Hiker Leon Hans is haunted by memories of the hike he and five friends began a week ago today. In less than 24 hours three of them were dead.
"People are blaming us because we are alive. Some people would have been happier if six people had died on that mountain."
Hans was one of the three survivors of the snowstorm tragedy on the Swartberg mountains near Oudtshoorn which claimed the lives of experienced climbers Charmaine Appels, 46, Deborah Raubenheimer, 51, and Baronese Jongbloed, 50.
The three, along with Leon, 36, his brother Jeremy, 42, and Linda Smith, 46, set off in good spirits from De Hoek near Oudtshoorn on Sunday morning for a five-day hike. But the weather turned vicious, with beating rain, hail and then snow.
On Friday, the Hans brothers spoke out for the first time about what happened on the mountain range amid speculation that inexperience and fateful decisions had led to the death of their three friends.
Smith, the only other survivor of the ordeal, is still too traumatised to speak.
Countering arguments that the group should have stayed together instead of splitting up, the Hans brothers said simply it was a choice born of desperation.
"Either we stay (together) and we all die, or you look out for your own survival and see if you can get help," Jeremy told the Weekend Argus from his home in Kuils River.
Day one was to have been a 12.8km hike to an overnight hut. Despite a light mist, the trek had begun around 8.45am on Sunday.
Leon said a weather report had predicted cloud with an 80% chance of rain and a minimum temperature of 8OC. For the group with decades of hiking experience between them, including trips to the Fish River Canyon in Namibia and even Kilimanjaro, there was no thought of turning back.
But a couple of kilometres into the hike, the weather suddenly turned ugly and the temperature plummeted. The wind picked up and it began to hail.
There had been no warning of the impending storm and CapeNature had not closed the Swartberg trail in anticipation of extreme weather.
Some of the party began to suffer from cramps around the half-way mark, but the wet and icy conditions would have made the downhill trek back to the start treacherous, so the group pressed on.
The sub-zero temperatures were taking their toll. By around 2.30pm it was taking the group almost two hours to cover a single kilometre, and Appels and Raubenheimer were in trouble. They desperately searched for shelter along the trail, but there was nothing, no cave or crevice to shield them from the elements.
The group tried sending the first of several SMSes to alert authorities to their increasingly desperate plight but there was no cellphone reception.
Eventually, the group decided to split up. Appels and Raubenheimer urged their fellow hikers to forge ahead to the overnight shelter. "Charmaine and Debbie told us we must go," recalled Jeremy. "We walked on but kept on watching to see whether they were still in range we kept them in sight."
But there came a "point where we couldn't wait for them anymore... it was snowing and our muscles were cramping from the cold."
Jeremy and Leon were the strongest in the now four-strong lead group and the two women - Jongbloed and Smith - urged them to go it alone to the hut. But the men decided to split into two couples, so Jeremy teamed up with Smith while Leon joined Jongbloed.
Soon afterwards Leon and Jongbloed urged the other two to head on alone.
Jeremy and Smith finally reached the safety of the hut just before 4pm . They changed into dry clothes and Jeremy broke down bunks to burn.
The pair then waited for Leon and Jongbloed who they figured were about 10-20 minutes behind them. But still more than a kilometre away from safety, Leon and Baronese Jongbloed were engaged in a desperate fight for survival.
"She was struggling and falling a lot," Leon recalled. "With about 900m to go I told her we had to drop our packs. But she was incoherent "She had blurred vision and was falling," said Leon.
"I tried to drag her and lift her up but I had no strength... My hands and knuckles were blue."
It was now 7pm. "Along the jeep track there were some bushes and reeds and I managed to sit her down among these, out of the wind...But she was stillin the rain."
He then made the final dash for help to the hut.
Jeremy says: "He was finished ... he couldn't speak."
Jeremy and Smith got Leon into dry clothes and made him stand in front of the fire.
"All he could say was 'Please go and help Baronese'."
Around 8pm Jeremy and Smith headed back out into the storm, to find and rescue Jongbloed. "We found her lying alongside the track. Her face, her nose and mouth were in the water ..." Jeremy said.
"Linda wanted to stay with her but I talked her out of it and said 'we will all die'."
The pair then headed back to the hut where a "devastated" Leon was told the news.
While he waited in the hut Leon had been sending text and email messages to Jeremy's wife Erin.
The first message read: "We are in big trouble. It is snowing. 3 people missing. Call the rescue people immediatly (sic). 3 of us save (sic) at Goukrans."
Appels and Raubenheimer.
"We were hoping (Appels and Raubenheimer) had turned back but we were expecting the worst," Jeremy said. "They had been way way back ... we knew our two friends were probably dead ..."
At 3am on Monday two policemen arrived at the hut and checked on their wellbeing before leaving to search.
Around 9am, they saw a rescue helicopter hovering some distance away. At 10am the trio were airlifted out. Raubenheimer was found later.
Almost a week later, the Hans brothers now share a bond of unimaginable tragedy.
"I am still numb, it's surreal," says Leon.
Jeremy says: "You see this stuff in the movies and on the news when it happens to other people."
His five-year-old daughter clambers onto his lap.
He says: "We had to make choices."