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About Us
It is believed that an already vast and rapidly growing number of people from all walks of the life (school teachers and their pupils, visitors to this country and city dwellers in general) seek to spend their leisure hours (weekends, annual holidays) out and away from cities, preferably moving through the countryside.
The above groups see this activity as a means to: improving their knowledge of the environment in which they live, studying fauna and flora; generally experiencing South Africa; improving general levels of health; relieving the pressures that go hand in hand with present day city life; achieving peace and tranquillity or merely satisfying a sense of adventure. The last should not be underestimated.
Mountaineering is essentially about adventure and the management of the risks associated therewith.
The mountain enthusiast derives a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction (within reasonable parameters of safety) from hiking around mountains and climbing them. We say "reasonable" purposely, for safety in mountains is, and should be, a relative term. If one seeks to eliminate danger altogether, one removes the magnet of adventure, in which an element of risk is an essential ingredient. Risk is the honey pot, which lures people to the mountains. Most of the satisfaction in every "risk" sport lies, not in courting hazards unprepared but in matching danger with ones skills, and in extending ones experience in order to step up, with impunity, the degree of risk which one seeks.
The vast majority of mountain enthusiasts would rather avoid staying in the relative comfort of a hotel but prefer to get as close to nature as possible, sleeping out and "roughing it". The uninitiated, whilst finding the proposition tantalising, generally lack: the resourcefulness to embark on an adventure in the mountains alone or in small groups; logistical organisational ability in terms of mounting, equipping and supplying an expedition; specialised equipment and knowledge to enable them to survive in the mountains; knowledge of localised geographical/ meteorological phenomena or are merely plagued with the uncertainty associated with being a stranger in a strange land as is usually the case with a tourist on a first visit to the Republic of South Africa.
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