A wonderful five hour, 9.5km inaugural meet led as a team by Jenny Meek, Tara, Baum, Esme Beamish and Di Meek. The route meandered up the Littlewort Trail named after Pixie and Charles Littlewort who designed the path to introduce scholars to the unique ecology of an afromontane forest (see link below).
The path winds up through old groves of wild almond trees, adjacent to the stream, reaching the stone bridge of the middle contour path and then into the indigenous forest.
We crossed the stream a little higher up to the left and followed the widely stepped path up to the top contour path, to take us on past the start of Newlands Ravine to the entrance of Dark Gorge – indicated by a large forked tree with a stone lodged in the fork.
The path up the gorge initially keeps right climbing steadily up through dappled forest to cross back to the left about midway up. Most importantly going left here avoids the approach to the infamously dangerous Dark Gulley. As someone quipped ‘go that way and don’t expect to be seen again’
Here we marvelled at how the gorge opened into a magical amphitheater of tumbling mossy boulders, giant ferns and tall rooi els and other trees forming a dappled sunny canopy impressively bracketed on both sides by great towering rock walls of deeply hued orange and red Table Mountain sandstone.
A wide rocky ledge on the left wall proved the perfect spot for a leisurely tea/coffee stop.
Continuing at good pace up the ever narrowing gorge a highlight was the sighting of a lone Red Disa in full bloom high up the rock face
Perfectly positioned sturdy roots of seemingly impossibly growing trees proved a helpful hand up the final steep section to the summit
A celebratory group photograph marked the successful ascent of the gorge before we made our way across for a fun exploration of the pulpit – the signature feature of the saddle from Cape Town’s southern suburbs.
Here we enjoyed more tea, chats and photo opportunities against fabulous views stretching across to the Hottentots Holland and False Bay.
On the homeward stretch we traversed a little way back across the saddle base of Devils Peak to rendezvous with the approach up from Tafelberg Road offering expansive views of Africa Face, Table Bay, Robben Island and the Atlantic Ocean.
From there it was a slight climb back up to the summit of Newlands Ravine and then a glorious, albeit hot, zigzag descent with merry laughter and much banter punctuated by the high pitched call of what the birders in the group thought was an elusive Forest Buzzard.
Back at the top contour path we stopped awhile to regroup at the wooden circular bench before continuing down through the forest to the car park.
We enjoyed another sighting of a large high soaring bird of prey – some thought a Verreaux’s Eagle – eclipsed only by two firefighting helicopters whose landing back at Newlands Forest coincided with the completion of our walk at 12.30pm.
Thank you to Don Jepson, Ezan Wilson, Alex le Roux and other long time MCSA members – notably Rob Satchel – for not only joining us on the hike but for their support, enthusiasm and encouragement.
Pictures by Don Jepson, Alex le Roux, Laetitia Riera and Di Meek.
