Kinder Mountain Rescue Team

If you go into the woods today

Mist, drizzle and low cloud rolled over Windgather Rocks as I approached the remote RV (rendez-vous point) for today’s exercise. Not quite the weather I had ordered (thick fog, torrential rain) but it would be sufficient to set the mood for the day.

The scenario for today’s exercise was a straight forward MISPER (missing person) search. But as I’m not one for making it easy I threw in dense forest with lashings of steep hilly terrain for added interest.

As the team arrived and search parties formed, the exercise story unfolded. A local middle aged female suffering stress and depression with a history of drug and alcohol use had gone missing some 36 hrs earlier. Other teams had been out searching prior to Kinder’s deployment. The area Kinder had been tasked to search would prove tough going for the limited resources available, but hopefully we’d be successful. read more…

This year’s Cracken Edge Fell Race will be held on Wednesday, 4 August. Start time is 7:30pm and entries on the night – £4 entry. For more information, go to Hayfield Fell Races.

Driving through the smelly water

The drivers group were wheeled out again for our bi-annual 4×4 refresher training.  This was hosted by Corporate Pursuits, a professional off-road instruction company.  They taught us to drive up steep hills, down steep hills and through smelly water.  We managed to drag our vehicles through impassable terrain and were proudly upholding the reputation of the team’s off road driving ability, right up to the point where Vinny got his vehicle stuck in the smallest puddle on the site.  We were all so proud!

Urban Folk band Blackheart are taking a break from their 2010 tour to play a fundraiser for KMRT on 3 September 2010. Blackheart are Chrissy Mostyn and Rick Pilkington Their songwriting blends folk, country and even rock influences to create a unique style of beautifully crafted, instantly memorable songs that has been christened by the media ‘urban folk’.

Having built a reputation on outstanding live concerts and two albums , they are widely regarded as the fastest rising stars of the new folk generation. To find out more about Blackheart, visit their website www.blackheartmusic.co.uk or better yet come and see them on 3 September 2010 at the Great Moor Club in Stockport.

Tickets are £6 each and available from Great Moor Club, tel 01614832140 or Ken Blakeman. Tel  01614830215.

Broken arm? - Not for long with our expert training!

Another good training session tonight.  We were given a series of scenarios and were asked to practice using various items of kit to deal with the injuries.

We spent the evening practicing with vacuum splints, traction splints and extraction devices.  Very enlightening.

I still have trouble with a triangular bandage!

• Type – Assist ambulance service.
• Location – ’White Nancy’, Bollington
• Time – 16.00 hrs (approx)
• Team members – 20
• Duration – 1.5 hours
• Man hours – 30 hrs

After completing our training exercise, members were on their way home when the call came through to RV at a known location in Bollington. The team rapidly redeployed to assist the ambulance service at a local tourist location – ‘White Nancy’, Bollington.

An elderly gentleman had fallen and sustained injuries to both legs. One leg had a suspected fracture of the mid shaft femur, the other cuts and grazes. The casualty was immobilised and evacuated by mountain rescue stretcher to a waiting ambulance.

Phil Ridley – Team Training Officer

The casualty receives pain relief before being loaded on to the stretcher

I had just arrived home after the day’s exercise to suddenly get a callout text message on my phone.  The message said it was a remote RV in Bollington.  I threw my rucksack in the car and headed off.  I managed to get to Bollington quite quickly, but had a bit of trouble with the directions at the end.  I got to the agreed location to find Dave waiting for us to send us on to an RV about half a mile further on.  I managed to drive passed the RV and had to turn round to make my way back.  read more…

Mike - Crashed at the bottom of a crag

Sunday exercise seemed to come round quickly this month. We turned up at the hut on the hottest day of the year, trying to second guess where the exercise would be held. We aren’t allowed to hold exercises on the top of Kinder in the summer months, as there is a program going on to protect nesting birds on the plateau. If it’s an emergency, there’s no problem with access, but the National Trust ask us not to tramp around on the tops during the summer months….which is fair enough, I suppose. My bet was on a search of Ollerset moor, as this wasn’t one of the mandatory sessions, such as Helicopters, or Rope Rescue, so a search was most likely. read more…

• Type – Assist ambulance service.
• Location – Bing Wood, Whaley Bridge
• Time – 00:17
• Team members – 12
• Duration – 1 hour
• Man hours – 12

In the early hours of Sunday morning (only just gone midnight Saturday) we were called to assist East Midlands Ambulance Service with the evacuation of a teenage lad who had sustained an ankle injury in steep woodland. The casualty was taken by mountain rescue stretcher to a waiting ambulance