Newlands Woodcutters Trail Run

Our trail grading: ORANGE 5B

Distance: 8km

Extremeness: Very technical single track, off-road and darkness

Location: Newlands Forest, Cape Town, South Africa

Joggers: Christiaan van Niekerk & me

The fun started when we turned onto one of many unknown single tracks with the intention to explore. We decided to take single tracks all the way to the "top" - where ever that was? In the process we passed many tranquil streams, very technical & non-technical single tracks, as well as beautiful natural vegetation. Eventually we got lost somewhere near the "top", only to find weird and scary clearings and spiders! After backtracking a bit we found the Woodcutters path which took us safely to an unknown jeep track. We followed the jeep track for a few hundred meters and it turned into a ridiculously steep single track which stopped against a fence! We were forced downwards and after jumping over the fence we lost altitude quickly and soon connected to our regular contour jeep track leading to the look-out point. It felt like darkness fell in a matter of seconds and I could kick myself for forgetting my head lamp in the Polo. When we reached the look-out point the wind was pumping and it was completely dark. Luckily the view was spectacular! The road back was very scary since we both relied on the dim light from Christiaan's Black Berry Torch! What made matters worse, was that Black Berry has a built in function to switch the torch off every 2-3 minutes... ensuring that we had a few seconds of stumbling in complete darkness every now and then. Thank you Chris for spending almost 2 hours in traffic to join me... as always the jog was enjoyable, eventful and truly extreme!

Christiaan jogging over typical Newlands Forest roots

Christiaan negotiating awesome technical terrain

Part of the natural forest where we lost our way

Entrance to the Woodcutters Path

It quickly became dark as we descended towards the contour jeep track

Blurry view, but you get the idea... the wind was pumping