Bobby Woods

I am deeply saddened by the death of my friend and former work colleague, Bobby Woods, on Thursday 08 April 2010. Bobby was climbing with two friends in the Left-Face area of Table Mountain, and it seems he pulled down a massive loose block. Mercifully, from the sounds of things death was instant, and he did not suffer.

I'm not going to write an obituary here. I honestly think Bob would be annoyed with me if I did. He was a huge inspiration to so many people, and one of our finest all-round mountaineers. His achievements, both in business and climbing, speak for themselves and will remain as a tribute to his life. What I will say are a few things about his effect on my own life, in particular in relation to climbing. We were roughly the same age, and I knew him from about 1984 or so; we would often meet on the mountain somewhere. I didn't get to know him well until 1995, when I was sent to Johannesburg to start a branch of Toprope, the rope access company he owned with Daniel Bottomley. We spent a lot of time together that year, and when he subsequently left Toprope I often employed him as a private contractor. In 1996 we were the first people to perform rope access work in the boilers of Eskom's many coal-fired power stations, during maintenance outages. It made sense, somehow, for us to end up working together on a fledgling venture in Pretoria in 1997. We choked on a lot of boiler dust for a long time, shared a house initially (during which time my and Nadia's first child was born), oversaw the construction of a climbing centre and rope access training facility, fought with the bank, schmoozed with clients, and had great fun. That was Bob's philosophy, work hard, play hard.

He was also the person who encouraged me to get up off my fat arse and get back into climbing. As a climber, you couldn't not be infected by his enthusiasm. We went sport-climbing at Waterval-Boven and Harrismith, and also climbing in the Drakensberg. I also climbed the North-West Frontal on Du Toit's Peak with him during his preparation for the successful second attempt at his awesome "3-peaks" solo challenge (he wanted to check that the rock was dry all the way up, as this is what had thwarted him the first time around). What was a long tough day for me was something he later accomplished as one of three climbs on the same day!

Shortly after this Bob and Kaolin moved down to Randburg, and Nadia and I moved into the house at the climbing centre that they had lived in. Our youngest, Nicholas, was born there (a midwife-assisted home birth), in the same oversize bath-tub where their daughter Lilu had been born the previous year.

I'll miss you Bobby, and so will many others. Rest in peace.