First hike-and-hack a success
2005-06-02
THE first Paarl Mountain hack on Saturday, undertaken in cool weather, was very successful.
They hiked to Silver Tree Kloof where there is a large stand of the aggressively invasive stinkbean, and fleabane, a common weed with masses of heads of fluffy seeds.
There were seven hackers in total, who were able to pull out the young stinkbean trees by hand. An incredible amount of damage was done to the stand of invader trees by a handful of people in the brief time of an hour-and-a-half.
Some of the larger trees were soon identified as “two-, three- and four-man trees”.
For these trees, hackers lined up in a row, all clutching part of the stem and pulled on the count of three, and the combined strength easily uprooted the pesky trees, eliminating the need for tree-poppers.
Towards the end of the hack, when hands were beginning to get raw and shoulders were tired, a pick was used to loosen the soil around the roots, which made uprooting much easier.
The fact that the soil was moist from rain also made the uprooting much easier.
Hackers said that they thoroughly enjoyed the first hack and were very keen to join the next one.
The next hick-and-hack is scheduled to take place on Saturday 11 June, from 8:00 to 10:00. The group will again be meeting at the Victoria Dam T-junction.
Hackers agreed that doing something uplifting for Paarl Mountain was most rewarding and that hacking was a good opportunity to vent frustrations and release stress.
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