A very windy Thursday morning resulted in a few drop-outs (understandably!), but the determined seven hardy hikers who slogged up Kloof Corner just after 07h30, and traversed along the contour path to Union Ravine and Yellowstone Gully, were rewarded by the ‘kindness of our lovely mother mountain’ providing a protective wind-shadow for much of the fun scramble up to the Right Face ArrowFace (RF-AF) traverse!
What was remarkable was the amount of water in the Gully, which we criss-crossed numerous times. Tea was taken in a lovely sheltered, sunny spot near the neck overlooking African Ravine and not far below the upper cliffs, with glorious views over Table Bay and beyond. As always, scrambling along RF-AF was a tad demanding but fun, with interesting little pitches to negotiate and two sets of narrow crevices to squeeze through, with packs being ferried along systematically!
Not far beyond the end of the traverse (with its interesting exposed exit from the crack) was the downward India Venster route, which we all used for the descent … as the abundance of ‘white horses’ out at sea clearly corroborated the ‘lack of cable action’ above us!
