Table Mountain is the world's 7th most-crowded hiking spot
Is there a solution to lessen congestion on the mountain?
Lester Kiewit speaks to Kosta Papageorgiou, Chairperson of the Friends of Lions Head.
Adventure tour operator Explore Worldwide conducted research to find which popular hikes around the globe are the most congested.
The study took a unique approach – analysing the length of popular walking routes and the number of associated Instagram posts.
They concluded that Cape Town’s Table Mountain is South Africa’s busiest hiking venue and 7th busiest in the world with an average of 1189 Instagram posts per kilometre of trail.
Other findings from the study included:
- Malaysia’s Mount Kinabalu ranks as the world’s most crowded hike, with over 22 000 Instagram posts per kilometre.
- The Inca Trail follows in second place, with 6723 posts on Instagram per kilometre.
Papageorgiou says this result is unsurprising, as Table Mountain is 'the Mecca of hiking.'
He says there is a solution to all the congestion.
"I think there's so many other ways to solve this problem... it's always going to be popular, but there are 46 ways to get up Table Mountain. We have to encourage people to use all of them."
- Kosta Papageorgiou, Chairperson - Friends of Lions Head
"We should be educating people about other routes available with SANPARKS and volunteers."
- Kosta Papageorgiou, Chairperson - Friends of Lions Head
Scroll up to the audio player to listen to the full conversation.