It been a busy day, having slept through the initial pager message in the early hours of the morning, I awoke to find a two hour old pager message on my phone so skipped breakfast and went to Nant Peris, where seven team embers where deployed to the hill, to come to the aid of an unknown injured walker. It later transpired that other than her physical injuries she had possible tried to take her own life, making the incident a major one. These are always tragic incidents to attend or be a part of I can only hope she pulls through.
The next incident occurred just as the first incident of the day was drawing to a close, and this signalled the 99th actual rescue of the year, the number of incidents that we have dealt with but not had to deploy to is into the hundreds now. However think of that number for a while 99 rescues, if over a year it would be more than two a week, but we are only 8 months through the year, so it looks like we are well and truly set to break a record that if we are honest is one that you really don’t want to break in terms of record number of call outs.
Based on the fact that the whole Mountain Rescue system in the UK is voluntary then when you look at teams like Llanberis, which is by far the busiest in the UK, then the amount of hours each individual puts into the team in terms of call out and training then it is a wonder how any of us manage to hold down a full time job. If the number of jobs keep coming we will be looking at well in excess of 150 call outs by the end of the year.
The team were out for most of yesterday afternoon, not to mention from 7am till 2pm today.
In order to help raise the profile and money for the rescue team, myself and another team member are running the Snowdon Marathon. If you would like to help us raise money then please use the donate button in the left column or click this link where you can donate via just giving, where for every pound the team will receive an extra 20p from the government through the gift aid initiative.