WATCH: North Coast locals narrowly escape as wildfire tears through Drakensberg

A group of North Coast friends narrowly escaped with their lives when a runaway fire tore through their mountain camp at the weekend.

Champion canoeist Hank McGregor of Salt Rock and five friends were nearly trapped in the path of the fire which tore through the Injisuthi camp in the Drakensberg on Saturday.

Early on that morning, McGregor said he and fellow local Andrew Erasmus split from their running group and tried to run up a mountain.

They saw a fire on the mountain about a kilometre away, but thought they were safe from it.

They had no idea how fast it would spread.

“Something, however, was telling me to get home so we turned around and headed back to rejoin our group,” said McGregor.

They then realised that the fire had closed in on them.

Strong winds and the direction of the winds had masked the fire’s approach and, by the time they reached the bottom of the mountain it was less than 40m away.

“Before we knew it, we were in the midst of it.”

When they reached their camp they collected Erasmus’ wife, Louisa, and daughter Blake, and high-tailed it out of the area.

McGregor did not know where his wife, Pippa, and the rest of the group were but later learned that they they had gotten lost and had attempted to hide beneath a bridge to wait out the blaze.

Unfortunately, that did not work so they had tried to escape up the mountain.

By a stroke of luck the wind changed and the fire changed course, leaving everyone unharmed.

“Were we naive? It was like no matter where you went, you were moving from hot spot to hot spot,” said McGregor.

He estimates that the fire stretched some 20-30kms, leaving almost no part of the Drakensberg untouched.

The fire destroyed several staff accommodation sites, a workshop and laundry.

Nobody was hurt.

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