Southern Berg escarpment traverses

@Ghaznavid, Thanks for the advice, yes i have no doubt it will be freezing cold,i must say the thought of heavy snowfall sounds all exciting but in reality it would not be pleasant.
i will do my best to take pictures,im new to this kind of hiking so my Kodak Playsport camera will be going mad to take heaps of pictures.
i see there is a possibility of rain which doesnt excite me at all.
i think trying to get tent pegs into the ground will be fun,
time and weather dependent we want to get to Rhino Peak and back to the pass,we plan to stay in the saddle at the top of the pass if possible on friday night.

Personally I enjoy looking at my photos from past hikes almost as much as I enjoy actually being there!

I have always seen snow like this: I am happy I experienced it in the past, and I am happy to not currently be in it. Its cold, its wet, its slippery and as it melts you almost can't stand still without sliding on it. Not nice for hiking in.

Personally I have never had ground frozen enough to not be able to get tent pegs in (although I always enjoy walking on crunchy frozen sand), but I am yet to spend a night on the escarpment in winter. Its fun having to bend the guy ropes on your tent due to them being frozen though. Almost every day on the GT, first break of the morning we all took our tents out and let them dry in the sun.

If you take it slow, Mashai Pass and climbing Rhino peak won't take more than 6 hours, even with a 30 minute break on the summit. There isn't much water at the top of Mashai Pass. Its usually better to camp near a river from a water point of view, but it is colder and the ground is much more likely to be frozen due to the drainage on the ridges being better. The valley just south of the ridge behind Rhino was one of my favourites from the GT, just because of how deep it is compared to the high peaks that surround it (i.e. its got tough ridges on both sides, but the valley itself is well sheltered). This is the valley from about 3200m on the Lequooa ridge, the peaks sou can see are Matebeng and Wilson. Bollard and Wilson Pass are to the right of this, separated by a jutting out bit of land.



Have an awesome and safe trip - I'm looking forward to a nice long writeup on the hike with tons of pics, this is one of the most amazing stretches of the Berg in my opinion.

Thanks
i will give it stick, my aim is to get my 6yr old son to the top of the Masahai Pass in 2 yrs time, i got him half way up this last christmas holidays, he is addicted to the berg.

Nice! Have you taken him up one of the easy routes to the escarpment before? Chain-ladders, Langies etc.

i havent as yet, i want to take him up the Chain Ladder after winter, must be honest i am a southern berg lover delux,i am taking the family camping at Garden Castle the weekend of the 6/7/8 July, so we'll take a family day hike around there sometime,
i have taken him from Bushmans Nek Border post to the bottom of walkers peak, he was driven on by the snow and the thought of playing in it

Can't blame you for finding the Southern Berg to be the best, Garden Castle is one of my favourites too.

Have you done the Hidden Valley before? I personally put that one down as one of the best hikes for a family, its fairly flat for a long time, so its easy if they aren't fit or aren't up for a long walk on the day, but you can do a good 25km round trip walk if you want, so its also good if they are very fit. Its very scenic, its got good water and lots of pools (not that swimming is usually appealing in winter in super cooled water!), tons of caves, lots of gullies to explore, and its not an overcrowded area.

After some research on altitude sickness (which keeps messing with me, I am sitting on 4 high berg hikes in a row right now where I have had altitude sickness issues), the people who never seem to have issues with it are always the people who got into hiking from a very young age. Reinhold Messner (if you don't know who he is, he was the first person to do all 14 of the 8000m peaks, the first person to climb Nanga Parbat - and the first to climb up one side of Nanga Parbat and down the other side - on his successful first attempt, the first person to do Everest without supplemented oxygen, the first person to do the 7 summits and the only person in history to have done the 8000ers, 7 summits and the North and South Pole, often considered to be the greatest mountaineer of all time - and he is still alive today unlike most famous mountaineers who die climbing some other significant peak) was basically climbing the Dolomites in the Alps when he was 5, and it seems that due to this he has no issues whatsoever with altitude. So I think its a really good idea to get children in the mountains from such a young age.

No i havent done the Hidden Valley, i will definetly take the family on that route in 3 weeks time, the lightie will love it, is the start of the Hidden Valley within walking distnace from Garden Castle Camp site?

You cross the bridge over the Mashai river just below the car park, follow the Giant's Cup trail for a while, it goes around the one ridge and then there is a path that turns off to the right. If you start dropping down steeply towards the Mzimude River, you missed the turnoff. You then just pretty much follow the river until you feel like turning around.

The first 4km along the Giant's Cup Trail takes you past the Sunken Valley which is very scenic, the path after the turnoff then follows fairly high up on the ridge on the north side of the Mzimude River, there are some really good examples of volcanic sills in the valley - I have only ever seen basalt at around 2000m in this area, never anywhere else in the Berg:


The path soon drops down to the river and 2km after the turnoff from the Giant's Cup Trail (ie 6km from the start) you get to the Hidden Valley:


You can then keep going up the valley for as long as you want, after about 6km from the start of the valley you reach the end of the valley and then start the approach to Mzimude and Walker's Pass (the 2 passes start from the same place - kind of).

There is a thread on this route somewhere on VE.

Hi Guys
Report on my Rhino summit and traverse, well we left the Garden Castle Parks Board Office at around 11 am on Friday, as we left the weather rapidly changed from being overcast to drizzling. Within 15 mins of leaving the Parks Baord office it was raining rather heavily.
We made a decision that we would take a lunch break in Pillar Cave and let the weather blow over,
Well it only seemed to get worse, the wind gusts were in my opinion around 65kph and the raining was driving down hard.
The top of Mashai Pass was no longer visible once we had reached Pillar Cave. My hiking partner is very experienced ( he has climbed Killi, mount blanc, mount albaris) and advised we hang out in pillar cave until such time as the pass becomes visible.

By 2:30pm It was clear that the weather had set in for the afternoon. Our plan to ascend up Mashai and traverse across to Rhino and head along towards Bushmans by late afternoon had been dashed.
We then set up camp in pillar cave for the evening, the wind was howling so bad that we actually set up our tent inside the cave to give us better protection and insulation. According to my thermometer it read 5degrees and that didn't take into count the wind chill.

We woke early on Saturday morning all keen to finish up our ascend up the pass and get cracking, the weather was not clear but thankfully it was not raining, we set off around 8am ( later than I hoped) all keen, it was not easy going as the pass was very slippery due to the heavy rain and ice on the pass from the day before.

Again after about 20mins from pillar cave the weather turned very foul and started raining again, wet weather gear came out, we were determined not to be beaten again by mother nature. The rain started to fall very hard and the wind picked up again to a very unpleasant speed, we were about 500m from the top of the pass and mother nature decided that she would throw snow, sleet, rain and gail force winds at us, we were now about 200m from the top of the pass when we decided to turn back, our wet weather gear was now completely soaked through, the pass was slippery beyond belief. To my absolute disgust we turned around again and retreated for Pillar Cave, after scrambling down the pass as fast as we could ( a few good falls due to the pass freezing up) we arrived back at pillar cave, defeated, deflated and freezing.

Our plans changed quickly on Friday afternoon due to the rain and again on Saturday, in true "Murphys Law" fashion we woke up sunday morning to the most glorious day and a heap of snow had fallen on Rhino and Peaks surrounding, the Mashai Pass had around a foot of snow covering it.
I will go back in the next month to finish the planned trip and as the saying goes, " what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger"
I am a lot wiser for the trip and what to do next time. Although I'm highly dissapointed we didn't even get to the top of the pass and onto Rhino I can say it was an unbelievable experience.

A quick foot note, we usd the Backcountry ready to eats for supper and I must say the Thai Green Curry is by far the best.
I will post some pictures tomorrow.

Its a shame you didn't get to finish the route, but to quote a famous hiker "summiting is nice, but ariving back home is mandatory". And you got to experience snow - as well as blizzard. Many times I have not got to my goal, but I always say that if you enjoyed it and got good pics, its totally worth it

Mashai Pass is a monster in strong wind - I could barely stand on the upper reaches of the pass last time I tried to do it due to how bad the wind was.

Looking forward to photos...