Table Mountain Rescue

Grateful acknowledgement of your superb rescue effort - night of 12/13 March 2007

Dear Hugo
Although I have unfortunately not met you, my wife Sandy has told me all about your skills and ability to mount the search and rescue mission on Monday night. By the time we got through to base camp you had already left for work.

I just find it amazing that you and all your teams from the different rescue organisations are volunteer workers, prepared to risk life and limb, not to mention missing sleep and family time over weekends. I truly salute you and wish I were in a position to pitch in myself, which I cannot for personal reasons.
What more can I say than THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart, and also that of my young German companions whom I expected to take on an uneventful walk to the Boss crane barge wreck for close-up photographs. My mistake to begin with was that I assumed everything would be the same as 12 years ago, when I twice undertook this walk/hike with other friends. Then there was a clearly marked path through the bushes and it posed no danger - until attacks started occurring. I am quite expereinced on Table Mountain, having been up eg. Skeleton Gorge, amongst others, many times, also in poor weather conditions. But there one has cell phone coverage, and everything is so well marked out.

I am also aware of the cardinal rule of never leaving the beaten track - which I did on Monday afternoon when the path we were on petered out in the ravine from which you eventually rescued us. We then decided to move down the ravine, which was really all quite safe going, to try and find a lower path to take us to the wreck. But I gave up this idea when I realised time was running short and decided to rather turn back and return along the upper path we had come along.

This was where our problems began, because we could not locate the opening of the path into the gorge, and just continued higher and higher, with the idea of summitting and finding cell phone coverage, at least. When we hit a sheer rock wall up at the top we were finally stymied - and now it was already late afternoon. All we could do in the interests of safety was move back down the ravine and then find a clearing from which we would be able to see Maori Bay and from where we could signal clearly if searchlights were to appear looking for us. The rest you know.

You have no idea what a relief it was to make contact with civilisation at midnight and to know that help was on the way.Those searchlights from the NSRI vessel were very comforting. When Hannes broke through the bushes it was an incredible experience.

In conclusion, another tribute to you all is that the next morning my wife said she had renewed hope in the future of our beautiful country - amongst all the crime, violence and corruption there are people such as yoursleves.

I can only mention the names of the people I came into contact with, but will rather not because it would not be fair on the rest of the supporting network we never got to meet. If you can please forward this message to all concerned; you know who they are, I would be most grateful.

Many, many thanks and God bless you in your service to humanity.
Yours sincerely
Helmut Gente