Update:
Wilderness Search and Rescue (WSAR) has confirmed that both patients have been safely carried from Table Mountain ‘in a Herculean effort’.
WSAR added that it was a team of second-year ECP students from CPUT stepped in to assist, by carrying the 28-year-old from the contour path junction on Platteklip Gorge.
‘He had made slow steady progress down the trail for nearly eight hours, as teams of rescuers carried his aunt down the mountain, but was unable to proceed any further,’ said WSAR in a Facebook post.
‘He was helped into a rescue stretcher and carried down the road.’
The final tally of the rescue team who attended to the two stranded visitors totalled nearly 50 people, including WSAR volunteer rescuers, WC Department of Health EMS medics, Metro Police officers, City law enforcement officers, SANPark rangers and the CPUT students.
‘The incident was concluded shortly before 5pm – almost 24 hours after the initial SOS call,’ added WSAR.
The rescue organisation also expressed thanks to Bacini’s Pizzeria & Deli, who provided the responders with pizzas ‘which sustained the massive team effort’.
Update: Two individuals have been rescued, a 53-year-old visiting hiker from KwaZulu-Natal and her 28-year-old nephew, thanks to a ‘large multi-agency and multi-disciplinary team, totalling more than twenty rescuers’.
Both hikers called the emergency number of 021 937 0300, when they realised that they were ‘not able to hike back down the mountain’ on Sunday, 25 February 2024.
A team of six rescuers, hiked up with warm gear to spend the night on the mountain with the duo, and helped the stretchered 53-year-old patient two thirds of the way down the trail, with ‘a second team assisting her 28-year-old nephew’.
The Western Cape Wilderness Search and Rescue (WSAR) has stated that they are currently busy with a rescue on Platteklip Gorge, Table Mountain, on Monday, 26 February 2024, at 9am, according to a post made on their Facebook page.
Two hikers failed to complete their trail yesterday, Sunday 25 February 2024, and called for help around 8pm, and due to ‘the injury and weather the team spent the night with the patients on the mountain’.
Also read: Six hikers rescued over busy weekend on Cape trails
The south-easterly prevented the Table Mountain Aerial Cableway from operating normally, and the Air Mercy Service (AMS) helicopter was unavailable to help rescue and extract the hikers and rescuers.
The WSAR has appealed to the public to ‘give the rescue team priority right of way on the route, to allow services to help the two hikers down’.
More updates will follow as the rescue continues.
Also read:
Book your cable car trip up Table Mountain before annual shutdown
Picture: WSAR Facebook / Hendré Zoutendyk