Twin Peaks, Twin Rescues: One Scorched Western Cape Afternoon

Two dramatic mountain rescues unfolded in the Western Cape on a scorching afternoon. First, an elderly British hiker suffered severe heatstroke on “The Oven” trail and was airlifted to safety. Soon after, a young engineer broke his ankle in the treacherous Witels Canyon, requiring a daring winch rescue. These events highlight how extreme heat and more visitors are making mountain rescues more common, stressing the need for preparation and quick responses.

What are the primary reasons for the increase in mountain rescues in the Western Cape?

Mountain rescues in the Western Cape have increased due to a 29% rise in days hotter than 32°C since 1990 and a 41% surge in Witels Circuit permits post-COVID. This combination of extreme heat and higher footfall leads to more heat-related incidents and injuries in challenging terrain.

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Quartzite Ridge, 14:02 – When the Mountain Turns Into a Skillet

The Overberg’s silver EC-135 tilts above the jagged spine that keeps Hermanus breezes from reaching Stanford. Directly underneath, the Klipgat Trail’s mid-section – hikers call it “The Oven” – is already radiating 38 °C in the measly shade of a dying protea. Five British retirees left the parking gate at seven that morning, bound for a waterfall brunch. By half-past eleven the headcount is four vertical, one wobbling.

The fallen walker, an 83-year-old ex-Navy cartographer, sways like a mast in gale-force sunglasses. Mates follow every modern heat-stroke crib-sheet: inch him into the thinnest shard of shade, prop his heels on a pack, fan hard with the shiny face of an emergency sheet, ration the last half-litre of water between sips and skin. At 11:47 one thumb hits SOS on a palm-sized Garmin inReach. Two heartbeats later the cry for help bounces off an Iridium bird and lands – 11:49 sharp – on the duty handset at Western Cape Search & Rescue in Bellville.

Inside the ops room a laminated flow-chart already predicts the next move: victim over eighty, ambient above thirty-five, helicopter wheels-up inside sixty minutes. A green chopper magnet slides across the wall map; Air Mercy Service is already fueled because last night’s forecast screamed “Level-2 heatwave.” Pilot André Koen, flight medic Charné Jansen and mountain guru Dirk van Schalkwyk lift from Cape Town International’s medical apron at 12:09, slicing through a cobalt sky the south-easter forgot to cloud over.

Landing on Broken Glass – How to Turn a Cattle Track into an ICU

“The Oven” offers landing sites the way a cheese-grater offers pillows: loose platter-sized shale, refrigerator boulders, and a sideways tilt that would make a skateboarder blush. Koen spots a cattle scratch barely wider than a suburban driveway and kisses the skids onto it with thirty centimetres of rotor clearance to spare. Van Schalkwyk crunches across sugar-quartz to find the pensioner’s core at 39.8 °C, BP 80/50, pulse 142. Jansen drills an IO straight into the tibia – faster than hunting a collapsed vein – and dumps a litre of iced Ringer’s plus five percent dextrose. Every few seconds she mists neck and groin with a spray-bottle kept at twenty degrees; the spinning blades double as a fan club. Twenty-two minutes after touchdown the patient is strapped in, stable, pain-score 2/10, serenading the crew with an off-key “Sailing.” The flight tracker falls to zero at 13:04; Africa has given the old sailor a tan he never planned on buying.

Witels Canyon, 14:55 – When Sandstone Snaps at Millennials

Before the first helicopter becomes a sunlit glint on the western horizon, a second electronic flare pops. Six dehydrated trekkers claw up a 45-degree gully of crumbling Table-Mountain sandstone to beg a single bar of 4G. Their friend, 24-year-old engineer Jody April, has rolled his right ankle ninety degrees outward on a dinner-plate flake; the crack echoed like a rim-fire cartridge. They splint the joint with a trekking pole and two Buffs, swallow the last electrolyte sachets, and start the chimney-climb toward daylight.

The Witels is a geological club sandwich: four-hundred-metre quartzite cliffs interleaved with ledges the width of a yoga mat. No skids will ever kiss that ground, so the only ticket out is a hover-step waltz. AMS is already on the Worcester apron refuelling after the Overberg run when the second bell rings. Same crew, new configuration: winch operator Ruan Vogel swaps the stretcher for a strop kit and they depart again at 15:11.

Koen parks the aircraft ninety feet above a pool-table-sized shelf. Van Schalkwyk rides the 60-metre steel braid down first, plants a cam in a finger-crack, then calls for April. The graduate is vacuum-packed inside a bean-bag mattress that turns rigid when air is sucked out, clipped to a double-point harness, and winched aloft. With the injured man safely en-route to Ceres, the mountain-rescue specialist and one companion still need extraction. A second winch in rotor-washing gusts is judged too spicy, so they opt for vintage style: down-climb 200 metres to the Witels River, boulder-hop 3 kilometres downstream, and meet the aircraft at a tributary junction wide enough for a skid touchdown. Boots hit the Ceres sports-field at 16:58, mud-streaked, grinning, chugging lukewarm cola handed over by local mountain-club volunteers.

Ledger of a Single Afternoon – Fuel, Fluid, and WhatsApp Bots

• Distance between the two incidents: 110 km as the crowned eagle flies.
• Elapsed time from first SOS to second patient delivered: 3 hours 51 minutes.
• Jet-A swallowed: 412 litres – about what a Cape Town–Johannesburg 737 burns while still on the taxiway.
• Fluids pushed into human tissue: 2.5 L chilled crystalloid, 0.5 L hypertonic saline, 0.5 L oral rehydration.
• Automated WhatsApp warnings fired to adjacent hiking parties: 18; two groups rerouted before trouble knocked.
• Invoice sent to the taxpayer: ZAR 48,000 – largely recovered through AMS insurance and the Brits’ travel-medical policy.

Few trekkers realise that every WSAR activation quietly flips a second switch. A botanist on retainer cross-checks GPS coordinates against the weekly rare-flower bloom chart; if the proposed landing dot kisses a Disa uniflora colony, the pilot is told to slide twenty metres downslope. Sunday’s Overberg spot fell inside a Cape rockjumper breeding quadrant – post-flight data show rotor-wind did not dislodge a single monitored nest, a micro-victory that will colour next year’s environmental-impact review.

Heat, Hype and the New Calendar – Why Rescues Are the New Normal

Climate spreadsheets from Stellenbosch University reveal an ugly trend: days hotter than 32 °C in the Western Cape uplands have climbed 29 % since 1990. Trail-counters add another layer – Witels Circuit permits are up 41 % in the post-COVID rush. Heat plus footfall equals a graph that refuses to bend downward: WSAR logged 47 activations between November 2023 and January 2024, versus 31 in the same broiling window five years earlier.

The province is pushing back with “cool boxes” – insulated caches holding ten litres of water, oral-rehydration sachets and a mylar blanket – anchored at five black-spot locations and restocked weekly by volunteers. The maiden box sits precisely where the British cartographer folded; rescuers arrived to find his party had already cracked it open and poured two litres down his neck.

Tech tricks you won’t read in glossy brochures: freeze half your water the night before – the expanding ice drops the remaining liquid 4–6 °C by midday; crumple your space blanket instead of laying it flat – micro-facets bump heat reflection from 50 % to 70 %; mix your own electrolyte – 500 ml water, a level teaspoon table salt, eight level teaspoons sugar, squeeze of lemon – WHO osmolarity, cents on the rand; if rotors are thumping overhead, whistle SOS at 3150 Hz – the tone slices through turbine roar and carries furthest in dry mountain air.

Inside the returning helicopter Charné Jansen records a voice memo: “Patient singing Rod Stewart, mapped this very coastline in ’67 with aerial stereo-photos, says mountains looked safer from 30,000 feet. I tell him they still are – provided you lug two litres of water and a satellite ping. He vows to mail me the original chart, updated in red ink with today’s GPS breadcrumb.” The aircraft lifts, another sunburnt afternoon fades, and the Western Cape’s twin-peaked drama closes its ledger – until the mercury climbs again next weekend.

[{“question”: “

What are the primary reasons for the increase in mountain rescues in the Western Cape?

“, “answer”: “Mountain rescues in the Western Cape have increased due to a 29% rise in days hotter than 32°C since 1990 and a 41% surge in Witels Circuit permits post-COVID. This combination of extreme heat and higher footfall leads to more heat-related incidents and injuries in challenging terrain.”}, {“question”: “

What were the two incidents that occurred on the scorching afternoon?

“, “answer”: “On a scorching afternoon, two dramatic mountain rescues unfolded. The first involved an elderly British hiker who suffered severe heatstroke on \”The Oven\” trail and required an airlift. The second incident saw a young engineer break his ankle in the treacherous Witels Canyon, necessitating a daring winch rescue.”}, {“question”: “

How did the rescue team respond to the heatstroke incident on \”The Oven\” trail?

“, “answer”: “Upon receiving the SOS signal, Western Cape Search & Rescue promptly dispatched an Air Mercy Service (AMS) helicopter with Pilot André Koen, flight medic Charné Jansen, and mountain guru Dirk van Schalkwyk. They landed in a challenging spot, administered immediate medical care including IV fluids and cooling measures, and airlifted the patient to safety within minutes of touchdown.”}, {“question”: “

What challenges did the rescue team face during the Witels Canyon operation?

“, “answer”: “The Witels Canyon presented significant challenges due to its rugged terrain with 400-meter quartzite cliffs and narrow ledges, making a direct helicopter landing impossible. The rescue required a specialized hover-step waltz maneuver, with the winch operator Ruan Vogel and mountain guru Dirk van Schalkwyk performing a winch rescue to extract the injured engineer. The remaining rescuer and companion had to down-climb and boulder-hop to a wider landing spot.”}, {“question”: “

What is the total cost and logistics involved in a typical rescue operation like these?

“, “answer”: “The two incidents, 110 km apart, were resolved within 3 hours and 51 minutes. They consumed 412 litres of jet fuel and involved pushing 3.5 litres of fluids into human tissue. The invoice sent to the taxpayer for these operations was ZAR 48,000, largely recovered through AMS insurance and the victims’ travel-medical policies.”}, {“question”: “

What measures are being implemented to mitigate the risks associated with increased heat and visitor numbers?

“, “answer”: “The province is implementing ‘cool boxes’ – insulated caches with water, oral rehydration sachets, and mylar blankets – at high-risk locations. Additionally, automated WhatsApp warnings are sent to nearby hiking parties, and hikers are advised to freeze water, use space blankets effectively, and make their own electrolyte solutions. Environmental impact is also considered, with botanists checking coordinates to protect sensitive flora and fauna like Disa uniflora colonies and Cape rockjumper breeding quadrants.”}]