Friday, June 19, 2009

Yarr, Table Mountain


Thursday morning I awoke and immediately threw back the curtains of my room. The sun was shining and the usual clouded veil over Table Mountain was nowhere to be seen. This was good news. Three other coworkers (Alexis, Mark, Lisa) and I had decided to take the day off to scale the mountain. Of the three-hundred plus routes we could have taken, we picked the one with the coolest-sounding name: Skeleton Gorge. Pretty gnarly, right? Rumor has it the name came from 16th century Spanish pirates, led by the dreaded Captain Donner. They got shipwrecked and climbed the mountain (then called Mesa Mountain) to hide their booty. On the way they got caught in a vicious snowstorm and were trapped. For months they stayed on the side of the mountain, slowly running out of food. Years later when Dutch explorers were poking around in the rocks they saw all sorts of skeletons and, lacking any creativity, named the gorge after that. Since then, literally dozens of mountain-climbers have searched in vain for Captain Donner’s treasure. Thursday was our turn…


Alright, I’m going to cut to the chase; we never found the booty. However, unlike Captain Donner’s crew, we climbed to the peak and lived to tell about it. We even did so without pickaxes, ropes, or whatever else people usually use to climb large rock formations. Along the way we had to hike up boulders, leap crevasses, use chains and ladders, and even scramble up an honest-to-God waterfall. We met a fair share of people who had turned around because of the treacherous conditions and told us to take caution. While the initial climb to the top was steep and dangerous, once we found ourselves on the top of the table it was a predominately horizontal adventure. That’s not to say it was easy. After three hours of intense battle against Mother Nature (not to mention our bodies) we reached the summit. There, silhouetted against the blue-grey South-African sky was the most amazing sight. A mountain-top restaurant and bar offering as much food as you could fit on a plate for R59 ($7). We all made sure to do the American thing and pile our plates high. I don’t think anything could have tasted better.


After our gorging it was getting late and we were tired. I had planned on going in to work in the afternoon but the mountain had thought otherwise. It was almost 5pm so we took the cable car back down. I couldn’t imagine descending Skeleton Gorge; that was probably Captain Donner’s foil. Unlike him, we four interns lived to pillage and fight another day.

No comments:

Post a Comment