Heritage Day in South Africa is celebrated on 24 September each year. It is commonly celebrated by a good traditional South African braai (barbecue). I prefer to celebrate South Africa’s mountain heritage over this weekend. While South Africa might not have the highest mountains, there are plenty of interesting ones that are well worth the effort.

A summary of my Heritage Day weekends for the past 10 years would look like this: 2012 Gypaetus Pass, 2013 a Giants Castle mini-traverse, 2014 a 7 day Giants Cup/Sani Pass/escarpment traverse, 2015 a traverse from Monks Cowl to Didima, 2016 Mponjwane Pass, 2017 the Northern High Traverse in a day, 2018 Double Giants Cup Trail, 2019 a mini-traverse at Cobham, 2020 a 4 passes traverse at Mnweni, and 2021 Buffelshoek in the Hex Mountains.

For 2022, Heritage Day happened to fall on a Saturday – which meant it wouldn’t be a long weekend. Nonetheless, I had no interest in breaking the tradition. After all – late September is a wonderful time to be in the mountains. The grass is starting to turn green again, and as always, some snow would be nice! I had also just booked a flight to Nepal for November – and having done my homework on the route I would be attempting, Three Passes Circuit in the Everest Region, my attitude quickly changed from “I could do it tomorrow without further training”, to realising that the elevation gain required would be almost as much as the Double Drakensberg Grand Traverse I had done in 2016 – the hardest hike I’ve ever done.

Tony agreed to join me for the weekend, so we settled on a long standing goal of mine – Makheka, 3462m, the 2nd highest mountain in Southern Africa. We agreed that Judge Pass was the logical route and we would do it from Giants Castle. Being a long weekend (well, not really), we agreed to carry tents in case the cave was not available and for some flexibility.

We drove to Giants Castle on Thursday afternoon, got our hiking permits at the gate, and spent the night at the picnic site. Around 7AM we were off.

There had been a reasonable amount of snow, and we were concerned that this could complicate things. Although it had been a few days since it fell, and conditions had been warm – so I was confident it would mostly be gone by now.

I have hiked at Giants Castle more than anywhere else. It is a nature reserve I know very well. I won’t call it the most beautiful part of the Drakensberg, not even close, but it is definitely one of the easier places to hike. The trails are easy to follow and are never that difficult by Drakensberg standards. Don’t get me wrong – a pass is a pass.

Seeing Cathkin in the distance with a decent covering of snow made me wonder if my calculations were off. I had gear for the cold and would likely be fine – but snow slows you down a lot.

We made good time reaching the contour path, and stopped for a short break before continuing on.

I have walked from Giants Castle to Bannerman Hut many times – one of the trails I have done the most, probably only behind Garden Castle to Pillar Cave and Langalibalele Pass, and on a similar tally to Garden Castle to the Hidden Valley. This section went very quickly and easily. From Bannerman Hut to Judge Pass is always a bit tricky as the trail is hard to follow – although Tony took charge of navigation here and thus we didn’t lose the trail.

We stopped at the bottom of Judge Pass for lunch, and seeing as I had signal – I posted an update on progress.

Judge Pass is a pass I have done a few times, always as part of a speed hike. On this occasion, my pack was far heavier than I am used to – but I knew I needed to prepare for a heavy pack for my Nepal trip, so it was good training. A pass always feels harder with a heavier pack – although the walk-in to Judge Pass is a long one, which doesn’t help either. Every time I have gone up Judge Pass, I have always gone from the car park to the summit in a day.

Not much to say about Judge Pass – it is basically average distance, average gradient and a really good trail, making for a reasonably average grass gully pass by Drakensberg standards.

The usual top of the pass was covered in snow, and I was in trail shoes, so we took a line south of the trail on top to avoid the snow.

I was surprised how much snow greeted us on top. While it was patchy, it was considerably more than I had anticipated.

I always forget how far it is from Judge Pass to Upper Injisuthi Cave. That ascent from the river to the saddle isn’t trivial either, with over 350m elevation gain. By the time we started the ascent, my lack of Drakensberg hiking in recent times was definitely showing and my pace became very slow.

We looked for a spot where we could pitch a tent on the flat ground on the way up the ridge – mostly because it would mean being close to water, but also because I had realised I was probably too slow to reach the cave before dark. This detour didn’t result in finding anything that was both dry and flat, unfortunately, so we made our way back to the trail and continued up the ridge.

We got to the cave as it was getting dark, and found it empty. I have probably slept in this cave more than any other Drakensberg Cave. Aside from how well sheltered it is and how conveniently placed it is, and the lack of anything useful nearby – it is also one of the best views one will find from a cave in the Drakensberg.

We were walking again by 7AM on Saturday – today would be mostly new ground for both of us, the stats suggested an easy day, but we were prepared for a hard day and thus knew it was possible that we wouldn’t get as far as returning to the cave – so we didn’t stash any gear. On the way out from the cave, we had a look at UIC Annex Cave – which surprisingly neither of us had been to before.

Like many annex caves in the Drakensberg, it isn’t terrible, but isn’t nearly as good as the main cave. But its good to know that if the main cave isn’t available, it is there for use.

As Andrew always says – to get past Mafadi, it is usually quicker to simply go over it. Being Heritage Day, it did feel fitting to stand on the highest point in South Africa. Both of us have stood on this summit many times, my first time was with Tony and a few others on my first Grand Traverse back in 2012. This was my tenth time and second for the year, but it is always a nice summit to walk over. The summit itself was covered in snow and ice, although not enough to justify taking my ice spikes out of my pack.

A mission that both Tony and I have been on for around a decade now is determining the topographic prominence of peaks in the Drakensberg. From varying sources, we had determined Mafadi’s prominence to be between 110 and 160m – but Tony had noted that everyone simply ignores the peak between Mafadi and Makheka when doing these calculations. Known as Lithotobolong (spelt incorrectly in my photo below), the ARCGis maps note it as 3461m, which would make it Mafadi’s parent peak. So the goal was now to head up this summit and identify the key saddle.

The trail towards Makheka goes fairly close to the summit, so we dropped our packs and went to the top. Our GPS devices both agreed that it was higher than Mafadi, and based on the measurement of the saddle between Mafadi and Lithotobolong, Mafadi only has around 75m topographic prominence. While I have not considered Mafadi to be a mountain summit for many years, but rather a subsidiary summit of Makheka, this measurement was a further nail in the coffin of the second highest country high point on earth that does not have at least 7% prominence relative to height. Notably most country high points higher than Mafadi are ultra-prominence mountains.

We continued along the ridge, with occasional patches of snow slowing us down a bit – but generally making good progress.

There is a fair drop in the trail before Makheka itself is actually reached – which is the saddle that is often used (incorrectly) for Mafadi’s prominence. We knew this was coming, and were prepared for it. We hid our packs in some rocks and continued along for the summit.

There was an old kraal near the summit, which looks like it is no longer in use. While it would be one of the highest kraals in Southern Africa, there is a kraal just below the summit of Thabana Ntlenyana which is actually higher.

Like many other peaks that are statistically relevant, the view from the second highest mountain in Southern Africa wasn’t about to win any contest for the best view in Southern Africa – but after wanting to head up this peak for more than 12 years, it was great to finally stand on the summit. We got a good look around, some photos and both measured the height according to our GPS devices – incidentally mine recorded 3470m, 8m higher than the official height. A handheld GPS with a barometric altimeter is usually within 10m, so this would be about right. Most importantly it agreed with the ARCGis data that suggested that Makheka was higher than Lithotobolong, which is higher than Mafadi – which was good to confirm, even if all measurements were within margin for error and thus technically meaningless.

The realisation I have had about the Drakensberg for some time now is that the best part of the range is the passes, not the summits. Don’t get me wrong, some of the summits are great, but the best spots are almost always on the passes.

As we neared our packs, there was a large group of shepherds nearby. We saw this when we were too far from our packs to do anything about it. Fortunately they either didn’t see them or didn’t care about them – either way they were left alone. There are plenty of stories of hikers being scared of the local shepherds, but I am not entirely convinced they would have done anything even if they had walked right past them (which they possibly did) – I have very rarely even had minor problems with shepherds on top of the Drakensberg. I assume, like everyone else, they are just living their day-to-day lives without too much concern for the random hikers walking by.

The hike back went smoothly, a lot of the snow earlier in the day was now gone. It had been a perfectly clear day, as good as we could have hoped for.

We got an earlier start the next morning – we had a long drive home, and we knew the end would be hot as we would be in the lower range around midday.

We made really good progress to the top of the pass, and got down the pass in no time at all. I had gone from the cave to Giants in a day a few times before, so I was aware that it was a reasonably easy day. I remember in 2018 when I had gone from the cave to Langalibalele Pass and still reached the car park before 2PM.

Judge Pass definitely provides for a quick way back down the mountain!

We stopped by the river just before the car park for about 20 minutes, which was nice. We ended up managing to get from the cave to the car in 6h52 in the end, which isn’t bad with heavy packs!

Overall a great weekend and another peak I have wanted to do for years finally ticked off – 2022 has been a great year for peaks for me!

Thanks to Tony for joining me on this one!