The Grotto Hiking Club

biometrics

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Oct 17, 2019
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@Papa Smurf

New thread for hiking. Once this pandemic subsides somewhat I'd like to go on a hike with you. As mentioned all my hiking buddies have either left Cape Town or got married with kids. I used to climb the Table Mountain range all the time, probably around 150-200 times. Did several mountains in the Klein Swartberge like Towerkop (twice), long multi day Cederberg hikes (twice) and so on.

Our hikes started to get riskier as we explored more routes on Table Mountain and eventually we decided to do a rock climbing course and get gear. That was fun for a while until I had a bad fall and tore the ligaments in an ankle. Since then I've developed a bit of fear for height exposure (regular hiking is fine, just the rope climbing bit).

Btw, any of you into Geocaching? I was somewhat instrumental in getting it going in SA. Back in 2000 GPS Selective Availability was turned off. Until then it was only accurate to 100m. With that the treasure hunting sport of Geocaching was invented. I read about it late 2000 and got a GPS early in 2001 and looked for the local caches. There were only two in the Cape, lol. I liked it so much I drove to Bloemfontein over a weekend to go find the three there. There was almost none other in the country. So I set out to promote the game, I organised the UCT professor that hid the one Cape Town cache to do interviews on the radio, the Bloem cacher published a booklet that I distributed to Cape Union Mart etc. I created and hid 29 caches, 10 still exist. The second cache I hid, and that still exists, has been found 1,312 times! Later we did "event caches", which is basically a braai + piss up. I very seldomly still do it unless there happens to be one nearly. I do want to go find the one at the Sandbaai beacon though. Geocaching is what got this geek out of the office/house into the mountains, until then I had never been up Table Mountain.

But first I need to get fitter. Upping the time on the treadmill starting this week.
 

Papa Smurf

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Great idea, will be doing loads of hiking after Covid19, at the moment im only doing solo hikes

I have never attempted geocaching as i am totally useless with a gps and maps :ROFLMAO:
 

biometrics

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I have never attempted geocaching as i am totally useless with a gps and maps
I've got 50 finds to my name. There are geocachers with over 10,000+ finds. Suspect these are retired people traveling the world. The awesome thing about the cache locations are that you will never find them as a regular tourist, so they are getting to see special places that other geocachers are leading them too. Pretty cool.
 

Rudolph Hart

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I suspect that I’d enjoy geo-caching, but I just don’t have the time (or money) to do all that travelling.
 

spiderz

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Apr 1, 2020
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I might be interested in the hiking too, just need to get a bit fitter first...
 

Papa Smurf

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Mar 20, 2020
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3rd Rock From The Sun
its good fun @spiderz
i started September 2018 and a month later after 28yrs of nicotine abuse i quit the habit and my new high became hiking

What i found the easiest and lots of fun in the beginning was the long horizontal tracks and not the climbing mountains ones, ex doing Pipe Track on Table Mountain and even the Contour Paths as well on Table Mountain. Another awesome place is Cape Point, my favourite hiking trail of all time is the Sirkelsvlei hike there and i often do it with other hikers or even on my own, it covers a section of beach walking and checking out a few shipwrecks on the beach and then head inland towards a waterhole and watch the Eland and other bokkies drinking water there, lots of Ostrich as well and an awesome bush trail heading back to the carpark. Very good beginner hike as the accent in height is only 30 metres i would guess

my dreamjob oneday is to take people hiking
 
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