Sunday, Feb. 24
Suicide Gorge? Sounds ominous - and something my mother would cringe at!
A few weekends ago, I went on a hike with 11 other people I’ve met here. But it wasn’t just a hike! We started off the day like any other hiking trip, walking, rather briskly I would say, with only one pretty intense up hill. But the fun started after about an hour and a half of pretty basic hiking. We reached a river and after eating a quick lunch and refilling our water bottles in the stream, we continued on. This time we were using the river as our path, wading through the water and climbing over the rocks in our way. A little ways down river, we got to a cliff. Uh oh - looks like we’re in trouble. There doesn’t seem to be a way to climb down and around the cliff or anything. So, what do you do? You jump!!!
Suicide Gorge is an area to hike in, with beautiful mountains and trails, but the area is more well known for its kloofing opportunities, (now there’s a word to add to your lexicon!). Here’s what it means: “an adventure activity that typically involves the descent of a deep ravine or watercourse that may be dry or wet…A kloofing trip usually combines hiking with the descent of a watercourse. Some of the more ‘interesting’ kloofing involves long abseils or high jumps into pools from varying heights, up to as high as 20 or more metres (for example the popular 'Suicide Gorge' in South Africa).” That was taken from the Wikipedia page on kloofing if you want further information. I swear that I did not add the bit about South Africa - total coincidence.
So we jumped. We actually did a total of about 10 jumps ranging from around 8 meters to 14 meters!! It was so cool!! We had to wade through the river and climb boulders to get to each jump that would eventually get us down the mountain. The shorter jumps were easy, but once we got up past 10 meters, it was a little scary - but so much fun at the same time!!
The pictures will give you a better idea what everything looked like!!
The group of brave souls!!!
This is kind of a weird picture, but cool none the less. It looks like I just walked off the cliff.
Weeeee! A waterfall slide!
A few people were carrying packbacks and then one girl had a dry bag that we shared. We just chucked the bags off the cliff and the person who jumped ahead of you grabbed the bag before it floated downstream.
River crossing!
One of the jumps!
There were two jumps that 5 of us took even higher. This one was not that much higher, but the other one we had to stand on a little pillar of stone and then jump out over a tree. That one was a little terrifying, but exhilarating when I realized I had cleared the rock and the tree and was safely on my way to the water.
It's hard to see, but I did two tandem jumps. This one, we counted to three and my friend jumped as she said three, and I jumped after three was said. I almost landed on top of her, but I missed by a couple feet. The other one, my friend used his Go-Pro (an underwater, all purpose video camera) and filmed us as we went down.
The water felt really good on the first few jumps because we were all so sweaty from the hike to the top. But by the end, it was really cold! I'm pretty sure this is a picture of the last pool after the 14 meter jump. The pool was really deep and it had a waterfall next to where we jumped from. You could swim up under the waterfall and then climb the rocks beside it and jump from a smaller cliff (maybe 2 meters) into the waterfall. Despite the cold, playing under the waterfall was very fun!
Fun Fact: Kloofing is derived from an Afrikaans word 'kloof', meaning 'gorge' or 'ravine'. (Wikipedia page on kloofing).
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