Etosha once more

This time I went on tour with my brother and his kids. The Landrover was fully loaded with borrowed camping gear and food for 2 weeks and off we went. We took our time to enjoy everything in leisure and to avoid too long drives in a day. Our first stop was the Cheetah Conservation Fund, a place where they care for injured and orphaned cheetahs. If a cheetah does not learn to hunt from its mother, it will not be able to survive in the wild, so it has to be kept in a reservate and fed. We were introduced to the concept of the place and saw the feeding of a group of the cheetahs. There is even a clinic and laboratory to care for injured animals and to do some research on them. The museum nearby was also very interesting. They do a morning exercise with the cheetahs, where there is a piece of fur pulled over the field for them to hunt, similar to a greyhound race. Unfortunately, we missed that.
The next highlight was Etosha. Although I had been there before it was still a great experience. Already in camp the night before we entered the park we heard the lions growling. We had 3 days to spend in the park and saw everything one could wish for: a herd of 20 elephants crossing the road just in front of us, 4 lionesses with 7 cubs relaxing at a waterhole, oryx fighting, giraffes with their offspring and a pair almost twisting their necks around each other … The funniest thing I saw was a large group of zebra mongoose whirling through each other at the road side and the strangest thing was a single black rhino pestering a group of elephants at the waterhole – and the rhino won! Usually this is the other way round. After those 3 days in the car we took a day off and relaxed in a camp outside the park, just walking around a bit and using the pool.

Rhino Horn

I spent another wonderful weekend climbing at Spitzkoppe. We did a number of routes, up to grade 22, Andreas leading all of them except the easiest one. The highlight was the 22 up Rhino Horn. I got some great pictures abseiling down the other side of it. In the afternoon we quickly wanted to get up an unknown route for which we did not have any description. It did not look so long from the bottom, but it turned out to be about 200m of climbing, 5 long pitches. Andreas only had 13 quickdraws with him and needed 17 on the first pitch, so he had to keep coming back down to retrieve them. To complete the mishap I then dropped one of them after taking them out, so it fell down the 50m into the bush at the bottom and it was missing for the next pitches. The sun was going down, but we completed the climb and reached the car just before dark. Next morning we had to search for the lost quickdraw, but we were lucky and Andreas found it easily.

Namibgrens

The last long weekend I spent with a friend on the farm Namibgrens near Spreegthoogte Pass, the way to Solitaire. We had not planned anything in particular, just relaxed, went for one short and one full day hike and enjoyed the view from the escarpment down to the Namib Desert and over to the Gamsberg. The campsite was new and typical Namibian: an open "kitchen" which means a water tap, sink and fireplace, an open tent for shade, a shower next to the rock with a wooden fence around and a toilet with a little tree inside a similar fence. I always find it funny to see the white ceramic basins in the middle of the bush with no wall around or roof above. And I do enjoy the free view while sitting there. We only saw a few wild animals on the farm: dassies, a hare, a leguan and the track of a large snake which had crossed the sand road, possibly puff adder or phyton.

Spitzkoppe summit

I spent a long weekend at Spitzkoppe once more. This time the aim was to climb the summit of Spitzkoppe itself which is 1728m high. Andreas and me arrived around lunchtime and waited for a Russian woman to join us. For warming up we climbed “desert rose”, a grade 13 pure friction route up the Sugar Loaf. It sounds easy and it was not hard, but the leading climber had to have good nerves as most pitches did not have bolts or any kind of protection – just around 30m to the next anchor which was not visible from the start of the pitch. I lead 2 pitches and each time was very relieved when I could see the anchor. I did not like the idea of climbing the pitch back down in case there was nothing on the top. We happily arrived on the top and enjoyed the view around before abseiling.
The ascent of Spitzkoppe was planned for the next day. We camped near the start of the scramble and got on the way at 6am. It is a long scrambling route and not always easy to find the way as there are waymarks of stone everywhere. We made good progress and had a break for a second breakfast at the bottom of the climb at 9am. It is an interesting route with 3 chimneys, 1 traverse and very few bolts or anchors. Andreas lead all the way as he has been there 10 times before. At 1pm the three of us walked up the last bit to the top hand in hand. We enjoyed the view over to the Pontoks and the Sugar Loaf which we climbed before and they looked very small from up there. Then we read odd pages in the summit book and entered ourselves and had a short break. After that the long abseil started. It went well, but it took some time. We also used the ropes to support us at the first part of the steep scramble down. In the end we had to hurry up as the daylight was fading and it became difficult to find the way through the boulders. However, we managed and arrived back in camp at 6:30pm, exhausted but happy.
Then we had a day rest, walking around and enjoying the rock formations and climbing 2 routes in the evening. The last day we spent the morning at Klippdachswand. I lead a 3 pitch grade 17 route which went fine and Andreas a 3 pitch grade 19. After a long lunch break I lead a short grade 18 route which I had not climbed before. I struggled a bit, but eventually made it. We decided we have to come back to this great climbing area soon, maybe to climb Rhino Horn, a grade 22.

Arnhem cave

Hello,
today I visited the largest cave in Namibia. It is a dry cave, so there are not the usual nice stalagtites etc, but the exciting thing about it are the bats. 5 different species live in there of which I got to see 2 alive and 1 mumified. There were lots of them and when we disturbed them it sounded like a storm coming up from the noise they made flying. We saw some very close and even a pair mating. There were also mumified porcupines which venture very deep into the cave - one was found about 60m deep and maybe a km from the entrance! During the second world war the guano from the bats was harvested and shipped to Germany to make explosives. Nowadays there is no mining, but the smell is awful!

Brandberg Pools

The next morning I went to marvel at the lovely stone garden up there and took some pictures. Then I took over the guiding and tour planning. With the help of map and GPS we exactly identified where we were and decided to carry on through unknown landscape to a creek called Longipools which sounded promising. The problem was the way. There were again steep stone slabs we had to cross and huge boulders where it was difficult to find any way through. However, eventually we managed to get to our destination and it was a wonderful place. Lots of pools to bath in and drink water from. We decided to stay there for two nights and make a day trip without the heavy backpacks to Orabes Kopf. This is a very prominent peak of the Brandberg, 2299m high and it offers great views all around. Again, it was not easy to find a way through the boulders as we lost the stone pyramids, but it was much easier to get through it just with the light day pack. On top were pools again and one very close to the edge really looked like a bath. I tried it out, but it was quite cold. Next day we packed again and climbed through another gorge to another rocky place called Wasserfallflaeche. Of course I took a bath at the heat of the day. There was also a cave with a waterfall in front of it, very pretty. Then it was time to find a way back to Hungarob gorge and we found a lovely place to camp directly at the Messum river, 300m below our first camp. It was a pity this was the last night, we would have liked to carry on. We were now able to follow the stone pyramids which made progress much easier, although walking was hard in the sliding scree. Early afternoon we arrived at the car which was boiling hot. After a last bath to cool down we left the gorge and made our long way back to Windhoek.

Brandberg Hike

This was a 5 day hike on the highest mountain of Namibia. There are no footpaths, just here and there some stone pyramids to mark the way. It is absolute wilderness, so we had to take all food, tent and bedding in our backpacks. Water was taken from creeks and pools with tadpoles in them. It was clear and tasty (just remember to spit the tadpoles out).
I went with a friend from the mountain club who had been in the Brandberg several times before. He had chosen the route he knew best: up Armis gorge to a cave called Lufthoehle, then Riesenhoehle and finally some pools “Katarakt” on the top. This was the plan. We also took a GPS with us, just to try it out and to be able to track back in case we got lost. We drove there from Windhoek and arrived at the bottom of the gorge in the early afternoon. We took a dip in a pool formed by the Messum river to cool down and then set up camp. Clouds were coming up, but only a slight shower disturbed our game of chess and the braai.
The first day of the hike was a usual the hardest. We went up from 700m to 1800m through difficult terrain. There were boulders 4 times the size of my Landrover blocking the way, thick thorny bush between the rocks and sticky grass where it was flat. You Europeans don’t laugh about the grass! I did so in the beginning when people told me about it, but it is very annoying. It sticks to your trousers, pierces through the skin and irritates you all the time. When you try to take it off it even sticks to your fingers. In the beginning we tried to follow the river which flew sometimes underground and then appeared as pools again, very nice. Quite often we had to make a detour around the boulders which involved some climbing, not easy with these heavy backpacks. Later we had to move up on the slope at one side as the river itself became impassable. My friend thought to recognize that pool and this big rock and so we moved our way up. At some point he became doubtful as he did not see familiar features anymore, but then very large stone slabs appeared on our side and this was were we had to go up. It was steep and he became breathless, so we swapped backpacks for a while as mine was much lighter than his. However, the stone slabs turned out not to be the ones he was looking for. Finally he realized that we were not in the Armis gorge at all! The GPS has been trying to tell us we were in the Hungarob gorge next to Armis, but we did not really believe it. Now we did. Luckily there were some waterholes at the top of the slabs and we set up camp there as it was already late. Wow, what a camp site, what a view! Alone at the top of a steep slope of rock! We cooked our noodles on a gas stove, drank a small bottle of red wine and sat by the campfire until tired.