Spion Kop 2016 Oct

Spion Kop 2016 Oct

Spion Kop is a great mountain to climb if you are sick or about to be sick. You drive to within four non-taxing kilometres from the summit, have a pretty pleasant, low-key stroll through the forest, some of which is on a now-overgrown former logging track, and then a little scaling of some contours and you are there. I had been in bed for a few days leading into this walk, and Angela was about to get sick the next day, so this mountain was a perfect little excursion for such conditions. Rain threatened and materialised just before the finish, but even if it had come earlier, this is a short enough climb for that not to matter much.

Summit cairn

Needless to say, it was not an exciting mountain, but it was still a different taste on the mountain smorgasbord.

We climbed in using the road shown above that approaches from the north, winding around and ascending all those contours. We then took an unmapped offshoot that was going where we wanted to walk, but which ran out where our route starts. The outward route was the more northerly one; the homebound route found more old roads to pursue.