Emergency Call-out Reports

Rescue of missing hiker in Magaliesberg

9 May, 2010

Man breaks both feet during hike

A man broke both his feet when he jumped from one rock to another during a hiking trip in the Magaliesberg, just a week before his 28th birthday.

Rescue services struggled for hours on Sunday afternoon to get Jaco Greyling out of the Tonquani Gorge in the Mountain Sanctuary Park in the North West.

Greyling, a boiler maker from Krokodildrift near Hartbeespoort, said from his hospital bed at Unitas hospital in Centurion on Monday that he had been at the park with the Seventh-Day Adventists of Hartbeespoort for the weekend. They went climbing in the gorge on Sunday.

"I picked a route and went off one way, but I soon realised I wasn't going to make it, so I jumped with both feet from one rock to another," said Greyling. "I landed on the rock, looked at my feet and saw they were standing at an odd angle. I wanted to put one foot in front of the other, but my foot just dragged. When I fell on my behind I just knew my feet were broken."

Besides the people who were climbing with him, a group of schoolchildren from another church group came to offer their help and gave him some painkillers.

"At first they said I should try crawling on my knees, but then we saw that wasn't going to work," he said. "They fetched a stretcher and started hoisting me up the gorge with ropes. I weigh 110kg, so the guys had a bit of a struggle."

Shortly afterwards, several emergency workers from the Off Road Rescue Unit, Mountain Search and Rescue, Lonmin Rescue and Netcare 911 arrived on the scene. Members of Lonmin Rescue gave him morphine for the pain.

Using ropes, they carried him for about 150m, one boulder at a time, out of the gorge.

At the top of the gorge, an Oryx helicopter from 17 Squadron - based at Zwartkop in Pretoria - was on standby to take him to hospital.

Greyling's right foot was crushed, and at least four bones in his left foot are broken. Doctors will operate on Wednesday, after which he'll have to spend three months in a wheelchair, and then another three months on crutches. Doctors said it's possible that he could be left with permanent damage.

-Beeld-

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