A few weeks ago, there was a media report of a hiker that went missing in the Bain’s Kloof Pass area. Herewith an abridged report from David le Roux, ZS1DAV!
It appears that a hiker went missing in the Bain’s Kloof Pass region a few weeks ago where he was staying. From various reports this hiker was hiking alone and if it were not for the observation of a resident from Wellington and some friends who were picnicking in the area; it may have taken a lot longer for the body to be recovered.
This picnicker saw what he thought was a person on a ledge near the tarred road winding its way over the pass and as it was getting dark, no further investigation could be done. The next morning through media releases, he realised that what he saw could be the lost hiker and immediately informed the Police.
It appeared that the hiker had fallen off a cliff of about 10 metres with result that his body was not visible from the road.
Wilderness Search and Rescue, Hamnet and Metro became involved in the search and by the time the various volunteer groups arrived on the scene, the Police treated this as a crime scene. The whole Pass was closed to traffic probably to allow the Police to search for clues. David reported that communication conditions in the area were very good as all search units were almost in sight of each other.
Crowd control at this point became important and recovery of the body was difficult, due to the steep cliff. However, retrieval was accomplished by a well experienced Fire team.
Many lessons were again learnt from this experience and at debrief all the issues were discussed in detail as a sharpener for the next event.
Reporting for Hamnet, this is Francois Botha – ZS6BUU.
No comments:
Post a Comment