Saturday August 1 - Hiking Table Mountain

I did not have a lot of things that I was intent on doing in Cape Town but hiking to the top of Table Mountain was one of them. Table Mountain overlooks Cape Town and is the vantage point for many of the panoramic shots I have seen. They have a cable car that runs from the base to the top but I was interested in hiking. In any case the cable cars are down for annual maintenance for several weeks so taking it was not an option, if I wanted to go up it was hike up then down on my own.

My plan was to hike Table Mountain in the morning then explore the city a bit afterwards but I got off to a bit of a late start and the train arrived downtown about an hour after I intended but not such a big deal. I also had to find an ATM as the one in the train station was broken. So now instead of going to Table Mountain I was on the search for a cash machine. I stumbled on one a block away but the line of 25 people to get cash made me think I should look elsewhere.

Table Mountain from Cape Town

One hour later, after stumbling around I found another one and headed back to the train station to get a cab. That too proved to be not so easy, none of the cabs I hailed would stop. One guy on the street asked me what I was doing as I was holding out my hand with two fingers up to trying to flag one down. When I told him he laughed. Not sure what he thought I was doing but that clued me in that cabs don’t stop in Cape Town, at least not this way.

I asked a security guard at the train station where a stand was and he just looked at me like I was some f**k up and if I did not move out of his sight he was going to hit me upside the head. The information desk was more helpful, they talked to me, but not that helpful since they sent me in the opposite direction of the station cab stand. So another half hour wasted before I found the cab stand but no worries, I was finally on my way.

The driver tells me the Platteklip Gorge trail is a popular one and he drops me off at the base of the cable car and I walk on to the trail head. The cable car itself is closed for two weeks for maintenance so I have to hike out as well as in but I wanted to do this anyway so no biggie.

Right away the trail starts going straight up and I keep thinking that sooner or later I’ll hit a nice flat spot, I can see several trails on the hillside and they don’t look too bad. Nope, this is pretty much a 4,000 foot climb up stairs but I came to climb the mountain and that was what was going to do. The sign at the base said it takes about 2 hours to go up, I figure the time is a little padded and I can make it under the 2 hours with less time to climb back down and get back to the bottom by 4 pm. Foolish me.

This mountain kicked my ass.

I’ve hiked the Grand Canyon once before and thought this could not be any worse but oh was I wrong. The trail is a lot shorter but way more technical and when I say it was climbing 4,000 feet of stairs that is not exactly right. It is really climbing 4,000 feet of rocks made out to act like stairs. Stairs that are not level and sometimes as much as two feet apart from one another. I kept climbing and climbing and climbing and about 2/3rds of the way up I was pretty well soaked with sweat and wondering what the hell I got myself into. I asked several people on the way down how much further and was told around 15 more minutes. 45 minutes later I still was not at the top. In all it took the full two hours. Maybe a little more.

Mountain goat making me look foolish climbing up

There were a lot of people climbing that day and I was at least in as good a shape as they were but the thought of turning around definitely was going through my head as going up is just half the battle and with no cable car, I had to walk down or get carried down. I would have been very pissed at myself for turning around and getting taken off was not an option.

View from the top. Lion's Head is center right and Robbin Island is just off at the top right corner.

I spent around 45 minutes checking the view eating a bit of lunch and killing off my water. The view was amazing and I could see for miles. All of Cape Town was below me, Robben Island was off in the distance, and I could almost see all the way back to Muizenberg. It was around 3:45 and the sun was getting lower in the sky so I started thinking about the climb back down. The sun goes down at 6:00, the temperature was starting to drop, I was beat and I did not really want to be hiking down this in the dark. The good news was the hike down was faster for me, but it was a pounder on my joints and I had to stop more often than I wanted for short rests. The more I stopped the harder it was to get going again so I just tried to keep a momentum but the uneven trail made that hard at times.

Another thing I noticed on the way up was that the trail was strung with barbed wire in many spots. This was curious to me going up but much more in focus on the way down as the idea of falling face first down the mountain and into the wire because of a tired miss-step did not really appeal to me. More than once I grabbed something for support and caught myself thinking of grabbing the fence by the trail. Why the hell would they string barbed wire along the trail? Simple wire would be fine if they feel they need to prevent people from falling off. The next day I learned the barbed wire was to prevent people from getting mugged and the thieves jumping on and off the trail to hide. Great!

When I got down I was totally spent and walking like I had been tossed off a horse. But it was also really good. Table Mountain tested me physically and mentally and I was beat up by it. A few times I was about ready to give up but I kept thinking of a friend of mine, John, who passed away in January and how he would have just kept on plugging on without a complaint regardless of how hard the trail got. So I figured I would manage the climb or be seeing him soon.

I am not rushing to do it again any time soon but I am happy I did.