Mom Dies While Snow Sightseeing

Cape Town, June 28, 2010 – A woman who went with her 7-year-old son and friends to look at snow fell to her death in the Matroosberg near Ceres on Sunday.

Elaine Abrahams, 40, from Claremont fell about 200 metres, according to Didi de Kock, co-owner of the Matroosberg Private Nature Reserve.

Provincial police spokesperson Warrant Officer November Filander confirmed the incident. He said that according to information received by police, she had wandered from a path and slipped off a cliff.

An Oryx helicopter from 22 Squadron at the Air Force Base Ysterplaat transported a team from Wilderness Search and Rescue to the scene. They were, however, unable to remove her body from the area where she had fallen by Sunday evening.

Previous deaths

De Kock said it was almost exactly the same place where an Italian man, Pier Alberto Za, had fallen to his death on June 28 last year.

The area is known as Groothoek ravine.

An emotional De Kock said she would go to the accident scene on Monday to see what arrangements had to be made to remove Abrahams's body.

She said Abrahams was the third person to have died in the mountain in three years. The first was Andrew Johns from Milnerton. He died in a hiking accident in 2007, barely a few hundred metres from where Alberto Za had died.

Wilderness Search and Rescue spokesperson Hugo Vaughn confirmed they were unable to reach the body by helicopter.

He said Abrahams was a sister-in-law of the Wilderness Search and Rescue member who led the search for the Italian's body last year.

"Fortunately he was not involved in today's search."

Vaughn said it was a pity they had to leave the deceased there.

"We will begin planning on Monday how we will get her out of there."

It took members of Wilderness Search and Rescue about two months last year to remove the Italian's body.

- Die Burger