Saturday, 28 December 2024

Garden Castle Reserve Drakensberg

 FOR SOMETHING TO BE ADVENTUROUS IT HAS TO BE UNPREDICTABLE.”

UNKNOWN







Garden
Castle Reserve

Drakensberg




How often is it that we dream of adventure and exploration in this modern age? To get lost in a wilderness area and experience a life far removed from the human rat race. Garden Castle Reserve in the southern Drakensberg is indeed a place where dreams of adventure can come true. It is a vast and exceptionally beautiful wilderness area, made for long range hiking. There is so much to see and experience that a normal day walk would simply not do.





You need to pack your hiking bag for a number of days and venture forth into the wild wilderness, exploring and finding all the hidden gems awaiting you in this area. Garden Castle richly rewards those making the effort to explore the wilderness. It is a place which draws you ever deeper into her arms and there are truly some magnificent sights to behold.

Travel to the town of Underberg, go straight through and a few kilometers outside of town turn right onto the Garden Castle road. The roads are well signposted and also tarred all the way to the camp. Any vehicle will do. After about 32 kilometers you will arrive at the gate of the Drakensberg Gardens Hotel. Sign in at the gate and proceed through the hotel grounds to the Garden Castle Reserve office.



Accommodation outside of the reserve is plentiful and you will be spoilt for choice. Staying at the Garden Castle Hotel gives you close access to the reserve wilderness trails. There is a very nice and clean campsite available in the reserve itself with more than reasonable rates and immediate access to the trails. The campsite also boasts superb views and on most days you will have the place to yourself. Fuel is available right outside the hotel gates and the hotel operates a superette on their premises should you have the need to stock up on supplies.

There is a car park available at the office for the cars of the day walkers or those going on multi-day hikes. A picnic site is also available.



Garden Castle Reserve is one of the most beautiful areas in all of the Drakensberg and well worth a visit.

Most people tend to stay at the Drakensberg Gardens Hotel and do their walks from there. Mashai Pass and the Rhino Peak Route is a crowd favorite and on most days people will be trekking up the pass. The route can become quite busy, which, for a hardcore hiker like myself, distracts from the experience. The other routes available to the walker and which can be completed in a day seems to be discarded in favor of Mashai Pass, which is a pity as these routes are exceptionally beautiful. The area is an absolute paradise for the multi-day hiker and explorer and allows a person to travel wide and far. How far you can walk is the only limit. I have recently spent a fabulous 7 days in the area and it was absolutely magical.




There are various river pools available for swimming and currently the flowers in the area are a sight to behold.

For the day hiker there are 6 main trails available, all of them spectacular:
1) Mashai Pass and Rhino Peak.
2) Sleeping Beauty Cave.
3) Hidden Valley.
4) Bushman’s Neck.
5) Lake Naverone.
6) Bushman Rock, Three Pools, and Champagne Pool.



Maps are available from the reserve office and please take note that you are not allowed to visit any cave with Bushmen Rock Art without a guide, which can be arranged at the office.

For the multi-day hiker your imagination is the only limit as to where and how far you can go. However, when you do go, be properly prepared, and have your hike well planned as the Drakensberg is a very unforgiving place for those ill-prepared and can become a very hostile place very quickly.




Hiking in the Drakensberg is about the freedom of a wilderness experience, not about ‘how much’ or ‘how far’. Just go out there and enjoy the mountains like a bushman. Then you will discover why the Drakensberg is a Cathedral of the senses.

We as hikers, explorers, and
adventurers have the absolute duty to respect and protect our Wildernesses.
Nobody else will do it for us. Take ownership!




The End.


Safe Hiking.





References and Acknowledgements

From the book: My Notebook

Photos:  ©Willem Pelser

Compiled by:  Willem Pelser



Saturday, 14 December 2024

GIANT’S CASTLE

 “THE VIEW WAS OF A

TRIANGULAR PEAK, SOME TWO THOUSAND FEET ABOVE US, STANDING IN A CLOUDLESS SKY”

CALIBAN. ON SIGHTING GIANT’S CASTLE, 1912



GIANT’S CASTLE






   On a clear day you can see, from a hilltop in Mooi River (a small farming town in the shadow of the Drakensberg), the Giant’s Castle massif dominating the skyline some seventy kilometers to the west. The image resembles a huge figure lying on its back, staring into the sky, peaceful, silent and contemplative. The Castle itself, which forms the Giant’s head, has three high points, the middle or ‘nose’ being the main summit. This point rises to 3 314 meters, unusually high for a peak set away from the main escarpment wall.

   Known to the Zulu people as Bhulihawu, ‘the place of the field thrasher’, or Phosihawu, meaning ‘the shield finger’, the peak is the largest example of a singular mass in the Drakensberg, extending away from the range in an easterly direction for more than three kilometers. The more superstitious called it Ntabayikonjwa, ‘the mountain to which you must not point’, for fear it will retaliate with bouts of violent weather. Owing to its size, the peak’s ability to manipulate the forces of nature on occasion is quite feasible.





When looking up from in its immediate valleys, Giant’s Castle’s main summit takes on a spectacular pyramidal shape, with two sweeping ridges descending to the southeast and north, like great arms embracing the valley below. Many of the earlier climbing routes are found in this area, and a beautifully placed mountain hut waits in the valley, providing a good base from which to start most of the Castle’s technical climbs.






THE PLACE OF VULTURES
   Around to the right of this valley extends the mighty north wall. In 1997, one of the most ambitious Drakensberg routes was completed on this enormous precipice. The climb, following an extremely thin weakness, boasts some of the finest and most committing climbing in the Drakensberg range to date, testament to the high level of mountaineering that can be achieved in the area. The route was named after the Bearded Vultures, or Lammergeier (meaning ‘lamb grabber’), that grace the peak’s surrounding skies.




   As early as 1941 the peak had been considered as a mountaineering objective, when a climber pioneered a route up the treacherous looking Eastern Gully.

   Despite this early interest, face-climbing proper only began when climbers completed what is now considered a classic line up the north face in 1950. The opening of Schole’s Route fired a new interest in the peak as a mountaineering and climbing sanctuary. The establishment of a second route on the north wall in 1971, veering right from the start of Schole’s Route, reasserted the peak’s importance as one of the range’s most challenging mountaineering summits. With routes like Lammergeier and more recently the Land Der Gesetzlosen (‘Land of the Lawless’), the Giant’s north wall is fast becoming a big-wall test piece for southern African climbers.





   On the southern slopes, winter mountaineering and ice-climbing developments add a new dimension of challenge on the Giant, offering an aspect of the sport that is often difficult to practice in Africa owing to the warm climate.





   The Giant, with its shear faces, particularly its north wall, holds numerous future climbing prospects. The peak is likely to be a focal point in African climbing in the 21st century.





Giant’s Castle is a place of dreams, of staring at the stars by night and the blue skies with white cotton-wool clouds by day.



IT IS A PLACE UNTOUCHABLE BY MAN. IT IS A RESTING PLACE OF GIANTS.






1 – Frontal Route – First Climbed 1955

2 – Schole’s Route – First climbed 1950

3 – Colli Extendenticum – First climbed 1971

4 – South East Ridge – First Climbed 1954

5 – Lammergeier – First Climbed 1997

6 – Land Der Gesetzlosen – First Climbed 1998




We as hikers, explorers, and
adventurers have the absolute duty to respect and protect our Wildernesses.
Nobody else will do it for us. Take ownership!


The End.

Safe Hiking.

















Acknowledgements

Extract from the book – Serpent Spires – Duncan Souchon

Photos – Willem Pelser, The Mountain Man.