My son and I decided a few weeks ago to hike to Victoria Peak. The reason was because I spotted snow on top of it - a rare event for Cape Town. Our journey started about 8 o'clock in the morning at the bottom of the Jonkershoek valley. Our destination, Victoria Peak, is about 12 km away and a climb of just over 1 km. The total distance of the hike in one day is about 24 km. At the point where we started is about 500 m above sea level and on Victoria Peak we will be about 600 m above sea level. The highest point on Table Mountain (Mclear's beacon) is about 1000 m above sea level.
I was about 3 hours hike to point where we can look down into the valley from the top of the Stellenbosch mountain.
The top of Stellenbosh mountain is flat and like a march. We had to cross it to get to Vic Peak. In the first photo, you can see Victoria peak in the background. The second and third photo is on the slope of Victoria peak, One can see the snow (it is more ice than snow) is becoming thicker.
In the first photo, we were approaching the peak self. At this stage, I was already very tired. When we reached the peak, there was already another group. Very disturbing fact was that I found bicycle tracks (second photo) in the snow and this on route which is difficult to hike.... Unfortunately, the imprint was made the previous day and I could not solve the riddle. The third photo is the evidence that we actually made it. On the left of the photo, you can see a bit of the marker which indicates the highest point of the peak. We reached the peak about 1 o'clock that afternoon (about 5 hours walk).
In the first photo we built a snowman. The only reason why it is so small is because snow/ice is very cold on bare hands. It took us about 4 hours to reach the bottom of the valley again (the second photo). We left the nature reserve with 10 minutes to spare before closure time. The total time of the hike was just under 10 hours.
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