Hiking on Youth Day

The crack on Kloof Corner route with Twelve Apostles in the background
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After four days of miserable weather, Friday 16^th - Youth Day was a glorious Cape winter day. The previous weekend two local hikers had spent the night on TM, blaming the guidebook (read the next Meridian newsletter). For this hike, the indemnity was made absolutely clear, no-one had forced them to come on the hike, it had been described as “something new for the fit and adventurous” and “a full day hike for the fit involving some B-grad scrambling and exposure.” In the indemnity speech they were advised that the leader hadn’t done the whole thing before and was joining up other well-known routes. No one in the group had done any of the routes before, with the possible exception of Kloof Corner and India Venster by one or two.

On our way to the top of Cairn Buttress
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The phone calls: “Mrs Wartkins, yur on speaker phawn, wharts invarlved?” said the clearly American accent. Three looooong phone calls later only Joy had the guts to try this out, and boy did she struggle. There were even plans to poach her onto another group going to the top of the mountain where she could catch a cable ride down, but somehow she stuck in there and dirty and high on adrenaline she completed the whole trip.

Table Mountain frontal traverse – with dog and after fire

Right Face Arrow Face Traverse - a first for 10 of the 11 hikers
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On the way from the Lower Cable Station, we passed many Gladiolus triste, the brown pypie that looks so insignificant in shades of brown, but smells of cinnamon, especially at night. Also mauve babiana’s and yellow bulbines. These slopes will look magnificent in October when Watsonia barbonica is flowering.

Pointing out the venster and explaining why India Venster got its name, we climbed a little higher before branching off to join the Kloof Corner route, having avoided the awful chain pitch at the bottom (which must be even worse than normal after the fire).

Right Face Arrow Face Traverse
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After passing through the ‘crack’ with new views of the Apostles, we continued along an exposed ledge, some of the group starting to wonder what they’d let themselves in for. And as we approached an area with the Upper Cable Station above, even the leader started to wonder “where-the-hell-are-we”? As soon as Mike said Cairn-Grotto-Fountain traverse, she knew where she was and even allowed us to have a tea break. According to Justin’s GPS we we’d climbed to 855m, travelled 1.88km, and spent 40min moving and 1.45resting at 2.8km per hour and burnt 100kilojoules! “There isn’t always a signal,” he pleaded as we threw rocks, jelly babies and leftover food at him.

Justin "If I can't have children - it's your fault!"
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Eventually joining the India Venster route we crossed to the Right-Face-Arrow-Face route where some were reluctant to go through the first crack. Steve and Steve were climbing (with gear – ropes, friends, nuts and a whole lot more) and reading the groups body language and faces, I knew they were losing what little nerve they had left. The leader was clever, and got Joy to go first and after that everyone sort-of, enjoyed the three cracks. It was tricky getting Litchi down the final pitch but once he’d recovered his dignity, he bounded about the mountain like he was on a joy-hike.

Lower Cable Station - they don't know what they're in for - a first for all (pic Justin Domnitz)
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“It’s so nice up here,” said Michaela as the leader dropped, by instinct, to the lower level with Michaela continuing higher up. Eventually the leader had to retrace her steps “come”, and we had lunch, once again with Justin’s fascinating but frustrating statistics: 878m, hiking 3.41km, 1 hour of walking with 3.5 hours of stops, 12,857 kilojoules burnt. What do these GPS thingies know anyway? Although maybe the kilojoules were right.

The leader had had enough and decided to descend, which in itself was an adventure as Veena and Jackie soon learnt, being co-opted as ‘cairn-spotters’. At one point, it looked like we would have to retrace our steps when we lost the cairn-route, but it was Mastin who encouraged the group to descend because we  could see a cairn to the left in a ravine (Union). So we scrambled down, instead of retracing steps to the last cairn, and found our way to the cairn, and the rest is history as we ‘happily’ reached the Contour Path only to find that it would take 55min to reach the Lower Cable Station. “Not us, “ said the group, who were soon back at the cars, dirty, in fact Joy and Veronika were VERY dirty, so much so that Joy threw her pants in the bin!

"Where do we go from hear?" (pic Justin)
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Members: Veena Sukha, Mastin Prinsloo, Mike Buys, Veronika Frey, Simon Brooks

Visitors: Dan Slater, Jackie Romanov, Joy Powell, Justin Domnitz, Michaela Gabriel and owner of Litchi the rock-climbing dog.

PS My thighs were stiff and sore next day, but Im please to say that I wasn't the only one.

On Sunday I climbed Nursery Buttress, alone but ahead of TCSA, in case I fell off they could pick me up. In the afternoon I went to the Book Fair to sign my book Adventure Walks & Scrambles in the Cape Peninsula, along with Don Pinnock and John Compton. The Book Fairis the first in Africa and has been a great succes with double the visitors expected.