Rock-hopping in Bainskloof

For more adven­tur­ous types who don’t only go camp­ing to sleep off the pre­vi­ous night’s Klipdrift or spend the week­end fan­tas­iz­ing about the return of their hair-dryer, I highly recom­mend camp­ing at  Tweede Tol in Bainskloof and doing the rock-hopper trail along the Witte River between the camp­site and Eerste Tol at the top of the Bainskloof Pass.

Bainskloof is situ­ated in the Limietberg in the Western Cape. The camp­site is con­veni­ently loc­ated no more than an hour and a half from Cape Town and is about 15 minutes from Wellington ...

From a camp­ing per­spect­ive, Tweede Tol, man­aged by Cape Nature, is slightly com­mer­cial. This means that site sizes are some­what lim­ited and that neigh­bours are almost cer­tainly guar­an­teed, how­ever, it also means that the camp­site is well-maintained. Booking is essen­tial as are per­mits for des­ig­nated trails.

When we chose to do the rock-hopper trail, we were a little unpre­pared for the day ahead of us and the thought of spend­ing a morn­ing scram­bling along a river bed for 6km was slightly more romantic than it turned out to be.

We left a little late in the morn­ing (in December) and made a seem­ingly wise decision to scramble upstream based on the rel­at­ive ease of climb­ing up rocks as opposed to down them and with the per­ceived logic that nav­ig­a­tion would be much easier.

Our judge­ment may have been slightly sus­pect and the trail took us about 8 and a half hours– most of which was dur­ing the hot­test part of the day. It didn’t take long before con­stant bal­an­cing res­ul­ted in sore feet and the urge to get to the next shady spot or decent pool was an abso­lute neces­sity rather than a nat­ural delight. Also, there came an hour past the half-way mark where dis­tance sud­denly mattered and every bend provided a cruel sense of hope that it was the last, when in fact it was at least an hour premature.

Despite the exhaus­tion, it was an abso­lutely fab­ulous day. The river bed was devoid of lazy frol­ick­ers (well any­one at all), the sense of escape was pre­served, there were some exquis­ite rock pools, and the exer­cise was welcome.

Some advice if you are con­sid­er­ing this trail:

• Downstream is appar­ently recom­men­ded for a reason
• 6km wound along a river bed is not 6km along a tar road
• Do not wear pre­cious clothes or shoes
• Take lunch
• Leave before 10am in mid-summer
• Remember to have two cars– one for both the start and the fin­ish– because walk­ing up/down the tar road at the end is simply not an option
• Do not go if you hate hik­ing, are indif­fer­ent about nature or are anti­cip­at­ing a long, late night around a camp fire that night
• Do not go with someone who insists on talk­ing the whole time

In all hon­esty, this is con­veyed from the point of view of a timid adven­turer, so my per­spect­ive is slightly cor­rup­ted by my tain­ted fit­ness, aver­sion to heights and inhib­ited cour­age, and is in no way a reflec­tion of my fel­low rock-hoppers, who are con­fid­ent and less obsessed with a dip in every pool. In abso­lute fair­ness and in humble resig­na­tion to real­ity, I do believe that without my com­pany and pres­ence, the trail should have taken closer to six and a half hours. That said though, my com­rades were equally exhausted and unamused by the 8^th last bend before we even­tu­ally reached the end.

If you’re fit, healthy and a fer­vent nature-lover, this trail is sat­ur­ated with reward.  A recom­mend­a­tion for the fol­low­ing day is to do the 9 km Bobbejaan’s River Trail to a water­fall. For the shocked and worn, how­ever, Sunday is best spent loun­ging with the week­end masses in splen­did rock pools in the Witte River near the camp­site and pic­nic area.

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Contact Details for Cape Nature:
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