Rescue training.

This was a week where I was able to take a week away from Trust duties using lieu days accumulated by working weekends and Bank holidays.   Friends from Canada, Kirk and Jo Mauthner, came to stay and enjoy some walking and climbing in the Lakes.  Kirk then ran a course for Rescue Team members.  I have worked with him twice before in Canada and it was well worth having him here to run the course for those who had not had that opportunity.

We started with work indoors on theory and in the rope training area of the Keswick Team base.  Just as well we did that because the weather was foul that day!  We then moved to outdoor work starting at Steel Knott behind Castle Crag and then on to Sharp Edge.  This is one of our black-spots where we have many callouts and the terrain is particularly difficult especially in poor weather.  We did a lot of work here on rigging a guide line or an aerial rope-way to get a stretcher out of the gulley which is the usual place for fallers.  Guide ropes are primarily to make life easier for the ‘barrow boys’ who go down with the casualty on the stretcher.  A few years ago I had a good rattling accompanying a stretcher down so I know the value of a guide rope.

Rigging an aerial rope.

 

Aerial evacuation of an empty stretcher this time.

Our next training site was Castle Nook up Newlands valley.  This is a low angle slope with lots of vegetation and steps that make it more difficult for ‘barrow boys’. So we had lots of practice rigging ropes for the slightly different problems posed by the terrain.  Like anything else, regular training and practice with the techniques we use make it easier to swing into action when it is a real call-out.

Barrow boys with a volunteer 'casualty'.

I returned to Trust duty for a damp and chilly Bank Holiday weekend but there were still plenty of people who intended to enjoy the Lakes.