A wife plunged 500ft to her death from a cliff as she jumped for a birthday picture taken by her husband.

Jolandi le Roux was celebrating her 31st birthday last Sunday evening high on the rocks at a Cape Town picnic spot and wanted to create a shot as if she was leaping over the sun.

However she lost her footing at Lookout Point and fell – with her body landing in a dead tree at the bottom of a gully.Her panicked husband, Andrew, 33, found a way to scramble 100 metres down the treacherous 65-degree mountainside.

Rescuers say the experienced trail runner managed to get to within about nine metres of where Jolandi’s crumpled body was hanging, but no further.Sheer cliffs stopped him from reaching her – and it took rescuers over three hours to get to her.

It then took them a further three hours in the dark and rain to get to the summit with her body.
Andrew and Jolandi had got married on the beach below in September last year, and had often cycled and hiked in the nearby area.

It is thought the couple ignored warning signs to cross metal railing protective barrier designed to keep the public off a sloping cliff top of loose rocks and slippery gravel.

The first rescuer on the scene, paramedic Henry Barlow, 47, was shocked to find Andrew clinging onto the mountainside as he desperately tried to reach his wife.
Andrew was told his wife had died, and the rescuers set about retrieving her body, which took another two hours.