A fellow mountain runner and I decided to have an adventure and bag some of the peaks on my list. Its been a while and the wind was bringing in a lot of cloud so unfortunately i was not able to get an image of any of the summits on the way in.

We started our journey from the MTO Forestry gate in Jonkershoek and ran the along the circular road (gravel road) until we reached Swartbos Kloof where we began our ascent. Swartboskloof is a relatively long climb by local standards and covers over 900m of elevation over about 3km. From the top of Swartboskloof there are spectacular views over Jonkershoek down into the Stellenbosch valley. If you cross over the ridge to Pic-sans-Nom you will find yourself on a ledge some 1184m up looking over Somerset West and Strand.

From The top of Swartbos Kloof we followed what is the Boland Hiking trail until the split. Where the path splits we headed east along the path that soon goes south up and around the Tripplets (three peaks in close proximity overlooking a deep gorge aptly named Diepgat). We summited the highest of these three buy leaving the path and climbing a ridge line. This peak has got to be one of the most spectacular summits i have achieved to date.

After summiting the highest of the Triplets we worked our way down the ridgeline and back onto the path (a path which is quite overgrown) and headed around the base of the last of the triplets to a neck from which we were able to summit the more popular Somerset Sneeukop. At this point the cloud came in quite heavily and although we were able to work our way up and down a ridgeline and summit the peak, we didn't see very much. This peak will definitely have to be revisited.

We headed back to our starting point the same way we had come to complete what was a long morning of more than 6 hours and 30km. It has to be sain that much of the route is very steep or overgrown and could probably only be power hiked at best (unless your name is Killian). We were only able to run about half of the way.