- Posted by: Rik Clout
- March 26, 2007, 11:11 am
South Africa certainly offers some of the best, and most diverse, rock climbing in the world. The cliffs are big, wild, often remote - and still being discovered. And it’s a climate for being out in.
It started with an article of the German climbing magazine Rotpunkt about Waterval Boven in 1993. From that moment on, foreign visitors have been flocking to this Mpumalanga town for some of the best sport climbing in the universe. The Restaurant (officially known as "The Restaurant at the end of the Universe crags") offers more than 500 routes, and there are still numerous untouched rock faces in the area.
The routes are ranging from scramble-easy to a superhuman 33 - and a number of traditional, unbolted routes. There’s something for everyone here.
Outside Durban, there are also a lot of sport climbs, and a few close to Johannesburg. En route between these two major centres, you’ll find some wonderful bolted routes in good hard sandstone in the eastern part of the Free State - notably at the Mount Everest nature reserve near Harrismith.
If you’re more of a traditionalist, don’t worry. You can revel in miles of unbolted rock in the fantastic, virtually pristine Blouberg in the Limpopo, the Drakensberg in KwaZulu-Natal, the Magaliesburg in North West - in close striking distance of both Johannesburg and Pretoria - or in the miles and miles of fantastic mountain ranges in the Western Cape.
One of these deserves special mention. The Cedarberg, two-and-a-half hours’ drive north of Cape Town, is a world-class bouldering area - and boasts some of the best trad rock climbing routes in the country.
But for a close-to-city experience, nothing can beat Cape Town, with hundreds of sport and traditional routes within the city limits. The city is built around Table Mountain, a national park consisting of two great, hard rock types - Table Mountain sandstone, which gives nice positive edges, and Cape granite, which offers fantastic friction climbing.
For more information about mountain climbing, visit http://www.climbing.co.za/.
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About the Author
Rik Clout As a Dutch business student majoring in management, Rik started working in the online travel industry while doing his internship in Cape Town, South Africa in 2007.
