Ice climbing at Sani pass (Drakensberg) Jul 2007

After work I drove to Dean’s place to leave my car. Robert arrived at around 18:30 and we quickly packed to leave at 19:00. Traffic through Johannesburg was surprisingly slow but beyond the N12 things eased up a little and we drove well, arriving in Pietermaritzburg at Carl Fatti’s place at 01:00 in the morning. Carl opened his cottage for Dean and me and Robert slept in the back of his bakkie. We got up early the next morning and had coffee and rusks before leaving for Sani pass.

Day 1 (21 July): We arrived at Sani pass at around 11:00, went through customs and drove up to the top. There was a lot more snow on the slopes compared to the last time I was in the area and three weeks previously, the Sani flats must have been covered with about a metre of snow. We parked at Sani Top Chalet, dressed properly and packed our bags. Then we walked the 3km over the top to the gully where Cool Bananas and a few other ice routes are located. We set up an abseil point, got all we needed and abseiled down the ice waterfall. We dropped our bags here and started scrambling down the ice and grass slopes to about 150m below the escarpment. The ice was not in the best possible condition, but there was enough to climb on. Setting up our first stance at the base of a short WI2 pitch, Robert led to the base of the next section and I followed second. It was my first ice climb ever and it was entertaining to note all the differences to normal rock climbing. I slipped once on the first pitch but managed to hold on to the ice axes. The first pitch was very short (about 10m in all) but when I got to the top I was so exhausted I had to sit down on a rock while Robert belayed Dean up. We then moved to the second pitch but I was feeling distinctly tired. Luckily it was a while before it was my turn again and on this second pitch I fared better, managing to get to the top without slipping. However, when we got to the base of the third pitch, a taller, steeper wall, I felt sick. Declining to belay Dean, I sat down on a rock and felt extremely nauseous. Thankfully the feeling soon passed but I had enough climbing for the day and decided to walk out on the grass slopes the rest of the way, taking pictures of the other two as they climbed. When I made it back to our packs I sat down and had some water. It started to get cold as sunset was approaching fast so I put my beanie on under the helmet and waited for the other two. When they arrived, we packed up and headed for the last difficulty before the top. We had to climb another ice waterfall topped with a rock scramble. But it was getting dark when Robert finally roped up to lead it. He struggled a little up the steep ice and I was wondering if I was going to make it. After reaching a ledgy area with a cave to the side, Robert took off his crampons and led through the rock scramble to the top. But we couldn’t see him anymore as it was now completely dark. Putting on my headlight, I then followed Robert, scrambling up the ice and into an iced up body width crack. At the top of the ice section I had to climb over a bush to access the cave ledge. Taking a break, I had some time to take my crampons off as Robert belayed Dean to the same ledge. Then Robert belayed me again over the rocky section. All of this was done at night with a pack on my back! When I reached the top of the scramble I dropped my pack and went to take down the remaining rope and anchor system we used to abseil in earlier, while Robert belayed Dean up. When all of us were safely at the top we packed up and headed back to Sani Top Chalet, arriving at around 19:30. Inside it was as hot as a furnace and a buffet dinner was being served. None of us felt like cooking so we settled down to dinner and was soon joined by our friends Carl and George who had played around the crags all morning and then walked back before dusk. After a wonderful meal we sat down on the couches with some gluhwein, but it wasn’t long before I was ready to pass out completely. I got Dean to help me pitch Robert’s tent outside and then crashed soon afterwards. During the night the wind picked up so that the tent rattled in the wind the whole night through and it was only in the early morning ours that I fell asleep for a short while.

Day 2 (22 July): When we rose, the wind was still blowing strongly and it looked like it was going to persist for the duration of the day. We had breakfast at the Chalet again at 08:00 before gearing up and walking out to the crags. We didn’t want to leave to late in the afternoon again so we decided to skip out on the Cool Bananas crag and moved straight onto French Wench, a WI3 and 4 crag a little beyond Cool Bananas. The wind was howling when we climbed down into the crag and the ice was not as good as Dean had hoped. There were three bolts above the climb but none of them had any hangers on them. Dean had spare hangers and proceeded to fix them using cable ties! We backed the two bolt placements up with three pieces of natural protection. I decided early on not to climb that day so I left my boots, crampons and ice axes in the car. While Robert lowered Dean I sat on the edge taking pictures. Dean then climbed up with Robert belaying. It was a nice short climb and Dean was soon up, and then got lowered back to the bottom. Then Robert took all the cameras and with me belaying went to the bottom as well. Robert and Dean then took turns to climb with Robert climbing 4 times and Dean 5 times to the top while I was belaying. At just after 12:00, we decided to call it a day, packed up and walked back to Sani Top, leaving there just after 2pm.

Amphitheatre (Drakensberg) Jul 2007

I drove to Chris’s place on Friday afternoon and arrived at 3pm. We were in Harrismith before 8pm and grabbed some grub at the Wrap-it-up café before driving off, arriving at Sentinel car park at 9pm. It was a perfect winter evening and not too cold at all. The only thing that spoiled the evening was veld fires all over the place. Because we wanted a good head start for the following morning we had decided early on to go and sleep in Sentinel caves. So we quickly woke the guards up, signed in and showed them our letter from KZN Wildlife which negated entry fees, and then we were off (Chris had a contact at KZN Wildlife and our mission was to do vulture spotting along the Namahadi escarpment, specifically Bearded and Cape vultures). Hiking in the dark up the zig zags proved to be interesting and the fires all around us made for a very surreal experience – it felt like we were Frodo and Samwise walking up Mt Doom! We made good time, took some interesting pictures with the fires and at 11pm found Sentinel caves, immediately going to the larger one on the left. We settled down and it wasn’t long before we were fast asleep.

Day 1 (14 July): We slept in a little and only got going at around 07:30. I had a quick bite to eat with Chris deciding to have breakfast later on. We then packed quickly and made a beeline for the chain ladder. At the ladder we met with a bunch of BASE jumpers who were going to jump off the Amphitheatre at Ribbon falls. As we talked I realized one of the guys was the same guy Darrell and I met a few years ago on Sentinel and who we watched jumping off close to "Here be Dragons" on the north face. We climbed the ladders past the group, got to the top and made our way to the Namahadi ruins where we gathered snow for water. We found a spot close by as an observation point and had a quick breakfast. However, the observation point was not looking out onto any known vulture nests so we soon moved beyond Namahadi pass, over the first saddle and then contoured around until we found a good spot that looked onto a decent cliff face, close to where we thought nests might be. The observation point was a little promontory below a buttress and provided a little protection against the wind that picked up slightly. We sat here for quite a while, scouring the cliffs with binoculars and although I spotted a hole that might be a nest, there was nothing inside. But our efforts were rewarded when two Bearded vultures came flying past and we followed them until they disappeared in the west. We wrote up the sighting and then decided to move onto the cutback below Namahadi peak where there were two nests marked on the map. It was a long walk but we eventually got there and found a good viewpoint. For some reason my stove leaked when I was busy boiling water in Sentinel cave that morning so I was a little concerned about it. Deciding to have our dinner for late lunch I got the stove going while Chris went off looking for some more snow. I figured out that the stove only leaked when the valve of the pump was opened to its absolute maximum, solving it by only keeping the valve three quarters open. While I waited for Chris I melted our ice water, and heated up the mince Chris had prepared for dinner so by the time he got back, we had a decent meal. Although we stayed at this spot for more than two hours, we only saw a few Cape vultures but no Bearded vultures. It looked like there were plenty nests in the large cliff faces close to us but none of them looked inhabited. Finally, at about 16:30 we gave up and walked back towards the Tugela bowl. Soon after we started walking, my left foot packed up again and I winced as I limped along behind Chris. It started getting dark at 17:15 and by the time we reached the Namahadi ruins, it was almost completely dark. We found a nice flat spot right below the ruins and settled in for the night. It was a cool night with actual temperature dropping to -6.5 degrees C. There was also a nasty westerly breeze blowing that probably dropped the temperature to below -10 and also had us zipping our bags right up. Even so, it was a cosy night in the bags and I slept well.

Day 2 (15 July): We got up as the sun rose above Sentinel, packed up and walked over to an observation point on the cliffs about 500m west of the chain ladder. Here we made breakfast and eventually decided to stay there for at least 2 hours. Seeing nothing at first we eventually got rewarded with a spectacular sighting of a sub-adult Bearded vulture, preceded by two Cape vultures and followed by another. It was then after 11am already and we decided to call it a trip. We walked to the chain ladders, descended and then made a dash for the car park, arriving at 12:45. We gave a lift to John, one of the guards at the hut and after we dropped him in Phutaditjaba, we were on our way to some greasy chips in Harrismith.