Chockstone Forum

      Sponsored By
      ROCK
   HARDWARE

Chockstone Photography

Australian Landscape Prints

Chockstone Forum - Crag & Route Beta

Crag & Route Beta

Area Location Sub Location Crag Links

International (General) (General) (General)

Author

Climbing in South Africa?

StephW

16-Apr-2010
8:41:28 PM

Hi,

we are going to South Africa in June and I am pretty keen to get some climbing in.
Has anyone been there and can recommend an area, also in terms of where to stay etc.? We are looking for sport routes in the range 15-22.

Thanks, Steph

egosan

16-Apr-2010
11:19:31 PM

http://www.climb.co.za/wiki/index.php/Trad_Hit_List#A_list_of_best_Trad_routes_in_ZA_-_Any_grade.2C_anything_goes.2C_can_have_a_bolt_here_or_there_but_must_be_primarily_Trad

Table Mountain

nmonteith

17-Apr-2010
6:45:48 AM

June will be bloody freezing and potentially quite wet around Cape Town. Think Melbourne in winter. We spent a couple of weeks there in early July and achieved very little. We never saw Table Mountain emerge from the clouds and it rained almost every day. Rocklands was a washout - we camped there for 4 days and never saw any problems as it was torrentially flooding the whole time. The area around Montagu (a few hours east of Cape Town) has good sandstone sport climbing in the grades you like, but when we were there is was snowing. You have been warned. :-)

We then drove to the other side of country and had a much much more pleasant time. Waterfall Boven was AWESOME, its a few hours east of JBerg). Dark orange sandstone, long routes lots of bolts. Heaps of good stuff in the grades you want. http://www.rocrope.com/home.html. That's where I would head in June!

Personal security is a very real problem in SA. The more people you can have in your group the safer you will be. Knife and gun attacks on climbers at the crag have happened in the past and you need to be prepared. Some crags at Waterfall Boven require an armed guard.

ampedandwired

17-Apr-2010
1:32:59 PM

For our first climb at montagu we arrived at the crag only to find police divers fishing a fresh body out of the lake/pond at its base. Didn't exactly put us at ease with the whole security thing, but the guy who runs the hostel at Boven was really good and even sent someone along to keep an eye on us when we were climbing at some of the dodgier crags.

Don't let it put you off though, there's great climbing in SA. The sport climbing in Boven is indeed awesome (and extensive), especially the routes around the waterfall.

Edit: I should point out that the body in the pond was NOT a climber.

skink

18-Apr-2010
6:24:03 PM

On 16/04/2010 StephW wrote:
>Has anyone been there and can recommend an area, also in terms of where
>to stay etc.? We are looking for sport routes in the range 15-22.

Erm, South Africa is kind of big - where are you going to be based?

Duncan

18-Apr-2010
7:17:40 PM

June in South Africa is the World Cup - I assume our German friend will be moving around quite a bit.

There are 6 messages in this topic.