Table Mountain looms over Cape Town and the thing looks pretty impressive and pretty damned high, too. Hiking up it, I have to say, wasn’t my ideal to spend a day, especially when there’s a handy cable car ready to whisk me up to the top in a matter of minutes.
But my two outdoorsy friends were determined to conquer the mountain and I was along for the ride, wondering whether I would survive the hike. We entered through the Kirstenbosch Gardens, paying the admission fee and not even stopping to smell the roses. We powered towards Table Mountain, not really entirely sure what our route would be or even if there were signs to direct us.
After coming to a dead end about 10 minutes from the start of our hike, we flipped a coin to help us decide whether to bushwhack our way through or to turn around and try a different route. I was pretty keen to trek down the tiny path (that it turns out wasn’t a path at all) but the coin told us to turn around and we were soon back on track.
Table Mountain is big and there are a whole bunch of different routes to get to the top with varying levels of speed and difficulty. We didn’t really have a plan at the start but we somehow found ourselves on the Skeleton Gorge path that was described as having some ladders on the way and a few rocks to scramble up. The moss-covered ladders surrounded by massive boulders were pretty great ways to ascend the mountain and the rocks were even better.
At the top of the last ladder there doesn’t seem to be anywhere to go: to the left there’s a sheer drop off of a boulder, in front of you is another huge boulder and to the right is a small waterfall. We were confused. We looked at the waterfall… rocks… maybe that’s the way? It didn’t seem likely but we were considering making our own path earlier on, so why not now? So up we went, not seeming to be on any path, having water tumble down onto us and not sure that if we hit a dead end at the top that we’d ever be able to get back down the way we came. Fortunately, we popped out on a path at the top and continued on our way, a little wet but feeling pretty exhilarated and hard core.
It took us about three hours to climb Table Mountain but we arrived on the opposite side to where the cable car operates. This meant another hour of hiking across the top of the mountain which was probably the highlight for me. The top is pretty flat except for sections where boulders are scattered all around and you have to climb up and down them. The day was clear and the view was fantastic which made the walk across the top even better because we got a lot of different viewpoints over Cape Town.
The cable car area is also pretty stunning but it’s teeming with people and I think a trip up and down the cable car to that section alone, while pretty cool, would be missing out on the greatness of the rest of the mountain. If you don’t want to climb, at least take a walk along the top and enjoy the amazing views and unusual landscape.
Details
- There are lots of trails leading to the top that start all around the mountain.
- Entry into the Botanical Gardens costs R### and from there you can access ??? trails.
- The cable car costs R## each way.
- If you’d rather take the exciting way down, you can abseil to the bottom for R###.
