Safety and leadership in the Berg

Thanks ghaznavid

I think that hiking with experienced people is definitely the best way to learn! My goal at the moment is to annoy the more experienced people as little as possible by not being completely helpless at the outset

Fair enough - but I find that many of the more experienced people are happy to share their knowledge. The big thing is make sure you are fit enough to keep up with them (which in the pas I wasn't), listen to what they say and ask plenty of questions.

It is important that you know what's going on, how to handle an emergency and the basic layout of an area - something goes wrong and you get detached from the group, you need to be ready. I recently did a trial run on an emergency bivy (1km from the car park), simply so I would be ready if I had to do one in an emergency. The fact is - reading up on how to handle an emergency only gets you 10% of the way there.

Myself and 1 other guy were lost in the mist above Hlathimba Pass on GT last year. We had no headlamps, warm clothing, GPS, compass, map or anything (we headed off from the group in clear weather and returned in thick mist). The way we found our way back was a combination of looking over photos on my camera, knowing the basic layout of the valley (which I had never been in before) and remembering how the leaders of the group chose the campsite in the first place.

It is important that you know what's going on, how to handle an emergency and the basic layout of an area - something goes wrong and you get detached from the group, you need to be ready. I recently did a trial run on an emergency bivy (1km from the car park), simply so I would be ready if I had to do one in an emergency. The fact is - reading up on how to handle an emergency only gets you 10% of the way there.

I read your description of the emergency bivy trial - from what you wrote it does seem to be more challenging than one would think. I imagine that most emergency procedures are similar, in that you only fully appreciate all the implications once you have experienced an emergency.

I 100% agree with your comment on fitness too. I think the fitter you are the less likely it is that you will make stupid decisions due to exhaustion. Being fit would therefore make you a safer person and a better leader, I guess.

I also feel you need more than one leader, the leaders make co-decisions together they all know where they are going, they all have experience, they are all able to lead, they all discuss and debate until they agree its called team. We have moved away from military styled leadership in the 21 Century and the synergy of team has been researched and has been proved to be more than that of the sum of the individuals.

Very simply the reason for this is, if as a sole leader you find yourself in a bad situation, you could be the one with hypothermia, or what happens if you the one with the leg that is been broken off or the one who is unconscious. If there is more than one leader there is no problem, if you the sole leader the situation has just got worse.

When ever I go into the berg all the experience in the group is pooled into the leadership. We make joint decisions we all look at the map and gps and have an understanding where we are going. For me that will include the rookie of the group and his insight is also important and decisions are explained.


In terms of leadership of the school groups I know some of the men involved and they are good leaders.

The fact that your group has an incident doesn't mean the group was led by a bad leader. Incident's happen, especially when dealing with the unpredictably of a minor under the age of 18! How you manage the event is what makes you competent. In terms of what I heard things were managed extremely well and a life was saved instead of lost.

A very big issue for me is risk management. We all take risks to achieve certain gains. When the risk is high and the gain small we have to re think it. However if the risk is high but so is the gain then we need to manage to what extent we want to take the risk.

How does this relate to school groups? Well we want to give the group of children a certain experience, there might be other objectives like teaching leadership in the group, exposure to hardship, team building etc this is the gain. We then have to evaluate the risk - taking them up Tseketseke pass to achieve this gain. Does the risk out weigh the gain? Can I achieve the same gain with less risk? In other words another pass or perhaps the lower berg. Does this take away from the gain in the experience they will get in the high berg?

Once you are happy that the risk does not out weigh the gain you now have to go and manage that risk.

What is worst case scenario? What will you do to minimize this risk? What is the procedure to follow if you have an incident?

Afterwards you would need to evaluate the incident, Why did it happen? Was this foreseen? Were procedures in place? Is there a pattern? How can we avoid such an incident again?

Anyway there is so much more to it, I'm just putting it in a nut shell. If you are taking minors into the berg and you never done this before I suggest you start, otherwise you are not competent to take a group of children into the mountains. Yes you may just be the coordinator. However, those with mountain sense and experience are doing this all the time. A beginner may have to write it all down and look at it on paper but once you in a habit of doing it often you will quickly be doing it in your head. To some extent a group of adults going into the berg should also take this into account.

Don't take the experience away from minors because there are risks and because an incident occurred, otherwise children will be better off only playing computer games in the safety of their home. It is so safe to google earth the Drakensberg but what a shameful lack of experience we will be giving the children of the future.

ruthtbl wrote:

I have been wondering recently if there are any courses that one can do specifically related to hiking? What I am interested in is becoming a more knowledgeable hiker in terms of navigation, safety, survival skills and first aid skills (I'm thinking along the lines of scouts-style courses). Does anyone have any information about this type of thing?

Came across this ONLINE training course called Trail Smart:

campus.educadium.com/aqn/

Also see: adventurequalifications.wordpress.com/trail-smart-online-training-course/