by Tony Dick
It is not easy to explain to young climbers why we used to bushwhack to the most remote walls, looking for the longest climbs. Usually what we found was a vast choss-pile of loose rock alternating with overhanging plants. Occasionally I still like to go back to those old routes, just to get into such unlikely positions, where practically no one else has been. I always hope that some young climbers will also go and look for these long routes again, because we had so much fun on them, but I also understand that they might not want to.
The embarrassing thing is that the known routes we did, like Central Diedre in Donkerkloof, Dinosaur Revival in Duiwelskloof, Renaissance, Thunderbolt Direct and Time Warp in Du Toit’s Kloof, are the good ones. That should give you some idea of how bad the unrecorded ones are! l remember making a direct route to the left of the very crooked Duiwels Direct behind Boschendal. Then there was one to the right of North West Frontal route on Du Toit’s Peak, another to the left of Blood is Sweeter than Honey on Yellowwood Amphitheatre, and one to the right of Central Diedre in Donker Kloof. The last mentioned was temporarily known as New Dimensions (G2, A3), to sandbag all our buddies. Actually, it was about 15 pitches of incredibly loose grade 17, which I climbed unroped with Dave Cheesmond, Chris Lomax and Greg Lacey, all carrying multi-day packs, but we topped out before lunch on the first day.
The main point was, the so-called wall had to be long. Yellowwood Amphitheatre was fine, but to be honest, at 250 metres, it seemed a bit short. It took us a long time to realize that the climbing is often much better on shorter cliffs. The lower amphitheatre at Milner turned out to give the best climbing in the country, but it was too short for us (not to mention, way too hard).
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