At 19h39 a call came through for three people lost on Camps Bay side of TM. Matt (ZS1MTF), confirmed availability with the logistics duty manager and was told to RV with Metro 1 and Johan (ZU1JV) at Theresa Ave in camps Bay.

Light was fading as we arrived on scene, contact was made with the party lost on the mountain and it was confirmed that they were well equipped and were comfortable to wait for the WSAR teams to reach them.

While discussing on the ground, a few ideas were came about on how to reach them – one was to take the cable car up and hike down to the party but this was later deemed an unsuitable option as it would have taken too long for the teams to reach the party of three in time. The decision was made to transport the teams up the Pipe Track to the start of the trail and from there to hike up towards the lost party and then up to the MCSA hut on the back table for extraction.

When the teams reached the party of three it was established that they had been on the mountain from 9am that morning and were exhausted – hence them taking extremely long to reach the hut. Three teams consisting of 14 WSAR members were sent into the field.

There were no communication issues while we were at Theresa Ave, we tried to use EMS 12 on the cable station but that seems to be down at the moment, this would have been particularly useful when we had to relocate to the back table and establish communications with the teams on their way up to us.

The first team reached the hut at around 4h05 31st Aug, everyone was down at Constantia Circle at around 5h25 and a quick debrief took place. Visibility at this point was anything from 5 to 10m. Johan left straight from there and I proceeded to take 2 MCSA members back to the Pipe track to fetch their vehicles.