The Reaper says Hi!

What’s a vacation without a little flirting with death?

Table Mountain is a lovely, kilometre-high plateau that wraps around much of Central Cape Town. Its impressive beauty and walking-distance-from-downtown convenience make it extraordinarily popular with residents and visitors, which led me to greatly underestimate the damn thing.

Steph, Andrew, Nathan and I set out early for the half-hour walk to the mountain’s base. The cloudless sky and violent heat (a break from Cape Town’s normally temperate climate) made us awfully whiny by the time we reached the trailheads at the cable car station, 300 metres up., but we weren’t seriously dissuaded. After all, thousands of people climb Table Mountain on a busy day, enjoying a leisurely ninety minute stroll from the famed Kirstenbosch Gardens on the south side of the mountain. That we were on the north side of the mountain didn’t discourage in the least. Indeed, we reveled in our own smug superiority as we trudged past the station to the start of the trail. Hundreds of lazy (and, I now know, wise) tourists lingered in hours-long queues for an effortless ride to the summit.

Long inured to the hyperbole of Canadian warning signs, I shrugged off their South African counterparts that said such things as “Warning: the trail ahead is very difficult. This is not the recommended route.” It could have said something more specific, like “Jackass Canadians with nearly no rock climbing experience have a palpable chance of messy doom on this path.”

Steep but straightforward for its first third, the path known as the India Window abruptly changed character when the trail metamorphosed into a series of 20-foot rock faces. Reasonably simple for an experienced climber, this was a new hurdle for me. Fortunately, Nate and Andrew are veteran rock climbers, and they talked me through the process of scrambling madly up terrain no human was meant to traverse. Though I made it through intact, I had the honour of clinging precariously to thin handholds over truly precarious drops, terrified out of all proportion to the situation (maybe). Easily the most hair-raising experience of my trip so far.

But I was rewarded with some of the most impressive views I’ve seen. Table Mountain is far larger than its modest height suggests, and some incredibly sheer rock faces cap amazing panoramas of Cape Town, stretching away from the foot of the mountain and over the horizon. Clambering among the rocks and peering down at the city, I heard the shrill cries of rock hyraxes, tiny rodent beasties related to elephants, but they hid from view. The mountain was beset with lizards of remarkable colour and variety (and no small number of birds waiting to eat them).

About three hours into what should have been a ninety minute hike, we began referring to the climb as our Epic Journey. The further we climbed, the scarcer the shade and more merciless the sun, but our sense of accomplishment grew. Until around hour five, that is, when our water ran out and we (mostly me) started to whine. Eventually, impossibly, the summit of the mountain appeared, up a gentle slope adorned with handrails and chains that had been painfully absent earlier in the ascent. It was well trafficked by tourists complaining about the five minute walk from the cable car station, while the four of us limped and moaned over the last few steps.

After talking cheerfully about our upcoming tour of the kilometers-wide summit while climbing, we arrived at the top to find incredible views that we had no energy to enjoy. Instead we snapped a few photos and staggered to the (insanely priced) restaurant for refreshment, then staggered onto a cable car downhill.

By the time we finished the walk back to the hostel, we’d regained the energy to boast of our day’s accomplishments. The four of us took some time to partake in the culinary delights of Cape Town (a long way from the boiled corn mush of Botswana), and enjoyed some world-class burgers and history’s finest milkshakes before retiring to our rooms and collapsing around sunset.

The Japanese have a saying about Mount Fuji that applies well to Table Mountain, methinks: “You’re wise to climb it, and a fool to do it twice”. Brushes with death, blistering heat and all, I’m glad to have climbed Table Mountain, and I can’t think of any reason to ever do it again.