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Right Face on Table Mountain is just to the east of the cable station. In a misguided attempt to 'walk up the mountain' many people have become lost or trapped on its steep cliffs.
Here Skymed moves in to lower a rescuer to a stranded hiker.
Wind swept micro-ledges, frozen ripples in an ancient sea bed, caramel bubbles and a scree slope of soft biscuit blocks.
At about 400 meters Table Mountain consists of micaceous basal shale, which weathers easily often forming small but bizarre structures.
These rocks were laid down as ancient sea beds 800 million years ago. The upper part of the mountain mesa consists of Ordovician quartzitic sandstone, commonly referred to as Table Mountain Sandstone (TMS), which is highly resistant to erosion and forms characteristic steep grey crags.
500 million years later these rocks were compressed by a huge glacial ice sheet, the scars of which are still visible around Maclears Beacon, and then raised 1 kilometre up into the sky by a massive granite intrusion below the peninsula, still visible around much of the sea shore.
Table Mountain is one of the oldest surviving mountains, 6 times older than the Himalaya and 5 times as old as the Rocky Mountains.
Source: Wikipedia and www.capetown.at