Champagne Castle

Champagne Castle is a basalt peak on the Lesotho border in the Central Drakensberg, 3,377 m high and the second highest summit in South Africa. Below it lies the Champagne Valley, reached on the R600 from Winterton, and half the hotels in it take their names from the peaks above. Most visitors never go near the top. They come for the day walks out of Monk’s Cowl and the Wednesday choir concerts, and leave the summit to fit, well-equipped hikers.

Getting there

You need a car. Winterton is the gateway town, and the R600 runs from there into the Champagne Valley towards Ezemvelo’s Monk’s Cowl camp, where most trails start. Either way you come off the N3, and Estcourt and Bergville are the nearby towns you will see signposted. Resorts in the valley publish turn-by-turn directions, and it is worth having them to hand.

When to go

The high Drakensberg is wet and cool, and the summit area gets snow in winter. For walking in the valley any month works if you watch the weather; for the summit, pick your window carefully and carry gear for cold whatever the season.

What to do

Day walks from Monk’s Cowl are the main draw. Sterkspruit Falls is the easy one, about 4 km and an hour and a half. Nandi’s Falls is about 8 km. The loop via Keartland’s Pass, Blindman’s Corner, the Sphinx and Crystal Falls is roughly 11.5 km and six hours, and the Blue Grotto and Fern Forest route about 10 km. Everyone walking fills in the mountain register at the camp, and day walkers need an Ezemvelo permit for some routes.

The summit is a serious undertaking. The usual way up starts at Monk’s Cowl and runs past Blindman’s Corner to Keith Bush Camp before climbing Gray’s Pass. Plan on two days and about 37 km there and back. Gray’s Pass itself is dry, so fill every bottle before you start up it. People who have done the route also say the trail is easy to lose at one rock band partway up, and some have gone astray there.

In the valley, the Drakensberg Boys’ Choir School sits on a 100-acre estate. The choir was founded in 1967 and performs on most Wednesdays of the year, usually to a full hall, and hosts the Music in the Mountains festival. The wider Drakensberg holds tens of thousands of San rock paintings; sites need a registered rock art guide.

Good to know

The story behind the name is that a guide dropped the climbers’ celebratory bottle of champagne on a rock during an early ascent, and the name stuck. The uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park was listed as a World Heritage Site in 2000.

Last updated 6 October 2026. Sources: Wikipedia, Wikipedia (Drakensberg), Wikivoyage (Drakensberg), TheDrakensberg.net, Drakensberg Hikes, SA-Venues (Drakensberg Boys' Choir).