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Diary

Mon 6th March 2006 - Casualty Care Training

Another month soon comes round and we are back in the hut for our Casualty Care training. Tonight turns out to be an interesting change as Neale (our training officer) has arranged for his Brother-in-law, who is also a consultant anaesthesiologist, to give us a more detailed explanation of the Drugs we carry in our Team Medical kits. It’s a very useful night as it is always good to hear someone else’s version of how the drugs are best used and his knowledge on the subject is excellent. Although we have been through these topics before, he is able to give us much more detailed explanations about how the drugs work. As an example, we discussed the use of Entenox (Laughing gas). This is a mixture of Nitrous Oxide (N2O) and Oxygen (O2) which is held in the cylinder as a gas. Below temperatures of minus six degrees Celsius the Nitrous Oxide turns in to a liquid and separates from the Oxygen. The Casualty would end up breathing pure Oxygen for the first half of the Cylinder (receiving no pain relief) then, when the Oxygen is depleted and the pressure in the cylinder lowers, the Nitrous Oxide starts to turn back into a gas and the Casualty would be breathing pure Nitrous Oxide. This could be serious, even fatal. As a result, all Mountain Rescue teams have a policy which states that we do not used Entenox below zero degrees and we are tested on this as part of our Casualty Care exams. It is often difficult to remember all the protocols for the drugs, but this kind of session helps, as understanding the background to how a drug works makes it much easier to remember when it is best used, how often to give it and more importantly, when not to use it. There is a lot of information to take in considering we have all had a full day at work, but the session is interesting and in some places funny. We even learn how to avoid Strychnine poisoning by staying off Bombay Mix (you had to be there!). Later in the Pub, Charlie shows us his new GPS. It has a colour screen with full OS 1:25000 mapping software on it. Ooooh!

Sunday 12th March 2006 – Call Out

It’s a snowy Sunday afternoon and I am sat in an outdoors shop in Hathersage, on the hunt for my birthday present – a new pair of walking boots. My head is still slightly groggy from last nights party and vague memories of karaoke and a bow tie keep flashing through my mind. I just can’t find the right pair, this one is too wide, that one is too tight, the colour just doesn’t match my outfit! The salesman smiles at me with a look of “Just choose one and get on with it” on his face. It isn’t going well. I am trying to find a reason to leave and try another shop without offending the overworked and under impressed salesman, when suddenly my phone goes off. Call out! I abandon my search for new boots and leave him surrounded by half opened shoeboxes and escaped walking boots.

It is a reasonable drive home from here, so I text back a reply saying that I will be attending, but it will take me about an hour. I phone my wife to let her know my change of plans and ask if she would kindly make up a flask and some butties and make my way home through the snowy roads. As I am reversing on to my drive, getting ready for a quick turn around, my phone goes off – Stand Down! The joys of Mountain Rescue.

It turns out that a group of students doing their Duke of Edinburgh award with their teachers were missing in between Snake Pass and Hayfield. The conditions were arctic so a search was quickly organised. Both Kinder and Glossop teams were in the process of deploying parties to search the area, when they turned up at the bottom of Kinder. Our Landrover’s were dispatched to give them a lift back into Hayfield. It was a good result as the conditions were severe and if there had been a problem, it would have quickly become very serious. As an added bonus, I don’t need to make any sandwiches for work tomorrow.

Wed 15th March 2006 – Training Exercise

Tonight is training night and we have been told that it will be a short exercise on “the hill” (which means wear your outdoors gear as you will probably get cold, wet and muddy). It also means that I get an early opportunity to try out my new birthday boots! Now for those of you who have been following my diary this year, my last entry will no doubt have left you in eager anticipation, wondering what happened as my latest shopping trip was brought to an abrupt end by a callout. Well, you need worry no longer; I did finally manage to acquire a shiny new pair boots, which are almost comfortable. They are a pair of Raichle 60 Degrees and for completeness I have enclosed the following picture of them:

Anyway, back to the real story. The exec had recently taken delivery of a new “light-weight” titanium stretcher to try out. This may not seem a big deal to most people, but ask anyone who has had to carry one up Sandy Hayes and you will get a definite raised eyebrow of interest. Our current Bell stretchers are very sturdy beasts, which split in two and are carried up the hill like a rucksack. The only issue is that it obviously occupies the same space that our own rucksack would use. The solution to this is to wear the stretcher and hook the straps of our rucksack on top of the stretcher and carry both. To give you a better idea of how this works (and some idea of how heavy it is), here is a photo of Lofty and Nick carrying the stretchers with their rucksacks attached in a previous exercise.

I arrived at the hut in full gear sporting my new boots, hoping to give them a good test and get a decent bit of mud on them. The new stretchers were there waiting to be loaded in to the landrover. This picture gives you a good idea of the weight. Yatesy can pick up half of it in one hand, which I know doesn’t really mean a lot, but you get the idea.

The exercise was based around a casualty with a broken leg on Lantern Pike (a small hill with excellent vehicle access). This allows us to test the stretcher with a proper night time carry off, and still get back at a reasonable time. Just as I am waiting to find out what is going on I get summoned to the control room.

John is running the base for tonight’s exercise. He asks if I will drive one of the Landrovers tonight. Looks like breaking in my boots will have to wait for another night. Oh well, I guess this is the downside of getting to do the off-road driving course last year. The teams load up and Paul and I drop them off at Lantern Pike.

Geoff takes an initial party mainly made up of probationary members to give them the opportunity to have a go at the main roles, and the others follow with the rest of the equipment and the new stretchers. After a few hours of dropping off and waiting around at the hut, they have located the casualty and stretchered him to the road head. We meet them with the vehicles and ferry everyone back to base.

On returning to base, it appears that the trials with the stretcher have not been as successful as we had hoped. Although it is a lot lighter and easier to carry up the hill, as it does not have carrying handles to attach harnesses to, it is a lot heavier and awkward to carry. The jury is very much still out. Although a lighter stretcher is a great idea, if it is too hard to carry it over long distances then we will have to rethink.

Oh well, lets wait and see.

Thurs 16th March 2006

Today turns out to be a bit of an unusual day, or at least a bit more unusual than normal. It’s my 40th birthday and the day starts with us being woken by a strange noise at the back of the house. I bravely ventured downstairs to investigate, only to be confronted by the following site in my back garden:

At first I thought it was a huge birthday joke, with people getting at my Cumbrian heritage! It turns out that the sheep had found a hole in the fence and liked the look of my plants. On the down side I now have a patio full of sheep poo, but on the up side, at least I won’t need to cut the grass for a few weeks.

I try to get back to having a normal day at work. At lunch I start writing up yesterday’s diary entry, but I am interrupted by a text message. Callout! I let my work know about the callout and make my way to the hut. As I am driving back the conditions look severe, with snow blowing in. When I get there, Darren, one of our deputies is in control.

A lady has a broken leg near the top of Kinder. An Air Ambulance has been dispatched despite the poor visibility. We send two teams up just in case the conditions get worse and the helicopter cannot land. Fortunately the helicopter made it and took the lady to hospital, however the message we are sent says that they did not take her husband with them, so our teams carry on to escort him down. As they get near the site, witnesses tell them that both the lady and the husband left in the helicopter. Ambulance control still assure us that he was not taken, so before we start a full scale search for him, we call the hospital only to find out that he is there after all. The teams are recalled.

While the rest of us are waiting back at base, we notice that in the rush to get out, Vinney has left his work clothes out in the hut. Our team mascot soon looks a lot more dapper for its new shirt, tie and trousers.

All we need now is a name for him / her. Answers on a postcard to.……

Sunday 26th March 2006 - Exercise

It’s the March exercise and today is “Local Knowledge”. The objective is to force us to go to all the weird and wonderful parts of our area we don’t usually get to. The format for the event is a bit like a treasure hunt, where we are given clues or grid references to known landmarks. We then charge around scoring points for each place we visit. The points for each location vary, usually depending on how far away they are and there is a prize (for all those we show) for the winning team. The conditions weren’t too bad, a little bit of snow left on the tops and the cloud base was just above the plateau.

I was looking forward to a nice leisurely stroll across the Kinder Plateau. My new boots were looking forward to their first proper outing in the mud. I had packed what looked like an excellent lunch and all was going well, right up to the point where they announced the teams. I was with Steve and Vinney. For those of you who didn’t read about this event in Dave’s diary last year, Steve’s team won by driving to all the high scoring locations and racing up and down each one. To say he takes it a little more seriously than I do would be a mild understatement and by the look on his face he was in no mood to loose his title today! We all settled down to pour over the questions.

Brows were furrowed and eyes were strained as we all tried to work out the best routes. I could see from the team below that I was not the only one with a tough day ahead. Bob and Chris are not known for their slow pace, so John was clearly going to have as much fun as me today.

Steve decided that the best strategy was to bag as many of the high scoring locations as we could by driving between them, so we jumped into my car and off we set. Our first location was Cobden Cross, at the end of a bumpy track on Mellor Moor – 90 points. Our next point was the Cage in Lyme Park, a long journey round by the main roads. “Don’t worry” says Vinney, “I used to drive around here in the Police, I know a short cut!” The next few minutes involve doing a “Right here” and a “Left there” until soon we are giving a cheery “Good Morning” to the golfers on Mellor Golf Course as we drive across the 9th Fairway! The road (?) we are on gets steadily worse until I get a “Left, left, left” from Vinney. “But Vinney” I protest “That sign says Bridleway”. “Don’t worry” he replies “I used to get my Police Mini down here in the old days”. My car complains at being driven down something it could never reverse out of. The nice ladies on their horses wave back in open mouthed disbelief as the three of us crawl past wincing at every pothole. Finally, with a few bumps and scrapes we reach the bottom. I am now going to proudly write the word “LAND” in front of the “ROVER” badge on the front of my car! At this point I would like to clear up that no rules were infringed here as the road / track / bridleway is clearly mark up as a public road on the map, and it went past several houses, so we couldn’t possibly have broken the no off-road driving rule. Anyway, you have to have a 4X4 to do off-road driving…don’t you?

We went on to pick up points at Lyme Park, Bowstones and Eccles Pike, all short hops from the car, before heading into Edale for the main event. We parked up near Barber Booth and jumped out of the car. Before I had time to fasten my boots, Steve was off down the track. As we were heading towards Jacobs Ladder, Steve pointed straight up the side of the hill. “This way is quickest” and off he went again. The following photo sums up my view of most of the day:

As we were making our way up the steep slop, I made an attempt to eat some of my carefully prepared packed lunch. As I grabbed a quick breather I smuggled a pork pie out of my rucksack, hoping it would supply me with the necessary energy to make it to the top. I took a bite, but I couldn’t get enough liquid in my mouth to eat it. I gave up, deciding that breathing was more preferable than eating at this time. After a lung and leg bursting pull up the hill we reached the edge path. My short legs had little chance of keeping up with Steve’s lengthy gait, so I plodded along behind and caught them up at relevant locations.

Vinney managed to find time to stop and enjoy the scenery, however this meant that we had to push on extra hard to make up for the lost time.

We went out past Grindsbrook to Harts Horn to pick up 120 points at the Wellington wreak. However my dodgy E-bay GPS lost us some time as it told me the crash site was 100 meters over the edge of the cliff!

On the way back we met Kinder 7 in hot pursuit. They were going a different way round and picking up the crash site on the way down

We made our way back towards Jacobs Ladder. As we were heading down a ridiculously steep section of the hill, we spotted Bob and Chris coming up, with John a little red faced somewhere behind. Looks like he had a very similar day to me, but at least I was going down hill now!

We reached the car and headed back to base, stopping off to quickly run up and down Lord’s Seat on Rushop edge. As we were about to arrive back in Hayfield, Steve decided that we just had time to get to the TV mast on Ollerset Moor as it is only 100m from the road. We swapped in to his Land Rover and off we went, with Steve insisting that this could be the difference between winning and loosing. As we raced up the track to the TV mast memories come flooding back of the last time I was in Steve’s Land Rover, trying to get up to Edale Cross in three feet of snow. I think I’d told myself that next time I would walk! We get to the mast and quickly ran back to the car and on to the hut just before the 16:00 hrs deadline.

When we arrived at the hut, it turned out that as one of the team Land Rovers had been driving around checking up on us, they were flagged down to help a lady who had broken her leg on the track above Lyme Park. A road Ambulance crew were on their way and the Air Ambulance had also been dispatched as they didn’t know if the road ambulance would get to her. Four of our team took the Ambulance crew as close to the scene as they could in the Land Rover, then ferried the rest of the equipment there on foot. Finally, the Helicopter arrived and whisked the lady off to hospital.

 

Back at the ranch, the scores are added up and Steve is jubilant to have retained his Local Knowledge champion title for another year. I look forward to someone else winning it with him next year.

Finally, to finish off the saga, you may have been wondering if I eventually got my new boots muddy.

Well let’s just say that my boots are well and truly broken in. My body? Well that’s just broken!

Friday 31st March 2006 – AGM & Team Meeting

Tonight is our Annual General Meeting, where we vote to elect the members of the Exec committee. It’s rumoured that in the long distant past these were exciting affairs, where people were unexpectedly voted out of their role. It’s not quite so dramatic tonight, with only Mick standing down as Equipment Officer and Pete elected unopposed. All the other officers are re-elected unopposed, which I guess means that either they are doing a great job running the team, or the rest of us are just too lazy to do the job. Possibly both…….you decide!

The meeting runs through quickly, with annual reports from the people doing the various roles. One item of interest in the finances is that the revenue we receive from people using our site to do their on-line shopping has increased significantly. If you do this already, make sure you let all your friends know, as this could really help team funds.

After the AGM we roll straight in to the March Team Meeting. We are introduced to a new probationary team member – good luck! As part of Mike’s Cas Care report, he lets us know that we have finally worn out “Resusci-Annie”, our CPR practice doll, and she is to be replaced by “Resusci-Dave” an upgraded version. I’m not sure about that idea!

After the meeting we are chatting over a pint and it turns out that Charlie has gone light-weight as well as Mike. This is a disturbing trend; I can’t see how I can get all my gear into a smaller rucksack. Maybe I need packing lessons?

Now, as those of you who know me will no doubt realise, my brain works in a subtly different way to most normal people! If I find something that I feel isn’t working properly, I just can’t let it lie. So with this in mind, I have recently been thinking about the lack of success with the light-weight stretcher trials and keeping up with Steve the other day without using a light-weight rucksack. After throwing some ideas round in my head for a while, I finally came up with the perfect solution. Wearable Bionic legs!

This could be brilliant, I could take as many sandwiches as I like! I am now trying to find out if they do one with a built-in GPS. I could have buttons programmed in saying “Pub” and “Home” and let it do the rest. Genius!