I am sorry to rant about Moutnain Rescue again, but this weekend I was working, and got a call out when I was gainfully employed so didn’t respond. I therefore didn’t know what had gone on, but I saw on the BBC website what the rescue was, and was so appalled that I just had to vent. I haven’t chatted to any member of the team, about this, as I feel it unfair to use there testemony when I am about to slag them off, which as I have been told time and time again isn’t the job of the Mountain Rescue Team, but seeing as I am only an observer here, I feel that I should highlight the gross misjudgement and neglect that a group showed to a fellow member f there team.
It transpires that a disabled person in a wheelchair was assisted by a team of six people up the hill, unable to get them up the Allt Moses, a step section in the Llanberis Path, just above where the approach to cloggy branches off. Rather than descend and get everyone back to safety have had an adventure and probably pushed themselves to the very limits in terms of physical achievement they decided to leave the disabled person there and continue without the excess baggage to the summit, a good hour of ascent for most people from there, before returning, when they decided that they were too tired to get the disabled member of the team down.
Now I have no problem with trying to get a wheelchair with a disbabled person to the summit, but you sure as hell need to make sound decisions and not get totally committed, as there is no way out. To push on regardless shows a lack of respect for the hill, a total lack of respect to the dignity of the disabled person and having to summon help from the rescue team in such a situation seems just as disrespectful to them.
It is not just them I see it all too regularly a sort of death or glory, summit or bust approach to people attempting to climb snowdon for charity, as if because they are raising money they are immune to weather, fatigue and sound mountain judgement. This incident just leave me livid that people can be so selfish as to essentially risk the safety of someone whose safety is totally in the control of the people that put them in that situation. Totally disgusting behaviour.