The MCSA and the wider climbing community
For many climbers today, the journey into the sport often begins not through a club, but in a climbing gym, through friends, social media, guides, or outdoor climbing groups. As climbing has grown and evolved, so too has the role of the Mountain Club of South Africa (MCSA).
While the climbing community is more diverse and self-organised than ever before, the MCSA Cape Town Section’s Rock Subcommittee continues to play a vital role behind the scenes, helping to ensure that climbers can access, enjoy, and safely use the Western Cape’s world-class climbing areas.
According to Convenor Robert Breyer, the rock subcommittee’s work today centres on three key areas: access advocacy, bolting and anchor maintenance, and stewardship.
Keeping crags accessible
“Most of the time we’re climbing on somebody else’s land,” says Breyer. “Whether it’s public land or private land, access is something we cannot take for granted.”
As the only organising body able to represent climbers collectively, the MCSA has become the de facto representative of the wider climbing community in its engagement with landowners and conservation authorities, particularly CapeNature and Table Mountain National Park. These relationships help ensure that climbers retain access to existing climbing areas while also providing a forum to discuss issues such as permits, environmental management, route development, and conservation concerns.
The benefits of this work extend well beyond MCSA members: maintaining access depends on relationships built over time, and on the often careful work of navigating the different priorities of climbers, land managers and conservation bodies.
In practice, this can mean negotiating and clarifying access and permit arrangements, engaging around new or existing climbing areas, developing codes of conduct, supporting the management of bolting and rebolting, and working with rangers and officials to build a shared understanding of the different disciplines of trad climbing, sport climbing and bouldering.
Behind every safe clip
Another critical area of work is maintaining the fixed hardware on sport routes.
Climbers place enormous trust in the bolts and anchors found on sport routes. Earlier this year, a climber died on the Greek island of Kalymnos after multiple bolts failed, highlighting the need for ongoing maintenance. In the Western Cape many of the sport routes bolted decades ago are reaching the end of their lifespan – particularly amid the seaside exposure and weathering.
MCSA’s Anchor Replacement Fund (ARF) is a collective of volunteers, who assess, replace, and maintain aging hardware to help ensure that routes remain safe.
Rebolting a route is skilled, painstaking work. Before a single bolt is replaced, volunteers set up secure anchors and rope systems that allow them to work safely on the wall. From there, it can mean hours suspended in a harness, handling heavy drilling equipment in awkward positions to remove the rusty bolts and hangers, and replace with the new hardware. Doing it safely and well requires technical expertise, sound judgement and considerable patience.
Beyond advocacy and bolting, the committee also contributes to a broader culture of stewardship. Whether supporting path-building initiatives or coordinating clean-up days, the aim is to help ensure that climbers remain good custodians of the places they use.
“The subcommittee provides leadership and coordination that individual climbers cannot easily undertake alone,” Breyer explains.
Much of this work depends entirely on volunteers, who contribute their time and expertise because they care deeply about the future of climbing in the Western Cape.
While many climbers may never attend a committee meeting or read a permit agreement, they benefit every time they clip a safe bolt, access a crag, or enjoy a climbing area that remains open and protected.
– Alma Viviers
