The somewhat annual meet to Joshua Penny’s Cave and the Grotto Fountain Cairn Traverse is well attended each year. This year’s meet turned out to be the biggest group so far, with 18 participants in total.
The group met at Kloof Nek for a walk along the pipe track before breaking away to ascend Cairn Ravine. The first few scrambles established that everyone was reasonably comfortable on rock and we smoothly reached a level at which we could traverse right from Cairn Ravine on the “magic line” that takes you easily to a point from which the cave can be seen.
The next section is loose and bushy but necessary. It is the key to getting to the cave. A few scratches later brought the group to the tranquil shelter of the cave, a snack and a reading, by Ezan, of the 1958 MCSA Journal article by W. H .Crump on Joshua Penny’s 14 months of seclusion on Table Mountain. Enlightened, the group then pushed on up a steep slope to a higher level for the next shady traverse that sneaks behind a wall of dense bush and elegantly deposits the group in Grotto Ravine just below the GFC traverse.
We looped back up and onto the GFC ledge and took lunch with the benefit of shade and an excellent outlook over the Atlantic seaboard. The rest of the trip was a pleasant return back to the Kloof Corner ridge on the GFC ledge system followed by a rapid hot descent back down to the cars.
Charles Morrison
