Dragon's Wrath 2014

This is the place to gather and discuss all accidents and rescues in the Drakensberg for 2014. The most common are hiking related, though they can also result from other activities such as climbing and paragliding. This thread is inspired by the book "Dragons Wrath" by Reg Pearse & James Byrom, and is an endeavour to continue on in that spirit.

The purpose of this is to:
* concatenate all information about these accidents to keep a concerned Drakensberg community informed;
* express solidarity and concern to those involved in the accidents;
* learn from mistakes made and to heed warnings of risks.

The purpose of this is NOT to:
* criticise or embarrass those involved;
* create media hype about other peoples accidents;
* create undue negative publicity for the Berg.

Historical threads:
5 hiking-related deaths in 2008
Dragon's Wrath 2010
Dragon's Wrath 2011
Dragon's Wrath 2012
Dragon's Wrath 2013

I saw a Newspaper poster this morning that indicated a tourist was rescued in the berg yesterday.
Does anyone know any details?

A German tourist got rescued off the Amphitheatre - still waiting for more details.

Some more info

Steve Cooke of the Mountain Club of South Africa said Gornowitz was hiking in the northern Drakensberg when she suffered acute pain in her back and lost feeling in one of her legs.
“The party had climbed the chain ladder from the Witsieshoek car park and had reached the summit of the escarpment when she was no longer able to walk,” he said in a statement.
Her party moved her to the Ezemvelo KZN hut on the summit and raised the alarm. Alerted at about 2 pm on Monday, search and rescue convenor of the Mountain Club of SA Gavin Raubenheimer co-ordinated the operation.
Raubenheimer arranged that Stephen Richert, the conservation manager of Ezemvelo Royal Natal National Park and a trained paramedic were accompanied by another local paramedic and staff from Ezemvelo who drove up to Witsies­hoek to hike up to Gornowitz to provide immediate emergency care.
“Having reached the patient earlier, the paramedics had examined her and provided emergency treatment. They suspect that the woman has a slipped disc and therefore would have to be evacuated from the mountain,” said Cooke.

...

Raubenheimer described the rescue as tiring.
“A decision was made early in the morning to transport the patient on a stretcher as the helicopter could not get in due to the thick mist …”
He said a team of at least 12 people and other hikers helped to carry the injured women over a distance of about five kilometres from where she was at Mont- aux-Sources hut near the Tugela River Falls, to the Sentinel car park where she would be transported to hospital.

The Witness

A rescue took place at the bottom of Ships Prow Pass on Sunday 23 March 2014, just after 2pm.

At the same time, I was in a group descending Ships Prow South Fork, less than an hour from where the rescue took place. We were near the junction of the North and South Fork when a chopper came thundering up the valley straight towards us and hovered very close to us. The pilot shrugged at us, at which I was a bit bewildered and lifted my hand giving a thumbs up indicating that we were ok, at which they left us. We were very confused about what was going on and had no idea about the rescue.



Soon after the chopper came back up to the valley and then seemed to be hovering for a long time and low flying above that big, awful ChiChi forest you have to battle your way through, in the boulder-bed approach to the base of the the two forks. It almost looked like they were trying to land, but not quite. We thought they might be practising something. It was only after the trip when I made an enquiry that I found out that this had been a rescue - and this perhaps under an hour from us, we walked through that ChiChi forest not long after. Apparently it was a group of three hikers, I think they had just descended the South Fork. A woman in the group had suddenly collapsed from unknown causes. KZN Wildlife was alerted, and after consultation with MSAR it was decided to arrange for immediate air evacuation using the local Westline Aviation chopper, since they feared it could be a heart attack or something like that, and there was no time to wait for MSAR to get up there. The woman was put on a drip and recovered in a hospital later. It may have been dehydration or exhaustion related.





In a strange twist of fate, the same helicopter crashed on the escarpment in the Garden Castle a few days later. Nobody was injured but the craft is pretty much written off.