Mostertshoek Twins

Mostertshoek Twins

Green Gullies

The route seldom comes into condition and has been climbed in winter in conditions ranging from snowless to thigh deep powder and bullet hard neve. It is a very long day with tricky route finding and a somewhat dodgy descent from the ridge. Take sufficient gear to survive a cold night's bivvy.

The farmers name is Anton Roos, 083 629 1735, you may need to try several times before getting hold of him.

Take the normal approach to the Waaihoek parking, but instead park at his house. Drive up past the fancy gates and the barn/shed, the road bends right (where the sign in book is -- sign in!), take the first left to Anton's house, there is a sign saying "Vredehoek". Park by the big pine trees next to the old equipment. From there walk up the ridge (take the second road to the left), passing the houses. Continue up the hill to the end of the road (you can drive to here in a 4x4, just get permission - it'll save you about an hour on the approach). Carry on up the ridge towards the big, obvious pinnacles, when you reach the rock outcrop, drop down into the kloof on the right, cross the river and carry on along the top of the next very narrow ridge, do not go up the large kloof heading left. You will reach two waterfalls, one above the other. The lower one can be avoided by some easy scrambling on the left side. Once above the first waterfall, there is a large easy gully heading up left. Go up this gully, until you reach a large ledge on the right on which you can walk right (little exposed in places) to get above the second waterfall. Once in the gully above the second waterfall, continue up until the gully splits into a (mostly) straight up branch and an easier angled left gully. The left gully is Green Gullies.

If the ledge looks dodgy, then it is possible to carry on up the large gully to a shoulder where it joins a large gully running almost straight down from the summit. Go up this gully until you reach a rock wall (you may have to traverse around a couple of short waterfalls) where the gully splits into a left branch and a right branch. Take the right branch to the skyline and then drop (down climb/abseil) into Green Gullies.

The route itself is quite easy, almost all on balance climbing with short sections of vertical ice. Take some snow stakes or pickets and a small rack of red, yellow, blue camalots, we rarely found enough open cracks for gear and basically ended up soloing the entire thing. We didn't find thick enough ice for screws and mostly used ice axe belays.

The descent: from the top, walk towards Ceres and take the first gully heading down. Scramble down the gully until you can contour around to the back of the ridge linking Mostertshoek Twins to Waaihoek. Walk to the 3rd (I think) neck along and then keeping left descend the south side of the ridge until you are below all the rock bands. From here walk down gradually, tending right to eventually regain the ridge with the road.

It is worth making sure before you leave the end of the road on the approach which neck you need to reach for the descent and how you are going to get back to the end of the road. That way you should be ok, even in the dark.