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Crag & Route Beta

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Question re South African climbing 12-Jul-2011 At 8:58:42 PM pete_w

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I second Neil, I hauled a heap of stuff over there to go climbing with my wife a couple of years ago when we went to see some family, but I really would have been better off taking a surfboard instead.

Only place my wife felt safeish was Montagu (mostly because we climbed with a brit and she was never on the ground on her own). The rest of the time we climbed she was very uncomfortable - so much so it wasn't worth the effort. Unfortunately we went in summer and it was 40°C so we could only climb in the shade and even then it was pretty unpleasant and slimy. Nearly everywhere else (except WB) we didnt see any other climbers.

The brit had just spent a bunch of time at rocklands and wasn't overly impressed with the place, I think he was a little disapointed that it was more spread out and in accessible than it appears in videos / mags. He was travelling on his own and struggled to find people to climb with which didnt help.

Honestly, of all the crags we visited (Montagu, Oudshoorn, a few places around the Cape, and Watervall Boven) I didn't any of them were that fantastic and I certainly wouldn't rush back to go climbing.

In addition to rapey, staby, shooty issues we also found baboons to be quite intimidating - those buggers are quite big and nasty looking up close - we went to another place called hogs back for climbing - but didnt get out due to the baboon population.

Pete.