Tag Archives: hiking

Giants Castle via Sherman’s Route: through the fire and the flames

Giants Castle is one of the most recognisable peaks in the Drakensberg. It can be seen from as far away as Harrismith, Ladysmith, Escourt, Hilton and Underberg. It is a peak I have summitted many times, and is one of my favourites. For many years I have looked at the eastern ridges of the peak […]

Pyramid Standard Route

The Pyramid is a large, well, pyramid shaped peak at Didima Nature Reserve in the Northern KZN Drakensberg. I first saw it in person on a hike in 2010. For many years I admired it knowing I would never stand on its summit, I would never take up rock climbing for a number of reasons, […]

The Dragon’s Breath: Bailed DGT April 2019

Some background The Drakensberg Grand Traverse (or DGT for short) is nothing new. I don’t know who recorded the first variation of the route, but I believe it was at least 40 years ago. There have been many different variations in direction and line, but the concept is roughly that of following the border between […]

Doubling back

Back in 2016 I had a rather odd idea – to do two Drakensberg Grand Traverses back to back. On a cloudy Thursday in January 2017 this goal was completed. It had been the hardest hike I had ever done, and I decided to take 6 weeks off hiking to let everything recover from the […]

Moroke: Rain Maker

On 5 January 2017 I completed one of my strangest, yet most difficult, mountain objectives: I completed a double Drakensberg Grand Traverse over 16 days. It was the hardest hike I have ever done and overall one of the most difficult challenges I have ever undertaken. While I have had big projects in mind since […]

Water, water everywhere

So on a Friday afternoon a team of four of us found ourselves at Injisuthi. The road on the drive in had been in a very bad state, but we had all arrived safely. We set off down the road in light drizzle. The river was flooded, and my choice of Boundary Ridge over the […]

Are you Redi?

Sometimes a hike report title is fairly obvious – and then something happens that causes you to abandon the easiest pun and provide a proper report name! In this instance, this report title was going to be allocated to a hike up Redi Pass in 2016, but the hike ended up going comically wrong and […]

Tropical Travels Part 12

After a good night sleep back at the Burgers’ house in Singapore, Matthew and I spent the morning chilling before I went off to the airport. Changi Airport was its usual amazing self – I was through all the controls very quickly, and decided to have a look at the shops while waiting for my […]

Tropical Travels Part 11

After our week in Mulu, it was nice to be back in Kota Kinabalu. We had our “free breakfast” – better described as toast and coffee – at Borneo Backpackers before heading out to the docks. The plan for the day was to explore the islands off the coast of the city. There are five […]

Tropical Travels Part 10

It was nice to be back at the Mulu Hostel. As basic as it is, and as awesome as Camp 5 was, there is something about being able to have a hot shower and meal! We both decided to try pancakes for breakfast this day. It turned out to be a mistake – the pancakes […]