2011

In a month's time most will be heading for the mountains and the rest will be wishing they were. The forum will rest for a bit. So time to take a look at 2011 and some nominations.....

Most successful thread - Stijn's Photo ID >430 postings and counting.

Second most successful thread - snowwatch @ nearly 200, though the season is stacked against this one now.

Most impressive Berg knowledge - Intrepid's >16 correct photo IDs. Don't leave the car park without this guy in your map pocket.

Equipment revelation of 2011 - all those easy-chairs on the backpacks.

Most prolific poster - Ghaznavid @ > 360 with a late start in 2011 - average of nearly 2 a day, including the days he is in the hills!

Off-piste/off thread - long queue for this one, who is going to fess-up?

Berg dedication - TonyMarshall for Berg holidays from West Africa

Berg contribution - ST and the great book

Driest humour - personal choice no doubt, but Kliktrak's comments on the Zulu locative lesson still make me smile!

Community prize - Must be Intrepid & the very forum

Now what have I missed?

Nice stats, I am always a fan of stats! My favourite stat for 2011 is that UNISA has just released exam and I passed my honours

Lol, I tried to join this forum last year and this year, the registration kept failing, eventually I tried the contact us option and Intrepid sorted it out, it has admittedly been a great distraction but has also taught me a lot about the Berg...

Let me be the first on the forum to congratulate you on your honours degree Ghaznavid. Well done.

Guess we won't read any more excuses from you for not studying! Hope your job doesn't prove to be too much of a distraction from keeping up the postings on VE.

tonymarshall wrote: Let me be the first on the forum to congratulate you on your honours degree Ghaznavid. Well done.

Thanks

tonymarshall wrote: Guess we won't read any more excuses from you for not studying! Hope your job doesn't prove to be too much of a distraction from keeping up the postings on VE.

Am I that bad? Lol, 371 comments prior to this one, thats crazy, soon I will catch up Intrepid (who I beleive had around 800 posts when I joined)... My new job is sporadic, its technically not a job, its more a semi-consistent flow of contract work for my accounting and tax firm (which has 1 owner and no other employees)...

ghaznavid wrote: [ My new job is .... more a semi-consistent flow of contract work for my accounting and tax firm (which has 1 owner and no other employees)...

Eish - I'd be tempted to run that outfit from a freshly cut bit of straw near the level bit of Mponjwane Cave.....

Excellent thread mnt_tiska!

2011 should also be remembered for a very successful VE Berg Trip... in fact, there are a few spin-off awards from this trip:

The ESPN Great Outdoor Games River Crossing award goes to ClimbyKel for her skilled display of crossing the Mhlawazini River. For those who missed the live broadcast, the highlights were repeated many times thereafter!

The Oscar for best cinematography goes to zen101 for his excellent videos capturing the trip.

The Stihl Independent Pine Hacking Army award goes to diverian and witchiwoo for taking down pines all over the berg on several of their own berg trips!

Then we have some general awards:

The Discovery Channel Fact-of-the-Day award goes to mnt_tiska for his informative posts and insight into all topics from Berg weather forecasting to the mastery of the Zulu language.

The Price Waterhouse Coopers Taxonomy award goes to ghaznavid for naming anything unfortunate enough to find its way into his lens. The unnamed peaks in the Northern Berg are still safe (for now)...

My nomination for Trip Report of the year goes to mike.wanliss for his excellent report and photos of their Winter Bell Traverse trip. Feel free to nominate some others as there were many great reports this year, particularly from tonymarshall and elinda as well. Keep it up guys - this is one of the great features of this forum - being able to share our Berg experiences!

And last, but not least, I would like to make the Crash Test Dummy award to my very own backpack, which survived the 100m of bouncing and rolling down Cowl Pass after I gave it a little prod.

Keep them coming!

@mnt_tiska: I would tend more to Upper Injisuthi Cave, provided it can be fitted with invisible high speed internet... The set up I have is pretty cool, I can basically work super hard so I have the cash to pay for more expensive hikes (eg Killi) and then take the required time off to do them, this sounds good in theory, we'll have to wait and see if it ends up working like this in practice...

@Stijn: Taxonomy award from PWC, was that combination deliberate?

The one I'd be interested to know is how many times everyone has been to the Berg this year (staying in a Berg chalet for a week counts as 1 trip), and how many hikes (staying in a chalet for a week and going on 5 day hikes counts as 5 hikes, non-berg hikes also count) each person has been on this year? I'm on 7 trips and 7 hikes, totaling 12 days.

There are some very funny comments amongst all the awards. This one especially...

The Price Waterhouse Coopers Taxonomy award goes to ghaznavid for naming anything unfortunate enough to find its way into his lens. The unnamed peaks in the Northern Berg are still safe (for now)...

Sadly only one trip, 4 days, and I missed all the snow!!! It is a bit hard to fly over for a 5 day.

No, Berg quote of the year goes to me for my discussion with my mother recently (although it was verbal and offline):

Me: I just read about an American general named Bannerman, I wondered if Bannerman Pass was named after a person, but I can't think of any names that end in "Man", so I didn't think this was likely
Her: What's your surname again?
Me: Um, Newman