Devil's Peak (Cape Town)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Devil's Peak (Afrikaans Duiwelspiek) is part of the mountainous backdrop to Cape Town. When looking at the mountain from the harbour, or when looking at the standard picture postcard view of the mountain, the skyline is from left to right: the spire of Devil's Peak, the flat mesa of Table Mountain, the dome of Lion's Head and Signal Hill.
The central districts of Cape Town are nestled within this natural amphitheatre. The city grew out of a settlement founded on the shore below the mountains in 1652 by Jan van Riebeeck, for the Dutch East India Company. Some of the first farms in the Cape were established on the slopes of Devils Peak, along the Liesbeek River.
Devil's Peak stands 1000 meters (3281 feet) high, less than Table Mountain's 1087 meters. One can walk to the top (western slopes provide the easiest approach) but the ascent is nicer and safer outside of the cold, wet, winter months of May - August.
Contents |
[edit] Landmarks
On the Eastern slopes of Devil's Peak you will find the Rhodes Memorial, to Cecil Rhodes, and the University of Cape Town. From these vantages one can gaze down upon the Southern Suburbs of Cape Town and over the sandy Cape Flats towards Stellenbosch, Somerset West and the distant Boland mountains. Other landmarks on the Eastern slopes are Mostert's Mill, Groote Schuur Hospital and the Groote Schuur estate, including a number of presidential and ministerial residences.
A number of historic military blockhouses are situated on Devil's Peak, and a number of cannons. These were intended to defend the city from attack from the South. There is an abandoned fire lookout high up on Mowbray Ridge.
About 35 years ago a formation of three military aircraft, off course and flying in dense cloud, narrowly missed the University and Rhodes Memorial and ploughed into the side of the mountain. For many years a radar reflector beacon stood on Plumpudding Hill above Rhodes Memorial to prevent similar incidents.
[edit] Hiking
There are a lot of easy walks on the lower slopes of the mountain. A popular short hike is from Rhodes Memorial to the King's blockhouse. The only safe ascent of the peak is from the Saddle, between the peak and Table Mountain. There are three routes to reach the Saddle: from Tafelberg Road on the city side, up Newlands Ravine from Newlands Forest, or the upper contour path from Mowbray Ridge and Minor Peak. Once on the Saddle, a straightforward path climbs directly to the summit. The 360 degree view from the summit is well worth the slog.
The peak is very exposed to wind and mist, so hikers must always take care. A number of the descents on the Southern Suburbs side are very steep and wet, and are highly dangerous (particularly Second Waterfall Ravine, Dark Gorge and Els Ravine). These routes should not be attempted, as many lives have been lost by hikers taking the wrong route. The general rule that applies is to stick to known and well-marked paths, and not to push on into the unknown.
[edit] Vegetation
The vegetation is typical Cape fynbos. The slopes facing north overlooking the city are hotter and prone to frequent fires, and as a result the vegetation is low, while the Southern Suburbs side is wetter and more protected, with indigenous forest remaining in some of the gorges. Near Rhodes Memorial there are a few natural stands of a famous native tree called the silverleaf. This may be the only place on earth where the tree still grows wild.
During the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, Devil's Peak (and other adjacent heights) were commercially planted with cluster pines, a problematic invasive non-indigenous tree. Local authorities organized paid workers and volunteers to chop down the pines from the peak and most of them are now gone. Although in Newlands Forest on the lower reaches, pine and gum forests are still maintained for recreational purposes. Stone pines (a non-invasive alien tree) still remain in the area around Rhodes Memorial.
[edit] Fauna
- Please add details of indigenous animals and birds.
Near Rhodes Memorial, some of the lower slopes of Devil's Peak are artificially maintained as savanna, and some herds of eland, wildebeest and zebra are kept there.
In the 1930s, a few Himalayan Tahrs escaped from a zoo on the slopes of Devil's Peak and bred until their population on the Table Mountain range was over 700. A culling programme has eliminated most of them, although a few still remain. Around Rhodes Memorial there were also some feral deer of European origin, which can still be found on the lower slopes.
Indigenous animals include porcupines, caracals, small grey mongoose and rock hyrax.
[edit] Geology
The upper, rocky parts of Devil's Peak, Table Mountain and Lion's Head consist of a hard, uniform and resistant sandstone commonly known as the Table Mountain sandstone or TMS. (This is, however, no longer used as a formal geological name). The tough sandstone rests conformably upon a basal shale that in turn lies unconformably upon a basement of older (Late Precambrian) rocks (Malmesbury shale/slate and the Cape Granite). The basal shale and the older rocks below it weather much faster than the TMS and for this reason the lower slopes are everywhere smoother, with few outcrops and deeper soil. Millions of years of erosion have stripped all of the TMS from Signal Hill and that is why it looks very rounded compared to its sister peaks. There is a road that runs almost on the contour from the lower cable station on Table Mountain along the mountain to Devil's Peak. As it turns east around the bulk of Devil's Peak the road cuttings expose a few famous geological unconformities, which illustrate very clearly that the Malmesbury rocks were folded, baked, intruded by granite and planed down by millions of years of erosion before the area sank below the ocean and a new sequence of sediments, including the TMS, began to accumulate.
[edit] Origins of the name
Devil's Peak was originally known as Windberg, and supposedly gets its current name from the folk-tale about a Dutch man called Jan van Hunks, a prodigious pipe smoker who lived at the foot of the mountain circa 1700. He was forced by his wife to leave the house whenever he smoked his pipe. One day, while smoking on the slopes of the peak, he met a mysterious stranger who also smoked. They each bragged of how much they smoked and so they fell into a pipe-smoking contest. The stranger turned out to be the Devil and Van Hunks eventually won the contest, but not before the smoke that they had made had covered the mountain, forming the table cloth cloud.
In 2002 the African Christian Democratic Party attempted to have the name changed to Dove's Peak, claiming that this was the original Dutch name. In Dutch the words for devil and dove are relatively close in sound and the claim is that the name became corrupted from Duifespiek ("Dove's Peak") to Duiwelspiek ("Devil's Peak"). The English term Devil's Peak is a 19th century translation from the Dutch.
