Well I spent last night in Caernarfon Police Station (no not in the cells), with around 15 friends from the Llanberis & Ogwen Mountain Rescue Teams and Ogwen at a debrief following on from John Evans tragic accident last. We relived the time line of the events on that day, each persons filling in a little bit of the story that they knew. It allowed us all to see the whole picture of the events that unfolded so rapidly.
I left convinced that the Team, and everybody at the scene of that incident had done everything possible to give John as bigger chance of survival as possible. I cannot and do not wish to go into the exact details, but suffice to say if ever I had an accident in the mountains I would want exactly the same team of people there looking after me.
As a team we have to deal with fatal incidents more often than you think, I have lost count of the number of deaths this year, but it is somewhere around 5. Some of the team will have been at all five, its is not easy, and we do it as volunteers, I know I have questioned the logic of heading towards such accidents when most people are heading away.
I know how I react know to these traumatic events, and fortunately I wasn’t working the two day after this incident, as I know that for the first two nights my head runs wild with images of the scene, and during the day my mind wanders back to the hillside. I really can’t concentrate, and given that my job is looking after people and teaching them to be safe in the mountains often means that I am just not up to working.
The night seems to have helped me anyway to understand the whole picture.