Table Mountain is astonishingly old, its sandstone dates back roughly 260 million years, making it older than the Himalayas, the Alps, and the Rockies combined. Its distinctive flat top is the result of millions of years of erosion wearing away everything softer, leaving a plateau nearly 3 kilometres long that towers over Cape Town at 1,085 metres, often capped by a rolling cloud formation locals call “the tablecloth.”
That cloud isn’t decorative, it forms when moist south-easterly wind is forced up the mountain’s slope, cooling and condensing as it rises, then spilling dramatically over the flat summit edge like something poured rather than blown. Cape Town’s weather has been shaped by, and around, this single geological feature for as long as people have lived beneath it.
An Ecosystem Found Nowhere Else
Table Mountain sits within the Cape Floral Kingdom, the smallest and richest of the world’s six floral kingdoms, home to over 2,200 plant species on the mountain alone, more than exist in the entire United Kingdom. Many of these, including several proteas, Cape Town’s national flower, grow nowhere else on Earth, adapted specifically to the mountain’s fynbos vegetation and its cycle of periodic wildfire, which several native species actually require to reproduce.
A cableway, rotating slowly for a full 360-degree view during the ascent, has carried visitors to the summit since 1929, though the mountain remains popular with hikers who prefer Platteklip Gorge, the same route indigenous Khoi people and early European settlers used centuries before any cable car existed.
Painting a Mountain That Makes Its Own Weather
The dramatic interplay of flat stone silhouette and rolling cloud gives a watercolourist an unusually dynamic subject to work with, no two views of Table Mountain look quite alike. We’ve captured that shifting drama in our own Table Mountain Watercolor Print, painted first by hand and printed to order on archival paper, a small piece of Cape Town for a wall at home.
Older than the mountain ranges most people consider ancient, Table Mountain has had a very long time to perfect the art of looking, and behaving, unlike anywhere else on Earth.