A great article on the caves from Peter Swart of Kalk Bay
A map of Kalk Bay Caves
Howard [ Just Imagine ] 23-Dec-2008Howard [ Just Imagine ] 23-Dec-2008
Amphitheatre (Camp Site)
Robin Hood's Cavern (Point of Interest)
Death's Leap (Point of Interest)
My friends and I named this cave, "Death's Leap" back in about 1968.
We had come upon the cave by accident on one of our regular camping trips to the Amphitheater, and had cleared some of the bushes to allow access to the cave which was completely overgrown.
We returned a week or two later with ropes, with the intention of climbing down the deep pit and, to our surprise, we found a professional wire rope ladder hidden near the entrance to the cave. We borrowed the rope ladder and used this to descend the pit.
At the bottom of the pit we found a date of 1914 inscribed on the wall, so we were not the first, and I would bet that the owners of the rope ladder could have also been down the pit the week before us. They must have hidden the ladder for future trips, rather than carry it home.
We explored the bottom of the cave, hoping to find a connection, either to Ronan's well or Robin Hood's Cavern, (this was before they had found the passage between the two) but all the passages tapered down to pinholes.
We returned the ladder to it's original hiding place when we were finished.
We had brought paint with us and we painted the name that we had chosen for the cave, "Death's Leap" above the entrance, and the names of all our gang on a rock near the entrance.
I was recently delighted to see a comment on the web from some recent spelunker in 2007, that mentioned that he had explored some of the lessor known caves such as Death Leap. I had personally come up with that name about 40 years ago.
The cave has a small, easy entrance, but quickly develops into a vertical pit, I would guess about 50 feet deep (it was a long time ago, but it seemed very deep) and about 6 or 8 feet across the top. You need a proper rope ladder to descend.
Howard [ Just Imagine ] 23-Dec-2008
Ronan's Well (Point of Interest)
Boomslang (Point of Interest)
Devil's Pit (Point of Interest)