About Wild Medix
Since 2004 - The original South African wilderness and extreme medicine company.
Founded and staffed by medical professionals who are also experienced wilderness adventurers, mountaineers, climbers and qualified adventure guides - Wild Medix is the result of merging a passion for wilderness and emergency care with a love of the great outdoors and everything adventure.
Walther Meyer
Founder & Managing Director
ILS Rescue Medic, Senior Instructor, Mountaineering & Adventure Professional
A qualified mountain guide and mountain skills instructor with over 30 years of personal mountaineering experience, Walt has climbed and guided in Southern and East Africa, South America, the USA and Canada.
He spent many years as an active volunteer for the government emergency services in the Western Cape, is a member of Wilderness Search and Rescue and is a qualified Emergency Care Practitioner (Paramedic-Intermediate, ITLS-Advanced), Wilderness EMT, registered First Aid Instructor and rope rescue technician.
Walt holds a NQF Level 7 national qualification as a mountaineering guide and is also a qualified rock climbing, canyoneering, paddling and 4x4 overlanding guide. He holds the MDT Mountain Walking and Rock Climbing Instructor Awards and actively guides and instructs for Venture Forth, the largest mountaineering and adventure training outfit in South Africa.
He is a registered Range Officer and advanced firearms instructor for handgun, shotgun, self-loading rifle and manual rifle, holding business and tactical competencies.
Dr Ross Hofmeyr
Founder & Medical Director
Medical Doctor (Specialist), Senior Instructor, Curriculum Advisor
Proudly South African, Ross was born and educated at the continent’s tip in Cape Town. An avid outdoorsman with more than 20 years backcountry and mountaineering experience, Ross is most in his element in the rugged Cape Mountains, but a passion for adventure in wild places combined with his love of challenges has taken him from baking deserts to mountain peaks and frigid icecaps.
Since qualifying from the University of Stellenbosch, his professional fields of interest have centred upon acute and critical care, trauma, anaesthesia, aeromedical, emergency and wilderness medicine. He is a long-serving member of the mountain rescue team, Divemaster, and volunteer flight doctor for the Red Cross Air Mercy Service. Ross has expedition experience from around the world, including serving as doctor and overwintering Expedition Leader for the South African National Antarctic Expedition.
After shifting his predominant focus of specialisation to anaesthesia and critical care, he now serves as a Consultant Anaesthesiologist and Clinical Research Fellow in Airway and Thoracic Anaesthesia at the University of Cape Town. Ross’s research interests include all facets of airway management, aeromedical care, extreme physiology, point-of-care investigation, and thermoregulation. He is a keen course director, instructor, speaker and #FOAM enthusiast with numerous publications.
A founding partner of WildMedix, he is responsible for the expedition medic program, medical protocols, clinical oversight and quality assurance. When not providing care in the hospital or abroad, Ross is usually to be found in the wilds, committing random acts of aviation and/or adventure.
Dries Steyn
Operations Director
BLS Medic, Instructor, Mountaineering & Adventure Professional
Dries joined Wild Medix in 2008. He is a qualified Basic Life Support Practitioner, wilderness first aid instructor and mountain guide.
He holds qualifications as mountain walking guide, abseiling and single-pitch rock climbing guide, paddling and 4x4 overland guide and is a full-time guide and adventure skills instructor for Venture Forth.
Dries is involved in the operational management side of Wild Medix and can often be found on courses and at stand-by duties.
Heide Pretorius
Environmental Specialist Instructor, Course Developer & Researcher
BLS Medic, Mountain & Adventure Professional
Heide joined the Wild Medix team in 2015 as our environmental specialist. As a qualified nature conservationist she brings a wealth of knowledge from the natural environment to the team.
Energetic and crazy passionate about all things venomous and dangerous, you are bound to hear of the "Wild Medix spider lady" at some point...
Heide is an experienced mountain- and adventure guide having lead groups all over South Africa; especially in the high Drakensberg and also on expeditions to Kilimanjaro. She is an instructor on many of our programmes including the Kilimanjaro Mountain Medicine Expedition.
When she is not instructing or scaring the rest of us with creepy crawlies; Heide is actively involved in course development and content research.