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Diary - September 2008
Monday 1st September 2008 19:30hrs – Cas Care Training
A nice easy one tonight to break us back in to the training routine gently. Colin had set us a medical quiz to see if we remembered anything after our training break. You could hear the grey matter creaking around the room, but we got there….eventually.
Wednesday 10th September 2008 19:30hrs – Training
This month’s training was being carried by SARDA, the Search Dog teams, on the procedures we use when we operate together. I however was working away that evening.
Saturday 20th September 2008 – Hayfield Show
Every year we run a stand at the Hayfield show. The idea is to carry out a bit of fundraising whilst also raising awareness of our activities with the local people.
We chatted with lots of people who were keen to find out about what we do, and were approached by several potential new members. If any of you are reading this, check out the section on joining us.
We almost had a couple of callouts while we were there. On Sunday we were on standby to help Buxton team, who were evacuating a casualty from Wildboar Clough. While on Saturday afternoon, we were called by the Police on site to one of the competitors in the Fell race, who had fallen and injured their chest. We had enough people on site to handle this, so we jumped in to the Land Rover and began to make our way to the incident. As we reached the exit gate, a police car pulled in from the road with the runner inside, so it was back to the stand for us!
Thursday 25th September 2008 20:50 – Callout
So, I am sat on a train from London to Stockport after a couple of days at head office. The train has been delayed thanks to some lovely kids who decided to play hide and seek on the west coast main line, resulting in us having to travel at 20 mph for the last half hour. Just as I am relaxing into a well rehearsed train sulk, my phone jumps into life with a text message. Now for those of you reading this that are not in the Mountain Rescue community, callouts happen at any time of the day or night. So to make sure that the text message gets me out of bed in the middle of the night, I have my ringtone set to the longest, loudest and most annoying tune on my phone. This detail was lost on my fellow carriage members and I wasn’t going to explain it to them all. So I just had to smile politely mouth the word “sorry” as they tutted at me over their laptop lids with a look like I had just disturbed them from the piece of work that would save their company. They were probably only watching a DVD anyway! The message read “Callout, RV Hut”. As it was dark, there was a good chance that this would be someone lost on Kinder. I sat back in my chair waiting to get to my station, wondering when the stand down message would arrive. Twenty minutes later and I was at Stockport station….still no stand down, but I had missed my connecting train and the next one would be over an hour. I decided to make a dash for the bus. Fifteen minutes later and I was sat on the bus, drumming my fingers impatiently. Now I’m not big on catching busses at the best of times, but after this experience, I’m afraid I can’t endorse it as a method of getting to a callout. The driver stopped for everyone who put their hand out! Inside my head I could hear myself screaming, “Surely they could wait for the next bus…..it’s only an hour”. But no, at each stop an old dear would get on, count out their fare in 1p coins, and then slowly make their way down the aisle as the driver politely waited for them to get to their seat. This never happens when I’m in plenty of time for something.
Finally the bus stopped outside my house….still no stand down. My family hadn’t seen me since Wednesday morning so I greeted them with a cheery “Hi….Callout” and rushed to the phone to see if I was still needed. I phoned based and Neale answered. “Yeah”, he replied “We have a couple of teams on the hill, but come along as you may still be needed”. I quickly changed and headed out to the hut. When I arrived, there were a few of our team already waiting around. They brought me up to speed with what had been going on. A group of five Air Cadets had been out on their gold Duke of Edinburgh expedition. They had set off from Crowden in the morning and were planning to arrive in the evening at the campsite in Hayfield. They hadn’t arrived on time and when it went dark, their supervisor called us in to help find them. Initially we were looking at a huge search area, so Bob, who was acting as controller on this incident, called Glossop team in to search Bleaklow, while we searched Kinder. Since then, they had managed to briefly get in touch to inform us that they were safe, but lost in the dark. They had wisely decided to stay put and informed us they were on a flagged path and could see the lights of a town in the distance. From local knowledge, this most likely put them in the Mill Hill area. So Neale had sent out two search parties, one direct to Mill Hill and the other up William Clough, which would be their most likely route off if they had gone any further.
We waited around with the usual mixture of coffee and good humour, while we waited for news from the hill. Every time you attend a callout, you can end up doing very different jobs. Occasionally you will be in the team that finds the casualties and will have a very busy night. Often you will be searching an area which turns out to be empty. Another team may find the casualties and you end up supporting them with the evacuation. Tonight I was held in reserve just in case it turned out that one of the lost people had an injury and equipment needed to be carried up to the Casualty site.
We finally heard over the radio that they had been located and although cold, they had no injuries and would be able to be walked back down. I was asked to drive one of the Land Rovers up to meet the teams coming off the hill and bring them back to base. Hey, it got me out of the hut.
I drove up to meet Vinny and Nigel at the other Land Rover, who had been providing a radio link. Not long after I arrived, we could see the torches of the team making its way back down. Half an hour later and they had the Air Cadets with us. We loaded everybody into the vehicles and headed back to the hut.
After we had warmed them up with hot coffee and driven them back to their campsite, we had a quick debrief. The general consensus was that although their route had taken them longer than they expected, once they became benighted, they did everything correctly. They stayed put, set up their tent and called for help. Let’s hope the D of E assessors take that in to account!
Friday 26th September 2008 20:00hrs – Team Meeting
A quick team meeting tonight, catching up on the usual items of business. It was followed by our annual slide show, where team members show off photos (well powerpoints in this technical age) of their latest adventurous trips. The SAGA group had been to the Dolomites this year and it looked very impressive. I didn’t bother with my photos of summer at the beach in France with the family!
Sunday 28th September 2008 09:30hrs – SARDA Training
Today we are having a training session with the Search and Rescue Dogs Association (SARDA). SARDA members are also Mountain Rescue team members, who don’t think the commitment of being in a rescue team is enough, so decide to take on the ultimate time consuming exercise of training a dog as well. We had arranged to meet at Lyme Park, where the SARDA guys would show us how they train their dogs.
I decided to walk to Lyme Park as a) I don’t live too far away, b) I had a new GPS to test for the day and c) the engine in my car had recently blown up, so I didn’t have a choice anyway. The GPS testing went well on the way there. We had been sent a SATMAP device to have a look at.
I currently have a Garmin eTrex, which I use as a normal GPS to show my position and to take me to known way points. I also use Memory Map along with a Bluetooth GPS on my phone. This gives me a moving map on my phone, to show me my exact location on an OS map, which is very handy when used in conjunction with a full map. The only problems I have with it, are that the screen is obviously small and I have to keep it in a waterproof Boxit case, so I can’t use the buttons with my gloves on. The SATMAP seemed to get round all of these problems, with the added advantage of being able to create a route by moving the cursor and clicking where you want to go. It seems to be a pretty good device. They only issues we still have are whether it is too complicated for a novice user to work the “Go to” facility on the hill and as it has a big full colour screen, it eats batteries, so we’d have to have plenty charged up all the time.
Well, it managed to get me to Lyme Park OK, even though I did cadge a lift off Bob half way. We met up with the rest of the team in the car park and headed up to the back of the park where it would be less busy.
For our first session Nick Smith from Buxton team showed us how he had begun training his dog Zak. This process involves getting Zak interested in playing a game of fetch with a squeaky toy. He then moved on to getting someone to run away with the toy and sent Zak off to find it. This builds up until eventually Zak understands that he is looking for a person and he has to come back and indicate that he has made a find and take the handler in to the casualty. It is a long process that takes as much training for the handler as it does for the dog.
We then moved on to see how Zak was used to cover a large area and search for hidden casualties. These dogs are air scenting and use the wind to follow a scent cone in to the casualty. I was asked to help out by hiding with Zak’s toy and then playing with him when he found me to help him see this as a good game.
In the afternoon, watched some of the other handlers searching a much larger area for multiple casualties. Unfortunately we managed to pick a misty day, so it wasn’t the best conditions for watching people on the far side of a hill!
I left with my usual impresion of these days, where I would love to train one of these dogs, but can't imagine where I would find the time to do it. I'll leave it to the dedicated, if slightly mad people of SARDA.