Sharing good practice.

As usual, last week’s half-term brought an early influx of visitors and the weather treated them well considering it is only February.  It could even have been described as warm at times!  It also suits us well as we in the Trust have been working to complete before Easter the projects I mentioned last week.

At the weekend I then went off with several other members of the Keswick Mountain Rescue Team to join the Kintail team for joint exercises.  Last year they joined us for rope-work exercises and this year we intended to share and practise winter rescue techniques.

 

On the Saturday, 15 of the Keswick and Kintail teams worked on the Falcon Ridge.  The RAF was also involved winching a new form of vacuum mattress with integral helicopter lifting strops. 

We stayed on the ridge line as far as possible because the warmer temperatures meant that there was an avalanche risk crossing snow.  We did have to negotiate a snow basin at one point in the day and, although all 15 of us were very experienced mountaineers, we were concerned and very cautious about the risk.  We were very careful about our route choice as we crossed the basin.  We had a good day though and gathered in the evening for a few shandies to round it off!

On the Sunday a group of us were back on the hill.  We had planned to do some ice-climbing but the weather was so warm that what we hoped would be ice-falls were actually waterfalls! It was much warmer than we expected and indeed was 15 degrees when we returned to the cars.  But it was great walking weather.

Overall it was a fantastic weekend.  Good practice was shared and we saw the new vacuum mattress with integral strops in action – that’s something we can consider adopting in the future.

Hi, it's Daisy here. He left me! He left me! He left me!

He came back!!