hit the nail squarely on the head mr davies..

Nobody (including TMNP) has been able to answer my original question. Are day activity permits availed? If I want to take a friend to Silvermine to try his hand at climbing does he have to have photographs taken and wait weeks for an annual permit. It's absolutely ridiculous.

Once again our glorious comrade leaders have legislated before thinking it through.

i'm not particularly fond of SANP and do not think they are handling some important issues very well. i do think however that we could do with a little bit of perspective here; and hence my best attempt with not-so-much research:

TMNP is 221 sqkm which is pretty damn big
this whole thing has to be managed properly: administrative staff & offices; management of the environment; building & maintainning some infrastructure (paths, stairs, camp sites, huts etc); patrolling the park; ensuring the safety of thousands and thousands of visitors each year etc etc.
government funding of SANP-TMNP has been withdrawn (i think), which is a political crime in my uninformed opinion. the park is a major drawcard for hundreds of thousands of tourists each year who create massive revenue & job creation across the board. hotels; other accommodation providers; retailers; taxi, bus & car rental; restaurants etc etc are making nice taxable profits and goverment is skimming VAT off every tourist rand spent. TMNP indirectly generates huge revenue for government but has to rely on relatively limited opportunities to fund its own sizable operations.
you can imagine the internal wangling, budget squeezing and politicking in the organisation to try and make it all work....
i do not think it unreasonable for them to issue activity permits to increase revenue and manage environmental impact, but it was obviously not well thought through (day visitors?) and implementation sucks.
crime is a significant problem but i maintain that its impossible for SANP, given their lack of potential revenue, to have enough trained resources to adequately safeguard a park of its size. if we don't pay before things improve we sit with an interesting chicken-and-egg situation. we need to look to both the provincial government, the SAP, SANP and ourselves to solve this problem.

1st prize would be for the city of CT to run the park but i don't know how realistic that is
all that said, i hope we can try and deal with this constructively and refrain from demonizing SANP. easy to tear down; not so easy to build.......

The City used to manage the TM area, probably no better, or worse, than Sanparks. But, what if they too wanted to milk the cash cow? How many remember Sanparks attempts to get control of the Cederberg? Imagine if that had happened...

The biggest load of crap concerning these new activity cards is that you have to have a separate activity card for each activity, BUT that you're not allowed to do 2 activities at the same time - for example dog walking and rock climbing - so you can't take your dog to the crag with you even if you have an activity card for both of those activities.

See this below:

"One is not allowed to perform more than one activity at a time – e.g. walk your dog whilst horse riding, or walk your dog whilst mountain biking unless special permission is obtained (e.g. a blind horse rider needing a guide dog ). You may use your level 4 permit on one occassion and on a serparte occassion use your My Activity Permit for rock climbing."

For the whole discussion:

http://www2.sanparks.org/forums/viewtop ... d#p1581874

Hi All

Just a friendly reminder that the current status of climbing permits in Table Mountain National Park is as follows:

Trad Climbing – requires no activity permit
Sport Climbing – requires an activity permit unless you are a card-carrying MCSA Member
Bouldering – requires no activity permit pending the finalization of the Bouldering EMP

Please be aware of SANParks Rangers requesting spot fines or issuing tickets for failure to produce activity permits. Kindly be respectful to rangers but do not allow yourselves to be bullied by them. Unless and until the legal position changes, the agreement between SANParks and the MCSA is as above.

The MCSA would also like to know every incidence that does occur where a climber is challenged in respect of the above by a SANParks ranger. Please email Delaney on delaney@rockchicks.co.za should this occur so that we can keep a log.



Yours sincerely

Delaney Carpenter – Chairperson of the Rock Climbing Sub-Committee of the MCSA Cape Town Section on behalf of
Brian Lambourne – Chairman of the MCSA Cape Town Section

What is the status on a day permit? I saw in an early post that if you bought an entrance ticket to Silvermine then that allowed you to climb in the park?

However, on Sunday I took a friend, who had never been climbing, to Silvermine. At the entrance I showed my activity permit and then paid for my friend. The ranger at the gate asked me what I was doing and I said I was going climbing. He said that my friend needed an activity permit if he wanted to climb. I said as far as I knew if my friend paid an entrance fee then he was entitled to climb?

What is the official stance on this? As it has been mentioned countless times already there is currently nothing for one time climbers or overseas visitors.

Hi GClamp,

That was the story when I inquired, however (as you have probably already seen), the MCSA have been in talks with SANParks.

The official stance from the Mountain Club is now (as per the Wild Cards and Activity Permits for TMNP:

Hi All

Just a friendly reminder that the current status of climbing permits in Table Mountain National Park is as follows:

Trad Climbing – requires no activity permit
Sport Climbing – requires an activity permit unless you are a card-carrying MCSA Member
Bouldering – requires no activity permit pending the finalization of the Bouldering EMP

Please be aware of SANParks Rangers requesting spot fines or issuing tickets for failure to produce activity permits. Kindly be respectful to rangers but do not allow yourselves to be bullied by them. Unless and until the legal position changes, the agreement between SANParks and the MCSA is as above.

The MCSA would also like to know every incidence that does occur where a climber is challenged in respect of the above by a SANParks ranger. Please email Delaney on delaney@rockchicks.co.za should this occur so that we can keep a log.

Yours sincerely

Delaney Carpenter – Chairperson of the Rock Climbing Sub-Committee of the MCSA Cape Town Section on behalf of
Brian Lambourne – Chairman of the MCSA Cape Town Section

_________________
Climb ZA - Administrator

Hi Justin

Thanks for the reply.

So it basically means if you don't have an activity permit you cannot sport climb in Table Mountain National Parks.

This seemingly makes the SANPark Activity Permit a bit more worthwhile!

From TMNP Access Cards & Activity Permits page.

Does the cost of My Activity Permit include the cost of access?

Holders of a My Activity Permit will not be required to pay the entrance fees when accessing TMNP pay points to carry out their specified activity.

_________________
Climb ZA - Administrator

Yep, most definitely
That is however what the website says...but I have spoken to Rangers at Silvermine before who said the opposite...
So, it doesn't help if this is their procedure, but the people on the ground enforcing it are unaware of this
Lets hope I just got an ignorant one

Hi All

Further to the recent challenges from SANP Rangers with climbers in Table Mountain National Park, the Mountain Club of South Africa has drafted a letter which climbers can download from our website and print out to take with them to show to any rangers who may question their climbing activities in the park.

The letter can be found and downloaded off our Website: http://mcsacapetown.co.za/home

Any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Thank you so much and kind regards
Delaney