Lucky escape for hikers

Two Port Elizabeth hikers escaped serious injury when they fell down a steep slope on Lady Slipper Mountain at the weekend, landing just metres apart.

A 40-year-old woman and a teenager were carried down the rocky terrain by the Nelson Mandela Bay rescue services staff in a four-hour rescue mission on Saturday afternoon.

Paramedic Chandre Gelderbloem said the two hikers had been found just 3m apart.

She said the incidents were not related in any way.

“Our control room received a call from the Mountain Club at about 1pm on Saturday with a report of a 40-year-old woman who had slipped and fallen,” Gelderbloem said.

The woman, who belonged to a hiking club, had managed to move herself down the slope, where she spotted the other young hiker, from a church youth group, who had fallen.

“It is understood that the girl, 16, was accidentally bumped by someone in her youth group and fell,” Gelderbloem said.

“The girl was complaining of severe back and neck pain.”

The two groups had been hiking along the old hiking trail at Falcon Rock on the Lady Slipper Mountain.

Due to the rocky terrain, the two hikers could not be reached by chopper.

Nelson Mandela Bay EMS head and paramedic Ashwell Botha said both of them had been stabilised at the scene.

“They were then carried down the mountain on stretchers by medics, mountain rescue and Emergency Care students assisting the metro emergency services,” Botha said.

The woman was taken to hospital in a private vehicle.

She suffered a torn ligament and a broken knee and will have to undergo an operation.

The teenager was airlifted to Livingstone Hospital.

No further details on her condition were available yesterday.