An early morning Platteklip Gorge hike

With summer approaching I am going to have to start getting used to starting earlier in the morning, however the early morning  Platteklip Gorge  hike last week was somewhat earlier than even for the hottest day in summer. It was absolutely wonderful to see the city lights from the dark gorge and then to see the sunrise from the top. Truly an experience worth repeating.

Contact Ridgway Ramblers to arrange a hike up Platteklip Gorge. We will fit in with your schedule.

The reason for the early start was a meeting at 9.30. So we had to up and down Platteklip before 8.30 to ensure time to get back to the hotel and shower before leaving for the meeting. (the first cable car down is at around 8.45 so we had to hike up and down to make sure we got back in time) So I guestimated 3 pretty fit ladies could make it up the gorge in 1.5 hours and back down in 1 hour. So I arranged to pick my guests up at 5.20am, aiming to start hiking at 5.30am. That way we should be finished by 8am so had an extra 30 minutes to play with.

Everyone was ready on time and so equipped with a head torch each we headed up the gorge. Up ahead we could see the bobbing lights of some hikers ahead of us. Without the torches we would have been completely lost as there was no moon and it was almost totally dark.

Behind us the city and Table Bay looked amazing.

In the cool morning breeze we actually got to the top of the gorge in 65 minutes. We would have been impressed if we hadn’t chatted to the 2 guys ahead of us who passed us on their way down. They had got to the top in 40 minutes! ok they were super fit and running but still made our achievement feel a bit slow.!

A quick celebratory fruit juice at the top and we headed down. Unlike the guys ahead of us we did not run down. One slip and you could have a very nasty fall. So we took a little over an hour going back down.

The sun rising

 

So we were well in time for that meeting at 9.30.