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Diary - February 2009
Saturday 7th – Sunday 8th February 2009 – Collecting at Sainsbury’s, Hazel Grove
This weekend the team have kindly been allowed to collect funds at Sainsbury’s in Hazel Grove. This is a necessary part of being in a Mountain Rescue team, as not only are we all unpaid volunteers, but we also have to raise all the funds to meet the increasing costs of running the team. Fortunately the public were very generous this weekend.
Wednesday 11th February 2009 19:30hrs – Training (Mini Exercise)
Phil (Training Officer): Tonight was a change of plan. We should have been practicing Rope rescue techniques. However it was decide to change this and have a SNATCH type mini exercise. Luckily there was still quite a bit of snow and ice around, so this would add to the evening’s entertainment (sliding around the place for those who forgot to bring crampons!). It would also be an insight for those taking part in tomorrow’s probationer mini exercise as well.
The scenario was two reasonably equipped walkers set out mid morning from the Snake Inn intending to walk the snake path to Hayfield. At approx 16:00 one of the walkers slipped injuring his leg. They try to walk off but after making very slow progress they call M.R. at 18:30. Contact is made with them at 19:00. The injured walker is in great pain and very cold, the second walker is also very cold and tired. They are unsure of their location, they know they came off the plateau down a valley, overlooked the reservoir and passed a white building. Shortly after this the accident happened, whilst trying to walk off they have become disorientated, they think they are still on a path. They say they can see lights in the distance and think they can see water. Their mobile battery is failing and can only be used for short periods at a time.
Me: Tonight we had been warned in advance that we would be in for a late night, as we were holding an outdoor training session. It was going to be a mini callout exercise and as there was snow on the ground it was looking like an interesting one.
I was sent out in a search party to look for two of our team who were playing the roles of a couple of walkers, injured on a day out in the snow. We were asked to clear a route up to the shooting cabins, which we decided to carry out as a sweep, either side of the path. This meant that we were knee deep in heather and snow, which is quite a tiring way to walk up a hill. Fortunately we decided to take this approach, as it wasn’t too long before we came across our missing colleagues, a short distance off the path. They had been sat in the snow for a while by now and were starting to get cold.
Vinny and Pete went to assess the casualties’ injuries, while I set up control with AJ. The report from Vinny was that one of them had a suspected Tib / Fib fracture and would need stretchering off the hill. The other parties were all diverted to our location along with the kit. We had to sit tight, wait and put up with the cold.
Phil: A number of teams were deployed on search patterns. It was a lovely night as well – clear sky, snow and ice covered ground. Kinder’s 1,2 & 3 were all converging on the ‘white shooting cabin’ when K4 radioed in that they had located two casualties just off the footpath. K5 deployed with ‘heavy’ equipment to the casualty site. All other kinder party’s would now make for the casualty site as well. As it happened, Bernie and John were also trying out a new location for ‘radio link’. Unfortunately, this proved to be futile and communications with hill parties was poor (just adding to the realism).
By the time everyone had reached the casualty site, Vinny had stabilized the casualties, and was ready to receive the stretcher for immediate casevac back to the road head. This was another opportunity for us to try the ‘Alpine stretcher’ rather than the ‘Bell’.
Me: After sitting around with only a radio link to base to keep us company, suddenly the other teams all arrived together. Things suddenly jumped in to life, with people assembling the stretcher and getting the equipment together. Everyone “cramponed” up and we carried our supposedly injured colleague down the hill and back to the Land Rovers.
Thursday 13th February 2009 19:30hrs - Probationer Training Exercise
Phil (Training Officer): Tonight was the accumulation of the current probationers training. It’s a mini SNATCH exercise where we let the probationers loose from the start. It’s more about finding the casualty and casevac rather than concentrating on the detail of actual casualty care (but they did this as a matter of course anyway). The probationers become leaders, navigators and sort out the casualty site management. It’s a chance to put all their training from the last 6 months into practice. Their accompanying ‘mentors’ and other team members volunteering to help this evening are just there for extra support and ‘stretcher fodder’.
Bob was the ‘exercise controller’ for the evening and some could be forgiven for thinking it was fancy dress night. As he was kitted out in full paraphernalia to give that extra realism for the evening – controller fluo jacket, flat cap etc…..(it’s understood he even managed to get through three cups of tea during the coarse of the evening, before retiring to the bar).
The scenario was a mountain biker had gone up onto the top of Lantern Pike and failed to return. The team deployed to successfully locate the injured cyclist (the weather had deteriorated from last night, so we had the added elements of thick fog, rain, sleet and bit of wind), who had suffered two broken arms, was unconscious and hypothermic. Mike put in an extra touch of realism, by wearing his bayonet fitting cycle shoes. This was very amusing for those who don’t know about such things. (Amputations usually occur as a result of serious injury rater than not being able to get someone off the bike!). Don’t worry; we managed to figure the bayonet fittings out in time.
Again, lots of ice so out with the crampons for the stretcher carry off.
Sunday 22nd February 2009 06:30hrs – Exercise
Beep, beep, beep...what the heck is that. It was my mobile phone blaring its text message tune. What time is it? 6:30am – what’s going on? We were planning to have an early start, but I was expecting 8am and had set my alarm for 7. I decided I’d better make an attempt at getting up. “Hurrumph frumpf” said my wife rolling over in disgust at the fact that I’d just woke her up in the middle of the night. After dragging myself around the house in a half sleep, I finally had all my gear together and was ready to go.
The scenario for the day was that two people had gone for a walk around the edges of the Kinder Plateau and not returned. We were sent out to find and evacuate them. By the fact that it was such an early start and that we had been threatened with a long day, there was a good chance that we would be searching into the boggy centre of the plateau. Perhaps that’s why the turnout was so low today.
We managed to get enough team members together for three search parties, though with a few people also not fit for full hill duties, it felt like there were more people out on radio link than out searching today.
Fate frowned on me again as I was sent up Sandy Hayes, the steepest route up Kinder, for the second exercise in a row.
At the top we split our team and I was sent off with Lee to search round the edge path back to Ashop Head. Once there, we joined up with Kinder 1 and searched down the northern edges. It took about another hour of searching in the increasing wind and rain before we eventually found one of our missing casualties. Ian was sent in to carry out Casualty Care, with Vinny to assist and the rest of us got ready for a long cold wait for the other teams to arrive with the equipment needed to evacuate the casualty.
As we were waiting, we heard on the radio that Search dog Ian was operating in the valley below us. It wasn’t long before we heard that he had a find, and could soon see him below us with the second casualty.
Due to the fact that we were facing a very long stretcher carry and would need every team member we could muster, control decided that they would have called in another team to evacuate this casualty. This meant that we didn’t have to worry about this one.
Eventually the team with the heavy equipment arrived. They had been trudging across the middle of the plateau and had almost lost Ryan as he sank up to his waist in a peat bog! The Casualty was loaded on to the stretcher and we began the long carry off.
It was a long and difficult carry which our lack of numbers did not help. Finally after around three hours of stretcher carrying, through wind and rain, we arrived at the road head, with the promise of a mug of hot coffee waiting back at base.