This past week my old Joburg buddies Hector Pringle and Ian Kotze, and new Joburg buddy Kyle Meenahan took this Capie to Blouberg. The place blew me away. It's incredibly beautiful and the route that Ian and I did - Something of Value - is really, really good. To climbers up north who don't know Blouberg my message would be that you have a world class climbing destination on your doorstep. To Hector, Ian and Kyle - thanks guys for a truly memorable outing. (And I look forward to climbing with Hector at Krakadouw next week!).
The 12-pitch 390m route was made by Kevin Smith, Ian Slatem and Clive Curson in '86. They picked a great line with excellent rock.

Have SA's top Boulderers seen the light and taken up the sharp end of a rope !??

Can anyone confirm the identity of this person attached to the pink rope??

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This is what happens when previously strong boulderers have passed their prime and have to resort to endurance sports in a desperate attempt to re-live their glory days! Riordin WTF!!

Krakadouw was cross pollinated by Gautengers and Western Capers these last few days. Hector Pringle, Andrew Porter, Clinton Martinengo, Julia Wakeling, Douw Steyn, Hilton Davies and Snort fired up the lats and biceps and finger flexors and climbed some of the classic routes there including Gorilla Grooves, Kayaman, Adam, Eve and the Ape, some new tricks and all did the outrageously exposed “Coming of Age” on the Southern Amphitheatre. This route starts in a recess capped by a 15m roof. The climbing is on excellent quality on steel grey rock and Hector reckons it is one of the best routes he has ever done.

Hilton, where are the pics?…

Adam & Eve and the Ape for first three pitches. Then round to Southern Amphitheatre for Coming of Age. Clinton - "one of the best routes I've ever done". Julia - "best route in the world". Hector - "as good as Celestial Journey". Me - "a top 5 route".

Coming of Age

Coming of Age top pitch

shorti & tanya came to visit for a week and we had a fantastic time climbing easy & awesome trad all over the peninsula.
brenda took the valies up on lion's head on day 1 for white face (11) & some other route.
day 2 saw staircase (13) on fountain ledge; TM.
then it was off to hellfire for some like it hot (18 - got rained off the 2nd pitch); afterglow (16); aurora (19); joker smoker (17) & trails&tribulations (20 sport).
back to TM for a day saw jacob's ladder (16) finally allowing shorti to get on it which he onsighted in style with some serious (unforced) runouts. next was escalator (17).
off to montagu we climbed some easy sport at the bold & beautiful; shorti making good on his promise to downgrade some of the routes (one by a whopping 2 grades). luckily he did not send it on trad; chop the bolts and sh@ at the base of the crag like he threatened to do gospel express (17) went on trad (with some scetchy gear on the crux and upper sections.
last day off to lion's head to climb aquanaut (15) and the other 5star 15 clifton crest - arguably the best grade-15 pitch i've climbed on trad.
amazing how much quality entry-level trad is literally in your back yard here in CT. no excuses not get into it (picture below shows shorti answering his phone halfway up clifton crest; duly informing justin that he is downgrading...)

Justin,
Re your note on Nov 8 about the trad routes on Cogmans. Nix Swart and I have been up twice to try and find those routes but also couldn't even find the starts. In the end we opened up something new about 20 metres left of the Rave up some easy stuff except about a 16 below the cave and chains. We then crossed over to the right of the Rave at the cave and continued to the top. 3 pitches of 16 or 17 and exposed at the top. 10 pitches in all. Scrambled back down to the top of the bolted routes and abseiled off. Have some pics somewhere and a RD. We're fairly "mature" climbers so named it "Super Corega".
Ringo.

Howzit
Had an interesting weekend, on Saturday Hector and me had a couple of issues to sort out. With all the rain the kloofs were full of water which made for and interesting decent of Tonquani kloof. I climbed Gnasher first gettting the onsight and dodging the wasps. Hector was not so lucky Just through the crux he got mobbed by a whole bunch and blasphemy ensued. Got of that and headed down to Just Hot which was wet so we headed up to our other issue. Crackamania. After scrabbling around for 1.5 hours we were at the base at last and Hector got promptly shut down on the first pitch. Then I decide to have a go with the same result. Now it starts raining and I traverse right and head up an easy looking open book. Just as I place a .4 cam I hear an ominous buzzing in my neck, too late. Wasps get me, I scream and shout and start down climbing, looking around to see where they come from I see a Death Star sized nest about 3 meters up. I down climb some more and they leave me alone at last. So the Wasps are even with us. Serves us right for getting cocky. Managed to do Butterfly after that and then I was shattered. Nic and Johan (visiting guy from Cape Town on his first trip to the Magaliesberg) did Sabre, Doppler Effect, Tigatrix. Johan and Hector then finished off on Boggle. So all in all a very memorable day... Woke up yesterday morning and was very glad that it was raining:-)

PS. The 0.4 cam is still there for anyone brave enough to go and fetch it.


cheers
Ian

Dark Horse and I did "Fun Time" at Yellowwood yesterday. It used to be called Slack Time but in fact there is nothing really slack about it since we straightened the second last pitch to include a strenuous overhanging crack to start the pitch.

Fun Time is a really good route and comparable to King Kong in the Cederberg for difficulty, variety and even quality although it is on more serious rock as Yellowwood is inclined to offer. There is only one short easy scramble pitch on the whole route and the rest is all varied climbing. On-sight grades, especially if you have never climbed at Yellowwood, are 21 21 20 19 14 19 21 20. If you are used to Yellowwood then the technical grades that are more comparable to those on Prime Time, Blood is Sweeter than Honey and Armagedon time are really 19 20 19 17 14 18 20 19. The first pitch has a tricky intimidating start but is technically only 19. So nothing very hard at all.

The second last pitch is a fantastic 20/21 "Krakadouw" quality pitch starting with a overhanging technical jamb crack and then onto very steep crack climbing with some face moves.

This is a moderate route, the only one on the main wall. It is very do-able and probably the most user friendly and forgiving route at YW. It is also slightly shorter route than the others on the main amphitheatre by about 20m or one pitch.

Nice thing it is also very forgiving on hot sunny days: one can do all the first 4 harder pitches in the shade. Then there are easy pitches that may be sunny. Then the Krakadouw pitch may be partly sunny and the last pitch is shady including the belay at the top at this time of the year.

The pro is excellent with no run outs like the other routes mentioned. However, tiny cams are essential like the purple alien or equivalent BD or Wild Country or metolius cams.

All the tricky bits can be avoided except the start of the first pitch. See the Climb.co.za Wiki for the route description.

A bunch of us geyzers blitzed up Slangolie buttress 12 Apostles yesterday. There were 5 of us, the average age being kept just under 50 as Margaret (46) joined us. It is a fun outing and the only "big wall" trad outing of its kind that I am aware of the world -it being in walking distance from a cosmopolitin city such as Cape Town It is about 450m in height and involves varied climbing on very climbable rock. But it requires some care and experience to ascend safely.

The climbers were Mark Straughan, Margaret Milne, Hugh Willis, Deon and Anton Van Zyl

It was an exciting weekend in Boven:
First up Jono Cohen managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory twice before finally sending Lotters Desire (27). On his first near-send he bungled the top sequence and had to skip the crux clip, resulting in a spectacular fall most of the height of the crag. Next go he managed to clip but still couldn't keep it together on the poor feet above the crux. Finally, and by now thoroughly pissed off, he crushed the crux and to everyone's relief didn't screw up the top again.

Next up was young Dylan Vogt on Snapdragon (29). He'd been stymied by wasps before but he finally manned-up and took out the deathstar nest with a long pole and a little-girl squeal. On his next burn he came close but didn't quite have the top moves dialed. A solid pasta on Saturday night (courtesy of our resident chef, Benito) gave him the juice to finish the route off first go Sunday.

Then finally, local veteran Gustav Janse van Rensburg was so inspired (goaded?) by the youth that he also sent Snapdragon. A very shaky start got him desperately to the shake-out beneath the first roof. From there he cruised his way to the chains. After the send he commented that the route was "slightly harder than Rude Bushman".

The crux of the weekend was explaining to Dylan's dad why we'd be home too late for Dylan to finish his homework. Man, but its tough to be a climber with all these responsibilities!

Yesterday Dark Horse, Josh Fensham and I did a second ascent of Snorty's new Yellowwood route Fun Time. By the time we were half way up I was feeling that the trip wasn't really worth it, but this is the original variant that was called Slack Time. Then we got onto the new pitches (8, 9 and 10) that turn the route into Fun Time, and boy it is fun. For the last three pitches the rock is superb and the climbing is beautiful....like really good Cederberg stuff, hence "the Krakadouw Pitch".
We topped-out at 12h30 and had only parts of the last pitch in the sun. Quite a different way of experiencing Yellowwood!
Smalblaar Ridge is not a Yellowwood Amphitheatre route and this route, at the other end, isn't one of the true, tough Yellowwood routes, but like Smalblaar it is very worthwhile and while not a doddle, it is a moderate way of getting up the mountain.

Andrew Pedley flexed his muscles of some trad routes on TM this weekend including No Longer Ease 25, And Arms Race 23 with Willem. They enticed me to the Hole but they all left as I arrived with my mate Willis - nice buddies. Anyway I managed to haul my ole body up 2 routes with relative ease and then left to find a dead genet on Boyes Drive where we park.

What a shame and what a beautiful creature.

I've got a little story to share about the coming of age of my mate Sipho (aka Matthys to the white people). Six of us went to Trident yesterday and Sipho and I ended up climbing alone in the top of the kloof while the others got bored with our scrambling up and down to find a suitable climb and just climbed the first and best climbable looking line (which, by the sound of it, got them a bit of a sandbag). Our first route (named George) went down rather well, although I have a suspicion we spiced it up a little too much on steep and somewhat loose rock at the top. Our second route was Swiss Army Knife, an old school Fatti F3. After a quick crash course recap, Matthys - who hasn't climbed much in the last few months - set of to lead the first pitch. It soon became apparent that maybe we were trying to bite more than we could chew, but Matthys wasn't gonna give in. It looked like there was plenty gear to be found from where I was... sitting by now, but he was having a mighty hard time placing anything, and I could see how some of the placements gave him grey hairs. He was not comfortable. I tried to keep him calm but I could feel him shaking through the ropes, a rather weird feeling. Two thirds of the way up he slotted in a cam, and looked up at the blank looking face above him, capped by some overhangs about 12 meter up from him. The tension was mounting, but sure he would find some gear before he got to the overhangs where he would build a stance according to the route description. He set of on the thin slightly positive angled face - straight up, deciding to ignore the description that said, diagonally left, then back right. About 6, maybe 7 meters above the last gear, he was struck by fear, still no gear! I was getting worried too. The tension was getting almost unbearable. I begged him to stay calm and concentrate, while I was seriously getting ready to jump of our starting ledge 10 meters above the river bed to a lower ledge about halfway down. I figured if I'm quick enough I can get their before he could tighten the rope, so that I can give him a soft catch. It would be touch and go. In the mean time Matthys was overcome by determination not to fall and started climbing again, not even looking for gear any more. He reached a ledge under the overhangs with a wail and by now he was praying and praising unashamedly. It took him forever to build a stance, most of the time he was just sitting there trying to calm down and release some of the tension. I was quite strung up too by now and didn't feel like climbing any more, but I had to get up to him, so we can finish the route. I struggled up the route and was soon caught between relief of the state of his placements (they were mostly good) and amazement at the guts my mate had. That was some serious climbing and the last lead out was at least 10 meters. A fall from just below the stance (10m x 2 + stretch/slack) would have brought him within 5 meters of the starting ledge. When I got to the stance I had to fight him of from hugging me. He said he has never been so scared in his life and he has done some pretty crazy stuff, but nothing like that. The second pitch was also F3 and also had its moments, but not quite as serious as the first pitch. We soon reached the top, hot and thirsty as hell from spending so much time in the sun, but mostly we were just relieved and happy. Climbing (on sight) so close to his limit on such an enormous lead out easily got him into the crazy club.

Mokganjetsi, phone your brother

I BEG you - don't use that term!



The idea was to find a nice and easy climb, to allow my girlfriend, who is very new to climbing, to climb with us. This turned out to be a serious 18, with sloping, slippery feet and small pinches - not quite the idea, but a lot of fun!

Well done on the climb shorti, you seem to have a knack for finding epic climbs without pro...

i did! my mom will kill you if she finds out!

Hermenator en Sipho...julle wetters! My hande het al die pad getap deur die storie...edge of the seat stuff...sjoe! Dankbaar julle's veilig daarvan af!
Eish...

3 Dodgy Old Dogs aka TATWOCIANS climbed at Tafelberg, Krakadouw and Yellowwood cranking Black Ice 19, Kif 22, Comes a Time 21 and BAT 22 at Tafelberg. Krakadouw: Coming of Age 22 and Australopithecus 23 and Yellowwood did Most of the Time 23 (1st 6 pitches of Fantastic Time) and Fun Time 20

At Yellowwood Hector Pringle and Andrew Porter joined the lads to do Armageddon Time 23+ and Fun Time 20.

myself and arno "bruce lee" managed to spend 12hrs and 15mins on TM yesterday; most of that on the Ledge. was again stunned by the mind boggling beauty of the place; the quality of the climbing and couldn't fathom how there could be only 4 parties climbing..... this is the holy grail of city climbing for sure

anyways, cruised jacob's for a warm-up; checked all the pretty girls in their summer dresses at the top and then on to atlantic crag. what a fan-tas-tic rout! the 3rd pitch (grade 14 yeah right) is super; the pitch thereafter as airy and interesting as it gets for the grade and the final cherry-on-top shooter pitch was damn scary and harder than any (trad) 19 i've been on....so, thinking the grade 18 might be a bit of a sandbag i'm nonetheless super stoked by having climbed a top-class route right here in my backyard. and thanks to arno for taking on the heady side of it all.

also checked clinton & joe working some ridiculously hard new lines and saw the malan-brothers having a communication epic on africa crag hehehe. all in all i can't imagine a better day's climbing!

Andy, Rik and Fiona put up a new route on Wedwo Buttress at Wolfberg.

Click here for the RD

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Climb ZA - Administrator

Jason Temple-Forbes sent his long term project at Oudtshoorn during the past Easter holidays.

Click here for more...

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Climb ZA - Administrator

the original was graded at 31, whats the extension graded at?

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At the chaaaaains boet!!

Jonathan Hajos and Snort got spanked on TATWOC 1st and 2nd pitches last week but Jonathan on-sighted the start of the last pitch past the controversial fixed nut to the rail but then got spanked above that.

Snort and Hajos then climbed RASTAROCK 21 and RAPDOG 24 at Karbonaatjieskraal yesterday but got spanked on DEBOTTLING BOLTS 24.

Debottling bolts and No can do Bolts at KarbonaatjiesKraal

Last weekend (26th), Clinton Martinengo sent the 'The Dream I Knew' (31), a Montagu classic that has seen few repeats since it was opened in the early nineties by Steve Bradshaw (Senior).
(Arjan De Kock and Ben Harper sent the route in May 2009)

Clinton wrote on his 8a.nu scorecard, "I knew it was a done deal be for I even left Cape Town this morning. Also did it in the same style as it was opened. Did the boulder start and did not stem on the upper half of the route and toped out. Thanks Natanya for coming out and belaying me and for just a very nice day out. Also thanks to Steve for all the encouragement and good luck on your project."

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Hey, good going Clinton! Clearly you should eat Pizza for supper more often

On Saturday Julia Wakeling, Tim Dunnet and I did the FFA and first one-day ascent of Blue Moon (25) at Blouberg. It was good to finish off an 8 year project with two great friends. We started climbing in freezing mist at 6am, and kept expecting the sun to come out and the wind to stop. Neither happened, so we shivered our way through the belays. Apart from numb fingers the conditions were ideal for sending. We did the last pitch and a half in the dark and topped out at 7pm.