Hiking with chocolate cake and cairns in Dark Gorge

A week of showers (by Tim Jenkin)
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A chance meeting with Tim (Houdini) in Pick ‘n Pay led to us doing Dark Gorge on my birthday. There were four of us die-hards at Rhodes Memorial, on the slopes of Devil’s Peak. We were lucky to have the only day with no rain. Amazing waterfalls not normally seen, polished black fallen pine trees and down below, the southern suburbs hidden under cloud – magic!

I hadn’t been up Dark Gorge for a few years and wasn’t even sure if I could find the start. The contour path has been upgraded with a boardwalk, this along with a few pine trees being felled made it difficult to find the right gorge, in fact we had two attempts before Mike (Buys) wandered up next to a gorge and found a huge cairn, so up we went. It’s actually a short route with the first half being quite ordinary but then we followed the steep moss and lichen covered rock wall to the right of the ravine, which later had a veil of water cascading over it where the gorge narrowed – exquisite.

Dancing, wine, good food, company and views

We then climbed almost to the top of Devil’s Peak where we had lunch and birthday cake overlooking a mist-enshrouded Cape Town. We came across two couples on our descent of Mowbray Ridge and one of them was using yours truly book Adventure Walks & Scrambles.

Beers at the car at 14h30, made a perfect ending to a great hike and we felt sorry for the Meridian members who appear to hibernate in winter.

A nice ending to the day was spending the evening with my two best friends at Maestro’s on the Beach – fantastic views of Cape Town, good food (too much), good wine (too much), good 60s music played by a pianist (and we danced). Feeling a bit rough today!