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| Table mountain is a famous landmark and tourist attraction in Cape Town, with many visitors using the cableway to take a ride to the top. The mountain is named for its flat top which is often covered by cloud, forming the ‘table cloth’. It stands 1,086 m above sea level at its peak and the main face is approximately 3 km from side to side. The mountain's highest point is at Maclear's Beacon, named for a stone cairn built there in 1865 by Sir Thomas Maclear for trigonometrical survey. It is 1,086 m (3,563 ft) above sea level and is the highest point of the plateau at the summit, about 19 m above the cable station. |
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The Table Mountain is overlooking the greater Cape Town area. It forms part of the Table Mountain National Park and is flanked by Devil's Peak to the east and by Lion's Head and Signal Hill to the north. Most major features of the mountain are named. The cliff immediately below the cable station is called Arrow Buttress and the area at the opposite end of the main cliff is called "Ledges". |
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| About a third of the way along from Arrow Buttress is a deep and partially hidden ravine called Platteklip Gorge (lit. "Flat Stone Gorge"), which provides an easy ascent to the summit and was the route taken by Antonio de Saldanha on the first recorded ascent of the mountain. A famous and dangerous feature is Carrell's ledge, which winds it narrow way across the face of a vast and sheer drop to the south of Devil's Peak. At one point the ledge is less than 200 mm wide. |
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The upper part of the mountain mesa consists of Ordovician quartzitic sandstone, commonly referred to as Table Mountain Sandstone (TMS), which is highly resistant to erosion and forms characteristic steep grey crags. Below the sandstone is a layer of micaceous basal shale, which weathers quite readily and is therefore not readily visible. The basement consists of heavily folded and altered late precambrian Malmesbury shale, which has been intruded by Cape Granite. The basement rocks are not nearly as resistant to weathering as the TMS but significant outcrops of the Cape Granite are visible on the western side of Lion's Head. The main vegetation of the mountain is the unique and rich Cape fynbos. An estimated 1,470 species of plants are found on the mountain and amongst them are many kinds of world-famous proteas. Remnant patches of ancient rain forest persist in a few of the wetter ravines but not on the famous face above the city, because conditions there are too dry and harsh. The mountain has also suffered serious invasions of alien plants for well over a century, with perhaps the worst invader being the cluster pine. Considerable efforts have been made to eliminate these alien plants. The most common animal on the mountain is the dassie, or rock hyrax. They especially cluster around the upper cable station, near the sources of junk food. There are also porcupines, mongooses, snakes and tortoises. The last lion in the area was shot circa 1802. Leopards persisted on the mountain until perhaps the 1920's but are now extinct locally. Two smaller, secretive, nocturnal carnivores, the rooikat (caracal) and the vaalboskat (also called the vaalkat or African Wild Cat) were once common on the mountain. The rooikat continues to be seen on rare occasions by mountaineers but the status of the vaalboskat is uncertain. Himalayan tahrs, fugitive descendants of tahrs that escaped from Groote Schuur zoo in 1936, used to be common on the less accessible upper parts of the mountain. As an exotic species, they were eradicated through a culling programme initiated by the South African National Parks to make way for the reintroduction of indigenous klipspringers. Until recently there were also small numbers of fallow deer of European origin and sambar deer from southeast Asia. These were mainly in the Rhodes Memorial area but during the 1960's they could be found as far afield as Signal Hill. The animals may by now have been eliminated or relocated. In the 1800's several dams, including the Woodhead, Hely-Hutchinson and De Villiers reservoirs, were built on top of the mountain to supply Cape Town's water needs. A cable car descending to Camps Bay via Kasteelspoort ravine was constructed to ferry materials and manpower (the cable lift was removed long ago but the anchor points at the old top station can still be seen). In the 1960's there was also a well-preserved steam locomotive housed in a small shed at the top of the mountain near the Hely-Hutchinson dam. It had been used to haul materials for the dam across the flat top of the mountain. Cape Town's water requirements have since far outpaced the capacity of the dams and they are no longer an important part of the water supply. The mountain formed part of the Cape Peninsula National Park in the 20th century. The latter changed its name to the Table Mountain National Park in 1998. In 2006, a devastating fire ran through the mountain, destroying large amounts of vegetation and resulting in the death of a tourist. The Table Mountain Cableway takes passengers from the lower cable station on Tafelberg Road, about 302 m above sea level, to the plateau at the top of the mountain. The upper cable station offers views overlooking Cape Town, Table Bay and Robben Island to the north, and the Atlantic seaboard to the west and south. Construction of the cableway was first started in 1926, and the cableway was officially opened in 1929. In 1997, the cableway was extensively upgraded, and new cars were introduced carrying 65 instead of 25 passengers. The new cars gave a faster journey to the summit, and could rotate through 360 degrees during the ascent or descent, giving a panoramic view over the city. Apart from the views, there are also curio shops, a restaurant and walking trails for visitors at the top of the mountain. Hiking on Table Mountain is popular amongst locals and tourists, and a number of trails of varying difficulty are available. Because of the steep cliffs around the summit, direct ascent from the city side is difficult. Longer routes to the summit go via the Back Table, a lower area of Table Mountain south of the main plateau. There are paths to the Back Table from both the Atlantic and Southern Suburbs sides, and from there a number of paths make a gradual ascent to the summit. Among the most popular routes are: Hoerikwaggo Trail Jeep Track a.k.a. the Bridle Path Kasteelspoort Nursery Ravine Pipe Track Platteklip Gorge Skeleton Gorge Rock climbing on Table Mountain is a very popular pastime. There are well-documented climbing routes of varying degrees of difficulty up the many faces of the mountain. Only traditional climbing is allowed on Table Mountain; no bolting can be done. Commercial groups offer abseiling from the upper cable station. For more information see http://www.tablemountain.net/ |
