Keith Bush Camp - Gray's Pass - Vulture's Retreat - Champagne Castle hike

Mike,

As you top out there are lots of flat areas along the river. A bit to the right is better as you will be a bit further away from the pass head, which is always better.

Hi Fuwaad,

Your plan and times sound reasonable.
You can follow a very clear path all the way from Moncs Cowl campsite up the Sphinx, pass Verkykerskop (stop at the stream at the top for a break, a bite to eat and some water), then onwards to the T junction at Blindmans corner. Turn right here and follow the path all the way down to the river. Go left here (don't think the path turns at all, but right would take you down towards Zulu cave) and about 2,5km's further on you will arrive at KBC. From the river you should be able to see a large scree field with grey boulders - there come off Grays pass, and KBC is just to the left of it.

You need to go up via the ridge just above KBC - don't attempt to go up Grays pass via the screefield, you'll see why when you get there
Two tips for the ascent:
1 - When you go up the ridge, you will go up in a wide arch, starting on the left (clear path initially) and then it swings over to the right about halfway up. Grays pass is the gap at the top to your right. Don't cross over to the left of the ridge, although there are some tracks leading there. The track just fizzes out, I know, cause I've made this mistake as well before.
2 - When you are just through the steepest part and getting past the lower rockbands you will see two paths, a higher and a lower one. Take the higher one. After some time you need to exit this path to the left, there was a distinctive cairn marking the turning spot when I did it in April this year. Easy to miss if you are tired and just looking at your feet. However, if you do miss it you will find yourself staring at a rather large rockface that will stop you in your tracks. Just backtrack about 50m or so and look for the path that will now turn right up Grays.

Going down Grays, remember to exit the gully to the right about 40m from the top, else you are in for a rather interesting climbing experience

All in all Grays is a fairly easy and straightforward pass, it's just fairly steep so pace yourself and you would soon be at the top. Take note that you will be in the sun the whole day, so the earlier you can start the better.

Lastly, I did a number of write-ups on this pass, do a search and enjoy the reading.

Awesome guys.

Now that i have all your input i am more excited then ever.

I have downloaded GAIA GPS, TOPO Maps and Wikiloc.

Thanks @ Smurfatefrog . 
I have received the GPS track and have loaded it onto my phone. On these apps, i can view the track and path taken but for some reason i cannot follow it. I can view the path like a map though.

So a good thing happened. Wife opted to buy me a a GPS device but limit is R4000.  I've seen one on Cape union Mart, Garmin GPSMAPS 64. 

Not sure anyone has experience with it.

Again, thanks for all the information and guidance.

My wife has the GPSMAP 64S, excellent gps, robust, light, relatively small, good battery life etc. You can't go wrong with it. Oh, and it has press buttons, which is great. My Montana has a touch screen and I don't particularly like it in the berg - because it is touch sensitive, when it gets cold in the Berg you have to really press the screen hard for anything to register, and in the rain I've managed to wipe icons off the screen when trying to clear raindrops so I could see what was displayed :-0

I was contemplating between a touch sensitive and pop up button setups and yeah, I’d prefer a button set up. I just think touch sensitive is weaker in terms of durability. Judging based purely on my phone.  The 64s is a it out of my budget but I’ll go for the normal 64. 

My friend is more excited about the gps then what I am. Haha.
Thinks I’m going to get him lost in the mountain. 

Hey Fuwaad, how did your hike go?

Hi,
The Drakensberg is amazing!!!

We had arrived at Monks Cowl at 9:30 and after some gear Checks and breakfast we set off walking at 10:30. I initially hadn’t been feeling too well and since we started at the Sphinx, I was pretty much sick. The Sphinx was harder then expected but we finished it and made a stop at the river just after that. The weather was overcast so that really helped but it took us about 8 hrs to kbc. There was no water at The camp site but luckily we collected water at the river which was about an hour before. If it was not for the gps, we would’ve surely been lost getting to the camp as it started getting dark.Clear skies through the night. 


On awakening the next day, we had to make a decision on what we were going to do and Since the rivers  were dry we decided against climbing Gray’s pass because if there was no water on top, we would have struggled. We took a round trip back to the river, had breakfast there and headed back to kbc for the day. Really beautiful. We seen, 2 eagles, few falcons and a deer lookalike. 

On Sunday we headed back down and it took us 6 and half hours. We came via the pass from blindmans corner. It started hailing and raining while coming down. All in all, an amazing, relaxing trip with some sore llimbs. 

Thank you for all the advice guys. I surely would have struggled if I didn’t take a look at this forum and would not have attempted this hike.

with better prep, next time I would conquer the pass. 

Hi Fuwaad,

Glad to hear you had a good experience in the Berg

For your next one, see if you can go with guys that knows the area well, then no need to worry about getting lost, finding water etc, you can just enjoy the hike.

I was abit disappointed with a few things around KBC and the General Hike toward that area.

AT KBC, there were some hikers who took a dump at the campsite and just left their toilet rolls laying around as well as a alot of dirt. At the end of our trip, we picked up the dirt and brought it back.

Another issue which has the potential to be devastating are camp fires. Not specifically at  KBC but close to the rivers. You can see that a camp were set up on 3 points and campfires were made  under low lying trees. I guess it could be hikers or even smugglers. They were pretty fresh, so couldn't have been older then a day or 2.
 
I would attempt to do the hike again though, but probably around next year.

With regards to safety concern, we heard a few guys screaming on the mountain below grays pass around midnight on Saturday. All i done was shine a torch in the tent to deter them that we are awake. Other then that, we had not seen or heard anyone. I think its a pretty safe hike and you have to make an effort to get to KBC.


But all in all, learnt alot with the gear i have, what i need and do not need on a hike. Learnt how to make cous cous