by Colin McCoy
In July this year a small group of us had the privilege of hosting Canadian ice and mixed climber, Will Gadd, for a whirlwind 10-day climbing trip in the Drakensberg. This all came about when Tim Larsen commented on an Instagram post of Will’s, about how short the South African ice climbing season is.
Believe it or not the rest of the world don’t think SA even has a winter. International climbers know of Rocklands and Boven, but SA as an ice climbing destination? Definitely not! Somehow Tim managed to convince Will that if he came to SA there would be ice to climb. At least the backup plan would be that there’s definitely good rock.
The team consisted of myself (Colin McCoy), Tim Larsen, Lloyd Anderson, Franco Houy and Garrreth Bird (who did an excellent job documenting the trip through his lens). We were also joined by two porters at Giant’s Castle, Mlayo and Sikile.
The first stop was Giant’s Castle. The evening before, at my place, the weather was quite tropical. I’d been to Bokong and Sani the week before, so I knew there was at least some ice, but to be honest I was sceptical that we would find anything worthwhile for Will to climb. Ice climbing is so condition dependent. I know of a number of lines in the Drakensberg that when formed would make amazing first ascents, but they very rarely come into condition. At least the worst case would be that Will would have the novelty of climbing ice in SA and then we’d spend the rest of the trip rock climbing.
Going ice climbing at Giant’s Castle is a mini expedition, it’s about a 15 kilometre approach walk with a 1,500 metre altitude gain. We made good time on the walk in and had set up camp above and to the east of the Shiza Gully by mid evening. All was going well at this point, and we had walked past the top of the ice route called Makhaza, which, to our relief, was well formed.
If you have camped on top of Giant’s Castle in mid-winter, you may have experienced the notoriously strong winds. Well, it lived up to its reputation.
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