JOHANNESBURG — In a dramatic overnight operation, emergency responders early Tuesday descended on ropes from a cable car on South Africa’s Table Mountain to recover the bodies of two male climbers, including a Japanese citizen, who died after falling from a cliff. A female Japanese climber injured in the fall was rescued late Monday.
The iconic, rugged mountain overlooking Cape Town is a major tourist destination and the occasional scene of search and rescue operations because of hiking or climbing mishaps, but the effort to help the trio of climbers was among the more complex. Hundreds of tourists were stranded for hours on the mountain until the cable cars were again available to ferry them down in a process that ended well after midnight.
A local climbing guide and two Japanese clients were involved in the accident, said Merle Collins, a national parks service spokeswoman.
The climbers were secured with ropes just below the cable car station at the top of Table Mountain when they fell, possibly after one of them lost their footing and dragged the others down, said Johan Marais, spokesman for Wilderness Search and Rescue, a volunteer group. Still attached to the ropes, two of them ended up partly supported by a ledge on the cliff face, and tourists in a cable car saw one — presumably the woman who survived — administering CPR to the other.
