From my chair:
33° 58’ 31.17”S 22° 35’ 44.89”E (elevation 151m)
Dear all
2025 sees the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the South Cape Section of the Mountain Club of South Africa. To mark this milestone your Committee would like to encourage the Section’s members to ascend, preferably on foot, twenty peaks during the course of the year. These peaks need not be in the Southern Cape, nor even in South Africa. There is no requirement that these ascents take place on publicised MCSA meets.
Records of ascents need not be verified, but members are welcome to take geotagged pictures of themselves at the top. (Perhaps there’ll be an award for most creatively taken summit photograph, or most outlandish mountaineering gear). You also have the option of recording peak heights and the actual height ascended from the start of the excursion – additional awards may result!
A basic Excel spreadsheet accompanies this note that you may wish to use to keep a record of your ascents, but alternative approaches are welcomed, provided that if it is the back of a cigarette box you scan it legibly for the Committee’s consideration.
All submissions are to be sent via email to chair@scp.mcsa.org.za for the Committee’s consideration. Naturally the Committee’s decisions re this initiative will be completely objective and definitively final, therefore rendering any further correspondence moot. Final recognition will be granted at the 2026 AGM, but the Committee may make interim awards during the course of year, not least at the year-end function in December.
Two other matters: Sanet has alerted me to an ongoing campaign to preserve the Robberg coastal corridor (Robberg Coastal Corridor), and I’m pleased to let you know that the MCSA has opened a new hut in the Hex River Mountains (see https://www.mcsacapetown.co.za/2025/01/sybas-hut-opening/).
We look forward to seeing you in the hills, and hearing stories of peaks ascended.
Gary Cundill
chair@scp.mcsa.org.za