General Information
Chapman’s Peak is a mountain on the western side of the Cape Peninsula, about 15 kilometres south of Cape Town, South Africa. It overlooks the inlet around which the town of Hout Bay is centred. The western flank of the mountain falls steeply into the Atlantic Ocean.
Chapman’s Peak Drive, a spectacular coastal road, winds along the near-vertical mountain face from Hout Bay to Noordhoek. Carved out between 1915 and 1922, the road was celebrated as a major engineering achievement.
The road was closed in the 1990s following a fatal rockfall, but was re-engineered and reopened in 2005 as a toll route. Chapman’s Peak Drive is also part of the route for South Africa’s two biggest mass-participation races: the Cape Argus Cycle Race and the Two Oceans Marathon.
Geology
The top of Chapman’s Peak consists of flat, sedimentary rocks related to those that form Table Mountain. The base of the mountain, however, consists of Cape Granite and the two formations meet at a geological unconformity that is world-famous amongst earth scientists.
Vegetation
Two different endangered vegetation types can be found along this road, and correspond to the two main geological formations. They are Peninsula Sandstone Fynbos and Cape Granite Fynbos, and they are both endemic to the city of Cape Town, occurring nowhere else.
Manganese Mine
There is an old, abandoned manganese mine on the northwestern slopes of the peak. The remains of a jetty from which the ore used to be shipped is directly below the workings.