What we do Our area Our members History Training
The History of Kinder Mountain Rescue Team.
By Dr. Peter Andrew
The Kinder Mountain Rescue Team was formed in 1971 by the amalgamation of
the Sett Valley Mountain Rescue Team and the Goyt Search and Rescue Team.
The Sett Valley Mountain Rescue Team (originally called the New Mills Mountain Rescue Team) was one of the first civilian teams to be set up in this country, being formed in 1959.
To understand the history of mountain rescue in the Peak District we should go back before the 1939 war. Walking and climbing in the Kinder area had been very restricted prior to the passing of the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act in 1949 and the setting up of the Peak District National Park in 1950 and their making access agreements with the landowners who had previously attempted to prevent all access by those without their written permission to their grouse moors. The only public paths were the Snake Path from Hayfield and the path from Hayfield to Edale via Edale Cross and Jacobs Ladder.
During the 1939 war because of the heavy loss of life among trained aircrew resulting from plane crashes, often as a result of navigational errors, in the hills and mountains and frequently from normally survivable injuries, the RAF had set up a chain of trained rescue teams recruited from volunteers among servicemen stationed at bases near mountainous areas. Their nearest team to Kinder was based at Harpur Hill in Buxton and was moved to Stafford on the closure of the Harpur Hill station.
After the making of the Access Agreements by the National Park both hill walking and rock climbing developed rapidly with many more people participating. Increased holidays and the five day working week in industry coupled with increasing car and motor cycle ownership made climbing and hill walking possible for many more people.
A Mountain Rescue Post with a Thomas stretcher, casualty bag and a simple but effective first aid kit had been set up about 1950 at Tunstead House by the Mountain Rescue Committee (MRC) - now called Mountain Rescue Council (MRC). It was soon moved to Reservoir House and later to the Filter House. The MRC and its predecessors had been setting up posts in the mountainous areas of Great Britain since the 1930s. This equipment was nearly always used by ad-hoc groups of people recruited by the post supervisor and local policeman from members of the victim's party, people on the crag or moor and other climbers and walkers in nearby climbing club huts, hotels, pubs and hostels immediately after an accident. The first civilian rescue teams were in Keswick, founded in 1947, and Coniston, founded in 1952. The Glossop Rover Scout Crew set up a rescue team in 1958. The problem in Hayfield was that, unlike the Lake District and North Wales, there were no climbing club huts, hotels or hostels catering for climbers and walkers - they all went home by train, bus or car each evening. The village policeman had to rely on his list of local residents who knew the way over Kinder when an accident occurred or a person was reported missing on the hill.
The scene was therefore ready for the setting up of the rescue team. One day in 1959, after a rescue, the New Mills Police Sergeant, Sgt. Starkie, who had most certainly seen the RAF team at work, and the local probation officer, Bill Thompson, were sitting in the back of the New Mills Magistrates Court discussing the operation when they decided to try and establish a rescue team in New Mills. After various meetings the New Mills rescue team had its first training exercise in October 1959. Bill Thompson was the first team leader. The team used the post equipment from Reservoir House.
Methods of working at that time were very different from those which we know today. Many houses did not have a telephone and many team members did not have a car or access to a car. A team call out involved phone calls to sympathetic neighbours and team car owners and then much knocking on doors.
In the field there were also major problems with communications: the team had no radios until the late 1960s. Signalling was by maroons and rocket flares, car head lamps and on at least one occasion the bell at Upper House was rung to re-call the team. There were very few back-pack portable radios around in the early 1960s. These were mostly war department surplus and all relied on valves in their circuitry and were very prone to damage by knocks etc. They also drifted off frequency to an alarming extent, especially when temperatures changed. Radios were of little practical use in mountain rescue until valves were replaced by transistors in the late 1960s and 1970s.
The team continued to help those injured or missing on Kinder until 1964 when mountain rescue in England and Wales, and especially in the Peak District, received a jolt with the four Inns Walk disaster. The Four Inns Walk is a long distance walking event for Scouts. On this occasion there was a rapid change in weather conditions to a severe cold wind with heavy rain which caused the deaths from exhaustion hypothermia of three of the lightly clad Scouts participating in the event while on the Bleaklow section of the walk. Some of the walkers went off course down the Alport and a blizzard during the night caused a huge problem during the following days in a search for a missing participant over many square miles of snow covered ground. The New Mills Team participated in this operation but the searchers were mostly untrained volunteers. This rapidly organised operation showed that some preplanning for operations of this nature was required plus many more trained and competent searchers than had been available for that occasion.
Over thirty years after this tragedy it is difficult to realise the then almost universal lack of knowledge of the causes, prevention and treatment of exhaustion hypothermia. The problems of wet cold and wind chill factors were hardly recognised nor was the great importance of a large intake of rapidly assimilable food (sugars) in those undertaking severe and prolonged exercise in adverse conditions.
Much of the information available at that time came from research done in the severely cold and dry conditions of the high Himalayas or Antarctic regions on people taking only limited severe exercise.
Following the Four Inns Walk disaster the Peak District Mountain Rescue Organisation (PDMRO) was set up to co-operate with the police, who have overall responsibility for search and rescue, in planning and co-ordinating rescue facilities plus organising and controlling operations.
As a result of this incident there was a rapid increase in the number of rescue teams in and around the Peak District. All the teams already operating in the Peak District area together with these new teams joined the PDMRO. All were expected to be able to operate anywhere in the Peak District so as to provide enough trained personnel for major searches.
Many of these new teams were based on Scout Groups. The Goyt Search and Rescue Team was one of these, being set up by John Niell, Group Scout Leader in Marple and George Livingstone, Group Scout leader in High Lane. It recruited members from both groups and was based at the Marple Scout Head Quarters. Its team leader was Bob Conway.
Over the next few years it became clear that using a large number of separate rescue teams, each with its own equipment and training programmes, was not the best way of dealing with most operations. The PDMRO encouraged the amalgamation of teams and brought in a grading system, after assessment, with the best teams being titled Initial Operation Teams.
The Sett Valley and Goyt teams amalgamated in 1971 to form the Kinder Mountain Rescue Team having its headquarters at the Sett Valley Team's base in Hayfield. The Kinder Team was an Initial Operations Team.
This amalgamation worked very well and members of each group have subsequently served as team leader. It has also saved on the costs of providing increasingly sophisticated and expensive equipment for the team.
Neither team had radios at the time of the amalgamation. With the coming of transistorised radios the PDMRO had a major fund raising effort and managed to buy six Pye Bantam sets and one control set. The National Park held the sets at Edale and in return for their licensing and paying for servicing was able to use them when not required for MR. If required for MR they were taken by road to the operation control site or collected before an exercise. The Police Authorities eventually accepted responsibility for providing, licensing and servicing most of the radios used by teams.
Another important change in mountain rescue which started in the 1960s has been the increasing use of helicopters. These can greatly reduce the time needed to evacuate an injured person to hospital or to move rescue personnel onto or off the hill. They are also very useful in a search capacity but are unable to operate in some weather conditions such as thick low cloud. Since insurance arrangements were finalised between the MRC and the Ministry of Defence (MOD) team members have been able to fly in MOD helicopters both on actual operations and during training. Team members are now taught basic procedures to use when working with helicopters as well as when flying or being winched into or out of the machine.
Since its formation the Kinder Team has continued to develop, training hard to get the best results from increasingly sophisticated equipment. The team is now equipped with Bell stretchers and has extensive medical kits containing those drugs recommended by the MRC together with Oxygen and Entenox plus modern splints and cervical collars. The amount of time spent training in casualty care and First Aid has increased greatly in recent years. This probably reflects the wide variety of hill walkers and climbers who are now helped, ranging from school children to pensioners, with a wide variety of medical conditions as well as injuries. Besides first aid, team members have to train and practice their mountaineering and search skills in all weather conditions both by day and by night.
The team usually counts among its members at least one search dog handler. Dogs and handlers undertake much additional training besides their normal team training.
The team call out is now based on a pager system although some members are still called out by telephone. Team members are supplied with red mountain jackets so that they can be easily identified in the field.
Of great importance in any team, especially when all members are unpaid volunteers, is their ability to work together as a team and to get on well together in the social sense. This is greatly helped by the team's programme of social events such as climbing evenings and hut and camping weekends in other mountain areas. This has been the practice since the earliest days.
In recent years the team has had a fund raising committee which has worked hard to raise team funds both for the improvement of the team headquarters in Hayfield and for the purchase of new and replacement equipment. All equipment is maintained in first class condition and the life of some items such as ropes is carefully logged so that their use and age do not exceed makers' recommendations.
The Kinder Team and all other mountain rescue teams in this country are composed of unpaid volunteers who give up their time to assist others who share their love of the hills. No charge is ever made to those rescued, or their party, either by the teams or by the RAF Helicopter Service. The expenses of teams and purchase of much equipment can only be met from donations received from walkers and climbers and other members of the general public.
Peter Andrew
Farewell to an old friend
The Death of Peter Andrew came as a tremendous shock to us all, not just locally but also nationally and, I am sure, internationally.
I first came to know Peter in 1974 when, newly elected as Team Leader at Buxton, I spent a night at Kinder Base with him during a search for a missing couple on Kinder.
We talked a lot during those long hours about many aspects of Mountain Rescue and I realised that here was a man, a big man, who not only knew what mountain rescue was really all about but also had a great compassion for his fellow man.
Peter was a quiet, unassuming person but yet one who would fight his corner with the best when necessary. I personally learned more about the job of being a Controller from Peter than from any other, a knowledge that Peter was prepared to pass on totally unstintingly.
Totally supported by his wife Gaynor, an angel on earth, Peter led a very full life with many interests outside mountain rescue but his first love was walking the countryside of his beloved Derbyshire and it is possible that he died as he would have wished. We are all the poorer for his loss and I am sure his memory will be revered for as long as mountain rescue exists.