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Diary

Wed 1st Feb 2006 – Training – Various Items

Training tonight is a catch up on various items that don’t make up a full session. We cover issues such as what is expected when responding to a call out and the responsibilities of the different members, exec and support team. Later in the pub, I explain that I have been looking into an alternative to whistles for our night searching technique. Courtesy of Ebay I am now the proud possessor of a “Safety Blaster” marine fog horn, which when blown into, produces an unnecessary amount of noise. I can honestly say that everyone was impressed with the size of my horn!

Sat 4th Feb 2006 – DIY @ Hut

My other team role is IT officer. Generally not an overly demanding role, unless one of the PCs blow up! So that will be why I am in the hut on a Saturday with the insides of a PC scattered around me. After a short amount of bashing and cursing not to mention a dash of technical jigery-pokery I give up and go and buy a new keyboard from New Mills. With a wave of my magic screwdriver our computerised deployment is back up and running – sorry Bob.

Mon 6th Feb 2006 – Casualty Care Training

Tonight’s Casualty Care training is in the woods off the Set Valley trail. It’s scenario based, so that means several team member acting as casualties with various injuries. In a bizarre series on unrelated accidents Darren has a broken lower leg, Neil has crashed his bike and damaged his neck, Mike has a broken collar bone, Neale a broken femur and Hamish has sever asthma. I try to imagine how all this could have happened and can only picture something akin to the RAF Motorcycle Display team, with the five of them making a wobbly pyramid on a Mountain Bike…..anyway, swiftly moving on. We have to go round each casualty and run through our standard protocol of Airway, Breathing, Circulation, ……Disability ….err what was the next one? We correctly manage to diagnose and treat each casualty without doing any further damage to them! There seems to be a disturbing theme as we go round where several of the casualties have actually had the injury in the past and left some strange knobbly deformity for us to find. A bit too disturbing for my liking!

Anyway the night turns out to be very useful as the scenarios are realistic and well acted. As an added bonus, I manage to get back to the hut without treading in any dog poo!

I think I need to suggest that next month’s training should be on communications or navigation as we seemed to loose half of the team on the way to the pub. Either that or they sent us to the wrong pub deliberately……surely not!

Sunday 12th Feb - Exercise

For the last two days at work I have been stood pining at the window, staring at the glorious blue skies and crisp still air wishing I could be out in the hills. So when our first Sunday exercise in two months finally arrives, why am I surprised to hear the sound of howling wind and driving rain against my window? Mother Nature: Who says women don’t have a sense of humour! I peak out of the bedroom curtains in the vain hope that I am mistaken, only to be greeted by a rain spattered view of the hill opposite my house. The top half is shrouded in mist and the streams are in full spate – brilliant! I sneak back to bed for an extra half hour, knowing that it will be the last chance I have to be warm and dry for quite some time.

As I am eating breakfast and waiting for the call out text message, I am thrown by a phone call from Nigel. The Vodaphone mast is down in Hayfield, rendering half the team’s mobile phones inoperable. Seeing the silver lining on this operational cloud Geoff has decided this will be an excellent opportunity to test our fall-back manual phone call system. I now have to call the rest of my section on the call-out list and let base know who is available, so that they can start planning the deployment. After ten minutes of frantic phone calls I have managed to wake up several team member’s partners and one person who was away on holiday – oops! I finish packing my rucksack with extra warm drinks and today’s treat – flapjack, and finally throw in my camera hoping it won’t break in the rain.

I make my way to the hut and push through waiting group of team members to sign on at the computer, only to find that it has broken again. I think it’s time we looked at getting a new one (any offers greatly appreciated!).

Soon I am called to the control room, I am one of the Party leaders for the exercise. This is only the second time I have done this and the last time it lasted about an hour until another team found the casualty. Geoff gives us a brief and tells us that a 37 year old man (Mike – of pie eating fame) has gone missing on the Kinder Plateau. His intension was to visit three World War II airplane crash sites on opposite sides of the plateau. This gives us a large area to search. My team is Kinder 4, Vinny, Neale, Andrea and Paul. We are to clear his route off the plateau, up William Clough.

The other teams load their kit into the Land Rovers and are dropped off to begin their searches.

We make our way to the Filter House at the Kinder Reservoir and head up William Clough

The weather starts out cold and wet, but soon goes downhill, unlike the journey ahead of us. As we head up William Clough it’s hard to tell the path from the river. I start out trying to keep my boots dry by carefully hopping from rock to rock as we cross the streams, but soon give up and trudge my way up through calf deep water. Still, we can look forward to the immanent hose pipe ban that’s sure to follow.

After we reach the top we manage to find the world’s windiest spot to stop for a quick drink. Unfortunately word got out about our discovery and Kinder 5 soon join us.

Our next assignment is to head to the Kinder Downfall. We make our way over there without finding anything so we radio in our position, only to be tasked with making our way to a grid reference in the middle of the plateau. As the visibility is getting even worse, we decide it is a good time to have some lunch.

As we try to find somewhere out of the wind to have lunch, Kinder 1 appear out of the mist. They radio in and let base know that they have met up with us. The response from base is the usual sympathetic reply, asking if we have left yet! We get the hint, finish our lunch and try to get our hands back into our wet gloves before heading out onto the plateau. Vinny works out a bearing to take us across the groughs and we line out to carry out a limited sweep of the route. About half way across, we start to hear vague whistles and make our way over in their general direction. The whistling gets stronger and stronger and soon Paul finds Mike “holed” up in his tent.

Neale and Paul carry out Casualty Care while the rest of us organise the Cas site. Two other teams arrive and we all wait for Neale’s verdict on how serious the casualty’s injuries are. If we have to stretcher him off the plateau it will take at least four hours from here and will be exhausting. Neale calls me over and says that he has a suspected broken ankle, but in this case he is willing to try and “limp” off (not what we would do in a real incident). As we radio this information back to base a cheer can be heard in the surrounding area as other parties overhear our message and realise that they can head back to base. We make our way back to the filter house and are collected by the Land Rovers.

When we get back, Mike has kindly provided microwave chips for everyone. Now in case anyone is wondering which Mike I am referring to, this is not “Darts and Doms” Mike (our social secretary) it is Mike the Casualty Care officer, sometimes known as “cagoule” Mike (well, by Dave in the Diary last year). This is the same Mike who treated us to his display of pie eating at the last call out, so perhaps in view of today’s activities I should refer to him as “Pie and Chips” Mike to avoid confusion.

After a final de-brief we head to the pub for a quick drink and to dry out by the fire. I cleverly brought a spare pair of trousers so that I didn’t have to stand around in soaking wet clothes. Just as I am being handed a full pint of beer, Geoff leans over - Call Out!. I reluctantly hand my pint back to the barman and we all rush out, leaving the rest of the pub wondering why everything has suddenly gone so quiet.

My plan to change into dry clothing completely back fires as I now have to change back into cold, wet trousers socks and boots! As I head back to the hut I hear the sirens of the Land Rover heading off as Geoff and a fast party go straight to the incident. As we are getting ready to follow in the second vehicle, Geoff radios back with a stand-down. It turns out a gentleman in his 70’s had a heart attack on one of the local hills. It was near the track and a local ambulance had also responded and got to him. Despite their best efforts, he did not survive. A very sad end to the day.

Exercise Continued…..

I thought I’d add the route from my GPS to show you where we went.

On our route above, you can see where we tried to get out of the wind to have a drink at the top of William Clough. We were tasked with carrying out a corridor search (generally a rapid search of known paths and escape routes) but we also searched up two groughs where we knew crash debris existed. I have marked where we stopped for lunch at the downfall. From there we lined out and headed on a bearing across the plateau. The point where the route deviates to the right is where we started to hear faint whistles and decided to head towards them, finally finding Mike where I have marked the Cas Site.

Friday 17th Feb– Team Meeting

Usually our Team Meetings are on the last Friday of each month, but several of our team are either teachers or have school age children, so this month’s meeting has been brought forward to avoid a clash with half term. Often the Landlord of the George lets us use his upstairs room for free, however as he has no heating in the room this week, we are using our hut. This gives us an excellent reminder why we are trying to get a new hut, as we all cram into our small room in an over friendly manor. I head over early to set up the team laptop so that it can connect to the deployment system.

The meeting is fairly routine, with reports from the people in charge of equipment, finance, vehicles, radios, etc, etc. There is however bad news from Chris, our fund raising officer. One of his responsibilities is looking after our interest in the “Gateway to Kinder” project – our new hut! The project has gone to consultation which will mean significant delays and even a change to the whole project, which would mean that we will have to have any plans redone, at considerable cost. On a more positive note, Ken tells us that in addition to Greater Moor Conservative Club raising over four thousand pounds for us last year, they may adopt us as their chosen charity for next year. In an item of extreme interest to all of us, Geoff explains that he has been looking into getting a new light weight stretcher. This can only be good news considering the weight we have to carry. We are also introduced to another new probationary member – good luck to him!

Later in the pub, we were discussing the new light weight stretcher and that “Pie and Chips” Mike has bought a new smaller rucksack and managed to get all his light weight gear in to it. This got me to thinking about why I have just about the biggest rucksack in the team. I can only think that it’s because I’m such a bad packer and if I leave something out, you can bet it will be the thing I need most when I’m out on the hill. To explain this a bit further, I thought I’d show you just what we take with us when we go out. Bear with me while I get a bit anorakie.

1. My trusty rucksack – in my case a Deuter Eclipse 65 + 10. A bit on the big side, but I don’t have to leave anything behind.
2. Down Jacket – There can be a lot of standing around in the cold.
3. Butty box & Flask.
4. Spare hat.
5. Emergency Shelter – 4 man bothy tent.
6. Climbing Helmet – Black Diamond Half Dome.
7. Goggles – For bad weather and helicopter landings.
8. Paramo Taiga Fleece – Provided by the team.
9. Crampons – Grivel G10
10. Ice Axe – Grivel Mont Blanc.
11. Spare food – Usually made up of out of day cereal bars and chocolate.
12. Compass & spare – One lives in my pocket, one in my bag – in case I forget it!
13. Maps of Dark & White Peak.
14. Gloves
15. Pen Knife & utility tool.
16. Spare stuff – Laces, batteries, cord. Also our red flashing light for the back of our rucksacks on night searches.
17. Radio & Spare battery.
18. Headtorch – Petzl Tikka
19. Mobile phone in waterproof case.
20. GPS & batteries – Garmin Summit.
21. Waterproof notepad, pencil & rubber. Also extra straps to attach medical kit, etc, to the top of my rucksack.
22. Sunglasses – You never know! Also useful on snowy days.
23. Personal First Aid kit.
24. Resuscitation Mask – To be used for Mouth to Mouth.
25. SAM Splint – Used to splint minor fractures.
26. Emergency survival bag.
27. Safety Blaster – The Marine horn I was looking into in last month’s diary.
28. Spare Gloves.
29. Climbing Harness, Slings & Prussics – Alpine Bod, my only piece of light weight gear!
30. Hydration system – 2L Plattypus.

With a couple of obvious exceptions, this is the kind of gear that most of us carry every time we go out. To get an idea of how heavy all this gear is, I decide it would be a great idea to weight it all. I then proceed to balance my fully packed rucksack on the bathroom scales in the middle of our kitchen. My wife rolls her eyes, not an unusual event in our house. The final result…..2 stone, 2 pounds (that's 15 bags of sugar!) and that’s before we add any of the team kit such as Medical kit, Cas tent or the dreaded stretcher. That will be why my back hurts!

Sunday 26th February – Call Out

On checking my e-mails tonight, Geoff has sent us a message to say that we were asked to recover a body in Marple this morning. The ambulance service were unable to get to him as he was on a steep embankment over the river Goyt and rope access was required. The full team was not required to carry this out, so Geoff rounded up a few members who live close to the team base.