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Diary - august 2007

Friday 3rd August 2007 20:00hrs - 'til late - Battle of the DJ's

As promised in last month’s team meeting, several members of our team attended the “Battle of the DJ’s”, an evening where the proceeds were to be donated to the team. By all accounts, the locals were impressed with the moves on the dance floor.

I have not put the rest of the photos in, to save embarrassment to those present.

Sunday 5th August 2007 14:00hrs – Callout

Sunday afternoon and I am with my family driving back from Stockport. My phone goes off, it’s a Callout – RV at the Snake Inn near Glossop. We have been to a few of these in the past, they are usually to support the Glossop team in a long stretcher carry. Quite often there will also be a request for a helicopter to these jobs, but the ground teams continue as the helicopter could be called away at any time.

We rush home and I quickly get my things together. I’m dressed and just about to head out of the door, when my phone goes off again. Stand down! Oh well, such is life! It turned out that the helicopter was able to get to the casualty (a fallen climber), so in the end we were not needed.

Tuesday 7th August 2007 04:50hrs – Callout

What’s going on…..Where am I…..Who am I……What’s that noise? It’s my phone. What time is it? Ten to five…. Is it a work day? Things finally start to come together. My phone is now in my hand. It’s bleeping at me like crazy “Callout – RV Hut”. What?....Why? Now I have worked out what is going on, I can’t decide if this is a stray message. My phone has been playing up recently, and I can’t decide if this is an old message that has finally got through. I decide that work can get by without my services for the next few hours and start to get ready. Just before I leave, I phone base. Darren answers…so it is a real callout then!

When I get to the hut, three teams have just been deployed and I am quickly sent out with Charlie, Neil and Paul. We are briefed before we leave and told that a man had taken the train to Hadfield, walked up the Longendale trail (a disused railway track) and then decided to walk over Bleaklow and Kinder to Edale and catch the train back from there. Not realizing the distances involved and the nature of the terrain, he had ended up getting lost and spending the night on the hill. He had woken up in the middle of the night soaked, cold and still lost. The cloud was down and visibility was very poor, so still not knowing where he was, he phoned the police on his mobile and asked for help. This led to us and Buxton team being called out to search for him and more specifically to me walking up Sandy Heys to carry out our search pattern.

As we trudged up Sandy Heys, the cloud around us started to thin out. We met Ken’s search party at the top, who were just being re-tasked to search another area. We had some better info that the man could see an escarpment, so Ken was sent off to search the Northern Edges. We continued on to the downfall, where we met one of the Buxton teams who had come up from Edale. We were then asked to make our way to Snake Pass summit. Rather than back track over the route we had just cleared, we decided to go in a direct line, across country to clear some of the plateau. The cloud finally cleared and it was now clear blue skies. In an hour it had gone from very poor visibility to the point where we could see Manchester in one direction and Sheffield in the other. As we walked mast the Kinder summit trig point we commented that if he was lost before, with this visibility he would now be able to find his way down. Sure enough, a few minutes later, we had a call on the radio to say that the man had made his way down and been picked up by a Buxton Team Landrover near the Snake Inn.

I have included the following map of my route from my GPS, showing our search pattern.

The track in red is from my GPS. The track in dark blue is his route from the Snake Pass. The light blue route is where he made a navigational error and turned left instead of going on to Edale.

We made our way back to the hut, cleared our gear away and went in to work.

Wednesday 8th August 2007 18:30hrs – Cracken Edge Fell Race

Every year we marshal a local fell race. It is organized by one of our ex team members and the proceeds go to our team funds. I was stationed with Colin near the top of Ollerset Moor. We got there early and waited for the runners start going past.

There were even a few team members running. Here is Darren.

And this one is Steve.

Once all the runners had passed, we collected up the marker flags and headed back to base.

Unfortunately we lost or trophy for fastest Mountain Rescue team as our third member Neil was also the course sweeper, making sure everyone got back OK. The race went well with no injuries or lost runners, and some very impressive times were posted.

More Photos...

Saturday 19th / Sunday 20th August 2007 – Collecting at Go Outdoors

August is usually a quiet time for team callouts, however we are often just as busy with additional fundraising. The team was kindly invited to carry out a collection at Go Outdoors in Stockport.

The Go Outdoors customers were very generous and the money raised will help towards the running of the team over the next 12 months.

Wednesday 23rd August 2007 – Chief Inspector Coleman Charity Walk

Chief Constable Coleman of the Derbyshire Police is due to retire this year. He is carrying out fundraising for several charities, one of which is Mountain Rescue. He was walking around his constabulary and a few of our team agreed to accompany him for some of his walk.

Friday 24th August 2007 20:00hrs – Team Meeting

This month’s team meeting was preceded by an Extraordinary General Meeting to elect a new Team Leader. This is the first of a few votes we will be having over the next few months as we reshuffle positions in the team. After a tense secret ballot, Daren was elected as our new Team Leader.

Follow the vote we carried on with our regular team meeting. It was good to see Ken back in the chair after having a substitute photo of him in last month’s meeting.

A new probationary member, Doug, was welcomed. We all wish him good luck!

As usual we had reports from the team officers on the progress of their various tasks and an update on information from our recent callouts. Often not all the information is at hand when we carry out a search, so it is good to hear a full account of the details, once they are received. This will usually come from other teams we are working with and from the Casualty after they have been interviewed.

Finally Ken relayed a story of when he was recently first on the scene at road crash and how his Casualty Care training had helped him look after the injured people until the Ambulance arrived. It was a sobering moment, broken only by Ryan reminding us that we had run out of milk in the hut.

Saturday 25th August 2007 – Poynton Show

The next day found the team at another fund raising event at Poynton show.

There were many visitors to our stand, including local MPs Nicolas and Ann Winterton.