Hiking attempt at Ifidi Pass, Mnweni,Drakensberg, South Africa 4K w/GoPro & DJI Mini 2

0:00 Introduction and title
0:10 The Ifidi Pass - Low Approach
0:54 The Cycad Cave
1:41 Ifidi Pass - High Approach - Grass
4:05 Ifidi Pass - High Approach - Boulders & Ifidi River
6:22 Ifidi Pass - The Push
9:45 Defeated - Back to the Cycad Cave

At the tail end of 3 weeks of rain, I and my guide Bafana made an attempt at going up Ifidi Pass hoping to get down Icidi Pass in the Mnweni, Drakensberg area. We hiked in to the Cycad Cave from the Mnweni Cultural and Hiking Center (MCC) on the afternoon of Friday, January 14.On January 15 we went up one of the most beautiful mountain rivers I've ever been to - - Ifidi River. From the Cycad cave we still had a few kilometers to cover the approach before the bottom of the pass. The approach wasn't particularly technical but those steep grassy no-trail slopes were killing my ankles going up and down. We got over several scrambling obstacles and made it far up the chimney at the top only to get stopped by a small super slippery boulder and waterfall in the middle of it. It was raining really hard and we figured that a 4 meter-wide chimney can flash flood pretty easily and fast. So we didn't tempt fate by trying to figure out how to make the boulder less slippery and turned around.  

The path down wasn’t too bad until my knees started to feel the toll of going up and down Ifidi in one day. Eventually, we had to start crossing the streams and rivers that didn’t pose any difficulty on the way up but now were overflowing with a lot of new extra rainwater. I don’t know what I would have done without Bafana at a couple of those crossings.  

It was a bit disappointing not to summit Ifidi Pass. Knowing that going down Icidi Pass would've been even sketchier I'm glad we didn't push too much and got out of the chimney when we did and didn't look for any additional adventures besides crossing now over flowing streams and rivers. I plan to come back for seconds later in 2022.