Monday, June 13, 2011

Hike and Weather

Last weekend my wife attended an all day belly dance class (taught by the lady in pink).  This gave me the opportunity to go on a long hike.  I decided to walk to the top of Devil's peak.  This 3000 ft peak stares me in the face every morning when I walk to work and figured it would be a good time to make an attempt.  
I started around 9 a.m. and headed to the Newlands forest since I saw a map showing a trail to the peak.  Two hours in I realized that this was a mistake.  There are many official and unofficial trails in the forest and I couldn't find the right trail.  I gave up on this route when I ran into two shady looking individuals who gave me the heebie-jeebies.  I decided to trust my instincts and cross over to the north side of Devil's Peak which overlooks the city bowl.
Taken from Signal Hill on a different day

After wasting these two hours I easily made it to "King's Block House", and then the fog started rolling in from the north.  I could hear traffic below me but couldn't see the city bowl.  I kept going up until I couldn't see more than 20 ft in front of me. Alas I decided to abort the mission for another day.  I didn't want to become another story about a tourist having to be rescued on Table Mountain.  Below are a few of the pictures I could take on the walk back.


Heading back towards the Southern Suburbs
I turned back when the visibility was worse than this.

Above the fog looking down towards the city bowl
Overlooking Mowbray, and Rondebosch.  I should have filmed the clouds.  The low lying clouds were traveling south and the higher clouds were blowing north.


Other than this hike, my life has been pretty boring.  I have been settling into my life as an academic and I must say that it is a little painful.  Most of my days are monotonous.  I get up, walk the quarter mile up my hill to work, I stay there for several hours, walk home, make dinner, watch videos, go to sleep, and repeat.  Nothing worth blogging about, which should explain my lack of posts over the last month.