I like variety) so I started looking around on Google earth. My eye caught Ships Prow pass, or possibly Cathkin Mountain pass. Ships (from what I could read on VE) sounded like the more adventurous option of the two passes. Once the route was decided on we started planning for the trip. We only had one weekend in October that could work for everyone in the group, so we really hoping that the weather would play along. And it did very nicely.
We would be 4 people doing this hike in October. Myself, my wife (this would be her second Berg hike) and two newbies. On the photo it is Sanet, Herman and Charles.

I warned them that Ships would be tough so they had about six weeks to train for the hike. The weekend before the hike we all did a two hour stair climbing session with full backpacks on. Boy, that wasn’t fun, but I had to see if the newbies were fit enough for the trip. Fortunately all passed the test. Charles battled a bit, and after 100minutes he couldn’t go any further. I was a bit concerned but fortunately he had quite a bit of “vasbyt” in him and he finished the two hours, the last 20 minutes without the backpack. My concerns disappeared when I tried to pick up his backpack, I nearly pulled myself off balance when I tried to pick up the thing! I managed to shave off a good 7 or 8 kilograms (I removed something like 5 knives, a fold up saw, fold up spade, kilometres of rope, etc.) and in the end he came in at around 18Kg’s or so. Phew, if he had to carry his original weight he might have died from over exertion.
We started our hike from Monks Cowl campsite at just after nine on Friday morning 17 Oct 2014, having left Midrand at 3am. The trip down was uneventful with little traffic on the road. 5:53am we arrived at the Wimpy at Harrismith for a quick bite to eat (darn, we were the second group to arrive), and then we were on our way to Monks Cowl campsite. As we got to Winterton we could see that a large part of the Berg was covered in snow, but mainly on the escarpment. When we arrived at the starting point the sun was already high up in the sky and the day was hottting up, time to get started! By the time we got to the Sphinx we were into a good rhythm and everybody was enjoying the hike.

We stopped for a quick photo or two and then proceeded on towards Breakfast stream. I was concerned about the availability of water on this hike, so after having had breakfast and something to drink we filled up all our containers.


My wife carried a 3L bladder which turned out to be very handy, and I had two Nalgene 1L hard bottles and a 1,5L fold-up bottle. Next up was Blind Man’s corner. On the approach to Blind Man’s corner Cathkin peak, Sterkhorn and Turret was completely covered in a thick, white cloud.

As we approached the mountain the cloud started to lift, and we could see first Turret, then Sterkhorn and then Cathkin peak. Wow, it was so beautiful, we stopped every now and then to take a pic and just admire the sheer beauty of the mountain.


We made good time from here on the contour path and by midday we were rounding the bend with Gatberg in front of us. Everything was green and pretty and a fresh wind was blowing, helping to cool us down.

As we climbed down from the contour path into the riverbed (on the approach to Grays) we found a place between the grasses and flowers where we stopped for lunch. Breakfast was a bit boring (peanuts and raisins and M&M’s) but now we had some droe wors and a snack bar that we washed down with a litre of orange flavoured Game.


Well, time was up and we still had about 3km’s or so to go to Keith Bush Camp (KBC). From here it is a steady climb, not steep but consistent and by the time we got to KBC at 3:30pm we were all happy to put our backpacks down for the day. The coordinates I had for KBC was on a grassy slope about 40m or so from the actual campsite, so we found the flattest spot in the veld and pitched our tents in a little depression that should keep the wind out.

It was quite an uncomfortable night with trying to sleep on grassy knolls and sliding down to the bottom of the tent every half hour or so. Needless to say Sanet had something to say about my selection of the camping spot the next morning.
The temperatures dropped quite low on Friday night, we had frost on the tent the next morning.



I wanted to try out my new FA Adventure light (which wasn’t so light after I asked FA to add a further 15cm to the length of the bag, it measured 210cm instead of the advertised 225cm. They obliged and made the alteration very professionally and at their expense, courier costs included. With me being 2m tall little things like this makes a big difference to having a good (read warm) nights rest). The adventure (now medium) light is rated to 5 degrees Celsius, so I brought my Reactor bag liner along, just in case. Even though we had ice on the tent the next morning I only started feeling the cold at around 3am. This was more due to me sliding out of the bag with my chest being exposed than the bag and bag liner combination not being effective.

Tomorrow I'll upload day 2 where we went up Grays and down Ships pass. It was an epic day that I will remember for a long time

Day 2:
I was quite happy when my alarm woke me up at 5am, today was the big day I’ve been dreaming about for the last month or so. Today we go up Grays and down Ships. We had breakfast (Woolies crunchy cookies (thanks ASL) and Nestle Cuppachino. We were all packed up and ready to go at 6am.





I always find it amazing that my backpack generally seems to be fuller on the start of day 2 than it does on day one. I definitely need to work on my packing skills while on a hike. Or maybe Sanet sneaked one or two items into my bag as she knew we had a long hard day ahead of us.
Anyhow, moving swiftly along, we got going while it was still nice and cool at the start of the pass. Soon we started overheating and about 200 vertical meters up we all stopped to remove the warm layers of clothing that was appropriate a few minutes ago.





Looking back at the starting point I could clearly see the real KBC a little to the right of where we camped for the night, closer to the river. The look I got from Sanet was not very loving when she saw it too. Ah well, now I know for next time. We saw 3 Basotho’s on the path in front of us, they ascended the pass to the right of the footpath we were on (north of us), they must have camped a bit north of us in the valley to the immediate right of the pass. I stopped to let them get ahead a bit, it was nice to have a quick breather. They soon tired out as well and we passed them sort of where you start entering the rock bands at about 2500m. The newbies were by now taking a bit of strain so we found a spot to rest and eat, at which point the Basotho’s then passed us again.

We stopped basically where the path starts curving to the north, from this point you can clearly see two footpaths merging. When I read up on Grays it said that there is a lower and a higher path. I was under the impression that we were on the higher path, but the two paths then came together and ended up at a rock band with some very exposed scrambling. I obviously missed the kern marking the turnoff to the higher path.
Having never done rock climbing before I found this rock wall a bit scary. Problem was that the rock was wet from the snow that melted with little space for my nr 12 shoes to fit on the very tiny little ledge. At best there was just about enough space to get my big toes onto the rock ledge. I then made my way across to the left trying not to think about how far I would roll down this mountain if I slipped here. Regrettably I didn’t take any photo’s here, promise to do so next time when my climbing skills have improved a bit. There was no way I was going to let Sanet and the newbies try and go across here, so I scrambled up higher till I found the higher path. I put my backpack behind a rock and told the rest to go back down the path to the point where I could clearly see the split between the higher and lower routes. When they got to the split I whistled and waved to get their attention. Even though they were only about 50m or so below me they battled to hear me, and I can whistle quite loud. Amazing how easily the wind can blow sound away. Fortunately Charles saw me waving and then they all got safely up on the higher route and met up with me at the point where the path dips down towards the chimney. Must say I am very proud of Sanet making it up this pass with all the scrambling bits, her only previous Berg experience was Mnweni and Rockeries which was nowhere near as tough (technically speaking, scrambling and climbing vs. plain hiking) as Grays.
At last, we made it to the top! What a view! Jackets on before we freeze!

By now our water supply was finished so we headed down to the Nkosazana river. Large parts of the slow flowing sections had a frozen top layer, amazing how cold it gets at the top even when it is not winter. We again had a decent meal, Tuna and some noodle soup thingy that Sanet got for us. And another Cuppachino. Good caffeine boost for the next section on the escarpment up to Ships Prow.
This was the first time Charles and Herman stood on the Berg’s escarpment and they took some time to enjoy the view. The 3,5km up to Ships Prow is not very steep but the going was a bit slow as the guys struggled a bit on the uneven terrain. When we got closer to the top I could see their batteries were running flat and I just had to capture this moment on film .
Batteries running flat:




Batteries flat: