Rayner Trophy 1994 Report

Bainskloof / Tweede Tol

The Rayner Trophy was held in the Tweede Tol area of the Bains Kloof mountains over the weekend of the 5/6 March. 38 teams entered, of which 8 withdrew prior to the competition, 4 were absent without apology, and 26 participated.

The competition had a computer theme, in that each participant became a "bit" of information, the team became a "byte" and the judges were keys on the keyboard. The whole competition thus took place within the control processing unit of a computer, with excursions out into the screen, modern printer and into software - a case of virtual reality.

The inspection thus became the "Power on self test". The code became the loading of DOS and the Scout Laws test became "checking for virus".

From the public campsite at Tweede Tol the teams hiked up the river valley doing tests such as knotting, quiz, retrieving a floppy disk from across a mountain pool, travelling up river rapids and waterfalls, circling through the mountains to return to Tweede Tol. Teams under¬took tests such as Kims game with smells, first aid, lashings, taking bearings without a compass, a rescue from a cliff face, the new road signs and snake bite treatment. All had returned to camp by 20h00.

That evening in camp teams had to make a fire by friction, cook a meal, make rope stretchers, detonate a "bomb" cross an electrified fence, negotiate a rope obstacle and solve some logic problems. On Sunday morning, after doing a few tests around camp, the teams crossed the Witte river and proceeded along the mountain path that leads to Klein Bobbejaanrivier Kloof (Arch Kloof). Along the way they did tests such as pin-pointing their position on a map, sema¬phore signalling, circulating contours with a hipsometer, ground to air signals, etc. Lunch in the kloof was a omelette cooked on a home made wax cooker.

After lunch the route took them down the very beautiful Arch Kloof, doing tests that involved them in swimming in the pools, such as underwater orienteering. The teams kloofed down the river back to Tweede Tol, to arrive at 16h30. The competition was won by 2nd Kenridge Air Scouts by a large nine points margin. Unfortunately, shortly after the presentation cere¬mony, an error of ten points was discovered in the 1st Durbanville score, and this altered places two to five, the winners remaining unchanged.

My thanks go to my fellow Judges for the great job of work they did. They were; John Mutti / Buzz Macey / Errol Kotze / Kuba Miszewski / Peter Foster / Mark Abrahams / Craig Mitchell / Bruce Dixie / John Bradley / Stuart Collins / Barry Culligan / Colin Inglis / Craig Mullett / Alan Turnley-Jones / Norman Davies / Thomas Schrick / Michael Small and Lance Goldblatt.

Richard Goldschmidt
Chief Judge

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