I forgot to mention an interesting fact from our Amphitheatre hike in my last post: Tugela Falls, the 2nd highest waterfall in the world (Trivia: What is the highest waterfall in the world? no cheating), originates from the top of the Amphitheatre. The reason I forgot to mention Tugela Falls in my previous post was because it was thoroughly underwhelming during dry season. It was just a small stream of water.
The roaring Tugela Falls during dry season
We briefly contemplated leaving the Drakensberg after hiking the Amphitheatre, but the hostel receptionist convinced us to stick around to hike Tugela Gorge – pretty but relatively uneventful hike – and Cathedral Peak.
Tugela Gorge
Cathedral Peak is a beast of a day hike that’s takes us up 1500m in elevation over 19km, with 4 scrambling sections. I will once again do a pictorial exposition of our hike.
Cathedral Peak is so far away it is barely visible from the trailhead. It is behind the mountain on the right.
A quarter of the way into the hike, Cathedral peak is finally visible. It is the tall one in the middle.
Nearly 3 hours into the hike, Cathedral peak is still so far away.
The last 200m of Cathedral Peak is poorly marked. In our stupidity, we neglected to take a map of the last section with us. Instead of taking the scrambling route straight up on the face of the peak, we went up the gully on the left of the peak that led us to a dead end.
Scrambling up the wrong route
Although it was a little demoralizing we didn’t summit Cathedral Peak after spending 9 hours on the trail, the amazing alpine scenery enroute still made it a worthwhile trip.
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