When flying past the berg, we climbed up to 10 500ft. Those mountains are massive!
On the day of the accident, the briefing was to try and climb up the escarpment. I climbed up to a crazy altitude of 12 500ft. From up there, it became quite apparent that the cloud was banked up against the berg, althought the top of the escarpment was visible. It was stupid to continue on, and so I turned around and landed back at Harrismith. Without going into too much detail in case the family is reading this, we then realised on the way back to Harrismith that one of the gyro's was in trouble.
I then instigated search and rescue, and in the meantime, one of the gyro's got through to the Dragon's Peak Hotel. He decided to come back to Harrismith, telling us that the weather had improved. All of us then carried on to Dragon's Peak Hotel, trying to look for the missing gyro. It was after landing there, that I got a call from a police captain saying they had located the wreckage. The next day, we flew through to the Shell Ultra City at Escourt.
I was keen to continue the trip, despite the horrific events of the previous day, since I had made peace with myself that I thought that's what Willem might have wanted. 3 Gyro's (including myself), continued on to Port St. John's, while the rest of the gyro group decided to head back home.
All in all, the trip had some of the greatest highs and lows that one can experience, and despite my airline flying, I learnt so much about flying in the berg, and the dangers associated with that, particularly at this grass roots level. There were a lot of smaller incidents and things that happened along the way, that I aim to avoid next when going on a long cross country. What a learning experience!
- Almost 12 500 ft!!!!
- IMG_3159.JPG (54.11 KiB) Viewed 2471 times
- At 12 500ft looking across the Lesotho mountains
- IMG_3161.JPG (30.17 KiB) Viewed 2472 times
