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A long time ago I had a friend die after quite a long fall during a climbing trip. Several pairs all over a mountain crag in various places. Good social trip so far. Conor had topped out with his second, coiled ropes, and they were walking off to the ab point to get down. He slipped, fell about 150m, died. It was my first experience of a mountain rescue situation where we were an active part - rather than the all to common body recoveries due to suicides at our local crag. It was a few months after he died that I realised how much work SRT/MRTs put in and decided should I find myself settled in an area with one, I would work towards getting on it and helping.
As it conspired this took nearly 12 years - between university, PhD, jobs, city living - before I moved somewhere that I would be stationary in a mountain (ish) environment. I missed the application cutoff after moving to Hebden by a month in 2015. So I waited. When it opened again late in 2016 I applied and waited. And waited. And waited. I'd sort of assumed that I'd not made it past the most simple part - the application vetting process. A few weeks later a mail in my inbox inviting me to attend a meeting to discuss the SRT work, meet some team members, and ask questions. Lots of questions.
The first meeting was a bit of an eye opener for some of the others who attended. Mentions of body recovery and the volunteer aspect and lack of any financial support on your kit turned away half of those who turned up for the info night from the next stage. But if nothing else, it gave them a glimpse past the red and black kit and into what the SRT members actually do. We were then asked, should we want to try to get into an operational role, to turn up to RP90 with full hill kit for a day long assessment at a given date and time. No detailed kit list. No explanation of time length. No idea of what it would entail. Just you - hill kit - a climbing helmet - and a headtorch - at RP90. Questions returned smiles and the same things, hill kit/helmet/headtorch/RP90
Bridestones by Greg.May, on Flickr12 out of the 26 people turned up for assessment. RP90 is the rescue post at Mytholmroyd.
Unsurprisingly it was raining, cold, and pretty typical of the month of February in Calderdale. Full kit was varied from a few of the runners with ultralight kit, to OTT mountain leader setups, and people who obviously had a lot of alpine experience. Out of the gate it was time for brews - get your own - then go upstairs and strip your kit out in front of everyone. A safety check of our kit on the SRT members side (two people didn't bring waterproofs). But a great chance for them to look at what be brought and how we packed it. This was followed by an operational member stripping out their bag for the day and being critiqued by other operational members. Everyone is an individual - bar the mandatory kit - and space for the fell party kit.
What followed was a fast ascent of a local trail (Daisy Bank) at full speed - fitness check part one. We were asked to orient ourselves, split into smaller groups of 2/3 and allocated an SRT member to work with. From then on we were tasked with navigational challenge after challenge. Long distance navigation legs on a bearing to micro features. Super micro feature navigating. Route choice off any form of paths. Extraction routes for proposed casualty situations. Scenario after scenario after scenario. Then, it got dark. At some point I ate a pie. And had a brew.
Another hour or so spent wandering around the moors working out how we coped without visual features. Which had been a fair chunk of the day already as we'd been in mist and snow for most of it. Then the radio chirped up. A walker had fallen and broken something or other, we were needed to help with a stretcher "evacuation". Get there as fast as you can. By fast, they meant fast and it was time to get as close to running as you can with a full days kit and 7hrs walking under your legs already. 200m vertical height later and we were up at Stoodly Pike Monument where a pre-stretcher bound 40kg dummy (known as Dead Fred) was strapped in and ready to be brought down the steep way.
A quick safety briefing, helmets on, and it was time to get the stretcher down. In answer to the age old question of "how many SRT members does it take to carry a stretcher?" - a minimum of 16. Eight to carry it, 6 to rotate in and give everyone a rest, one to navigate, one to give orders. Wall crossings were interesting. Think about that next time you crash hard and debate an MRT call out. A minimum of 16 people to carry you off. It took 30 minutes to descend 300m and cover about 1km. I was quite sore the next day. Lucky for us, we got to skip the 8km walk back to the base and we got to get in the rescue vehicles. Debrief (with a brew) and a chirpy - we will let you know tomorrow.
I didn't sleep well that night. Debating what choices I'd made. Did I fit in. Was I fit enough. 5pm the next day and an email comes through to the chosen ones. I couldn't have been happier. This was two weeks ago.
DSC01717-Edit.jpg by Greg.May, on FlickrLast night was my first night training of the next six months as a trainee. Met the other trainees, some of whom I met on the hill assessment, some I didn't. It was a relaxed night talking about refining what kit we had out on the hill down to what we are expected to carry at all training sessions, and on the hill, for each future session. There will be an outlay, not much, but something I'd factored into the post Divide monthly budget and put aside for it. We talked about the most basic form of the 5 party fell team - the minimum needed for operations and assessment of a casualty. We got to poke and probe the kit, try to figure out what a Little Dragon is, brews were drunk.
This is now my Tuesday for the next 6 months. After that, I go on a weekend assessment to make it to probationary team member status. If I pass that, I go on call, and keep training for the next 6 months before another weekend hill assessment to make full team member. To say I'm looking forward to this is an understatement. To say I'm nervous, almost terrified, is also fairly true.
