Why tracking doesn’t work for misper SAR in the UK
Why tracking doesn’t work for Misper SAR in the UK
(And why every SAR team member needs to learn basic tracking skills)
Here we go… this post will attract a minimum of two types of response:
1. “you don’t know what you’re talking about, if your skills were as good as mine you could follow a flea across a glacier”
2. “tracking is too slow/doesn’t work/is overrated”
Well, quite.
Both views have some validity, and that’s the point of this post.
Tracking, within the context of SAR/non-combat scenarios, is often represented by evangelists who want to present tracking as a panacea to locating any human OR by those who have sworn off it having tried the techniques (sold to them on a course) on a live operation and found that it just slows everything down and eats up resources. Each side will defend their own hilltop to the last man – neither attitude being actually that helpful to achieving the end goal.
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Looking for Jim
Let’s consider Jim. Jim wasn’t actually called Jim, wasn’t necessarily a him and didn’t necessarily have this motivation – but Jim is roughly based on a real person and a real job.
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Jim knows this forest well and runs here regularly. He likes to drive into the forest, park at one of the secluded public car parks and head off into the woods for a 5-10km run along the paths and forest roads.
It’s 06:44 and he has just locked the car and has set off on the trail leading to the lake. It’s a last-minute decision but it’s a trail he knows well.
At 08:44 Jim’s wife is wondering what time he will be back. At 11:30 she is really starting to get worried and at 12:37 she tentatively rings 999 and asks for the Police.
By 14:00 a police officer has contacted her to see if Jim has made contact yet. By 15:00 a PolSA (Police Search Advisor) has started to co-ordinate the early response to this incident, and by 17:00 a police officer in a vehicle has discovered Jim’s car in the secluded car park. It’s sat safely amongst the slamming of car doors and shouts of dog walkers, families with kids on bikes and mountain bikers returning or leaving their vehicles at the beginning or end of their forest adventures.
At 17:32 a message is sent through SARCALL to the local volunteer search and rescue team and the incident moves to the next level of response.
******
It’s a fairly standard missing person callout – someone without any previous indications of despondency, medical distress or other factor goes out into a relatively remote area for a short activity and just doesn’t return to their vehicle, and a steady but measured response unfurls from the emergency services – allowing for various scenarios but also not assuming immediately that Jim is dying in a ditch, and it’s most likely to be a miscommunication between Jim and his wife, and Jim is happily doing something blissfully unaware of the multi-agency search developing in the forest.
The volunteer Search and Rescue (volSAR) team will follow their own protocol for calling the team members together, establishing a search control/staging area and gathering other assets – dogs, helicopters, even drones. A Search Manager will speak with the PolSA, Jim‘s wife and possibly anyone else involved in the response thus far. This will lead the Search Manager to come up with a variety of scenarios in the following categories:
- Jim is in the area, but stationary and possibly in medical distress (or worse)
- Jim is in the area but mobile (either in a good cognitive state or otherwise)
- Jim is somewhere completely different (Rest of World)
Search Managers may be good but they are not omniscient so they must focus on the first two categories – Jim is somewhere out there in an area they can search with the resources they have now, and the resources they are likely to have in the future.
So they work out a search area, based on a combination of barriers to travel, previous search incident data for profiles similar to Jim, his own patterns of behaviour and fitness and what can be accomplished in the next few hours and days. They have a Last Known Point (LKP) – Jim‘s car, as he HAD to be there in order to park it and run off somewhere. He did this unseen by anyone else (as far as the Search Manager can know) but it gives them an Initial Planning Point (IPP) to set a radius around and begin the process of planning search areas, calculating probability and the other wizardry and dark arts of Search Theory.
The next steps are a combination of good personal skills exercised by both SAR team members on the ground and their party leaders and data gathering/handling. Search parties are deployed to an area or areas with a brief of what Search Control expects them to do – it might be a ‘hasty’ (fast search along trails and tracks to ensure that the misper isn’t lying in plain sight) or an area search of a section of woodland or open ground marked out on the map. They perform their search brief, return to control and pass on the information they gathered. This feeds back into the search plan and a new tasking might be generated.
Rinse, and repeat. Until either Jim is found or a decision is made to stop searching for Jim.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”8781″ img_size=”300×300″ alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”8973″ img_size=”300×300″ add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”8972″ img_size=”300×300″ add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Deploying the trackers
The above is probably familiar to anyone involved in misper SAR around the world. A person leaves their car in a busy parking area, heads off into increasingly ‘wild’ terrain and doesn’t return. They had to leave SOME sign of their passage surely, so couldn’t trained trackers be deployed to go out, find those signs of passage and link them together into SOME kind of narrative?
When it comes to looking for humans and the physical signs they leave behind on the ground (training humans to search by scent has been largely unsuccessful and unpleasant for all involved) there are two things a tracker will hope to find:
- Prints (foot or occasionally hand, often referred to as a subject-print) – including partial prints, vague smears on muddy banks and impressions left in soft surfaces
- Physical sign – everything from vegetation bent at unnatural angles and broken off in unusual ways, foliage turned over the wrong way by a trailing foot or hand and even broken cobwebs and a thousand other clues
Finding signs of some human passage through an area isn’t that hard – in a few hours you can train somebody to look for the obvious signs of a track in most terrain. It’s the noise-to-signal ratio that matters – which of these dozen prints or physical signs belong to your misper and which are just the dogwalkers and hikers?
In the above scenario any SAR tracker deployed as part of the search would either hope to find a print or series of prints that they could, with good certainty, assign to Jim and use for tracking further down the trail.
In an ideal world they would be able to find out exactly what brand, model and size of running shoe Jim wore that day, if they had any unique wear patterns and even what clothing he was wearing, which snacks/gels he carried and anything else he might discard by the trailside. They might even be able to get a calibrated photograph of a print from somewhere at Jim‘s home.
It isn’t an ideal world though – and Jim‘s wife doesn’t know what shoes he wore other than “the blue ones”. He’s a size 11, but sometimes 10. He probably took a water bottle but maybe not. She can’t find his expensive GPS watch she bought for him last Christmas though… And so it goes. Information dribbles in over time and analysis is made as to how accurate or useful it is.
On the ground
The gravel area around the car has been heavily trod since Jim was declared missing. Several members of the public parked close by and walked either side of the car, the police poked around the vehicle when they first found it and again when they forced entry to see if there was any clue inside to Jim‘s whereabouts. The volSAR team members had a good poke around too. Any hope of discovering a sterile print is probably lost – but what about further out?
As the laid surface of the car park ends it turns back to mud and soil and there is a chance of finding a print at the start of the various trails that radius out from the parking area. There are plenty of partial prints – from the public, police and volSAR. They are layered down into the damp soil and the most recent start to obscure the previous ones. There is a bottleneck at the start of most trails and the prints cluster together. It takes time and careful examination to find a few candidates that match the vague criteria for a Jim-print: running shoe, roughly UK size 10-11 and laid roughly twelve hours previously. With several possible trails and a limited number of trackers they must make a decision about where to move to next.
Meanwhile the search parties move along the trails, sweep through open areas at a regular spacing and gradually reduce the Probability of Area (POA, the likelihood that Jim is in that bit of woodland or open ground) for their tasked areas. They trample and crush, make new trails through vegetation and turn untouched wilderness into a footpath – but move far ahead and faster than the tracker teams.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”8974″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Limited Resources
The enemy for Search Managers is not nature herself or the elements – it’s depletion of limited resources:
Time and Daylight
Jim could be lying somewhere in a poor medical condition and getting worse by the second. Eventually he will reach a point where his recovery is unlikely and then expire. All searches run the possibility of becoming a recovery rather than a rescue if too much time passes before the search subject is located. A slow and methodical search would probably find that misper EVENTUALLY, but the whole point of SAR is to try and locate that person and help them.
The sun is also setting over in the west and it’s not unusual for volSAR to not be called on until the end of the day – to allow enough time for the misper to be located by the initial response, or just wander home under their own steam. As soon as darkness falls the whole job has become harder – reducing the effectiveness of the searchers and potentially compromising their safety.
Personnel Availability
Voluntary SAR teams all suffer the issue of availability of their team members. You don’t join unless you are able to help and attend callouts, but the 24/7 nature of volSAR means that not everybody will be able to attend every callout. Work, family, health and even finances can keep a team member away for part or all of a search and a volSAR team that boasts 50 members might be only able to field 15-25 at one time. Those team members on the ground also have a limited time they can search for – whether due to fatigue/operational effectiveness or just the demands of their ‘real’ lives. Eventually every volSAR team member will need to return home and a Search Manager cannot guarantee how long they will have that team member for. A good Search Manager will start to stack up potential reinforcement and replacements from neighbouring teams as soon as it looks like a search will run for that long.
Skills
Specialist search teams are a boon for any Search Manager, but use of them can pull resources away from other parts of the operation. The moment the search moves to near-water (T6 or T7 terrain) then a decision needs to be made about whether that area is left unsearched or to redploy part of the search teams for water search – something that cannot be done without several team members plus specialist equipment and PPE.
Dogs are another exhaustable resource – they can only work for so long, and although they can cover a large acreage quickly they can still only ‘search’ part of the area at once.
So with the above resources dwindling, does a dedicated tracking cell within a volSAR team actually work? Where and when would they deploy – prior to the hasty teams and when the minimal amount of damage had been done to what trail remains? Are trackers a specialist search asset to be deployed from the SAR toolkit like Swiftwater Rescue Technicians and dogs?
You’re burning daylight and with a limited number of searchers available for the next few hours is it appropriate to separate out a few tracking-trained team members to faff around on the fringes with elastic bands and sticks?[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”8975″ img_size=”medium” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”8976″ img_size=”medium” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
The cohesive approach
Although we teach tracking as a distinct skill from search techniques as part of the EST Framework courses I do not think the two can be completely separated. By the very nature of the skills required a good searcher can be a good tracker, and vice versa. The skills of Land-SAR search (searching the cube, staying in formation, personal safety) are all essential skills for a SAR-tracker, but an understanding of the importance of certain patterns (or indeed, breaks in those patterns) can highlight certain things to a tracking-trained searcher.
When a tracker is either looking for a specific print or any relevant sign of passage then she or he can pick them out from the background scenery and analyse them – if they are also searching then they can do that in-context and feedback information to their Party Leader of Search Control.
Basic tracking skills and an understanding of both the benefits and limitations of those skills within a SAR context should be seen as an essential skill for any volSAR ground team member (and indeed, understood by Search Managers and Search Coordinators).
Any sign of Jim?
What if every team member on the ground in this search had been given some basic training in tracking (e.g. how to extrapolate an entire print from several partial prints, or to spot the signs of passage by an adult human through dense vegetation etc) and had been deployed by a Search Manager who also understood this?
What if those initial hasty parties had been on the lookout not only for an adult male runner somewhere within their search radius, but also slowing down to check likely track-traps such as the edges of puddles or choke points between trees? Or if they had performed their first search around the edges of the car park, looking for candidates for a Jim-print?
This is how it SHOULD be done, but rarely is. Tracking is often seen as a separate skill or occasionally an afterthought when previous efforts are proving fruitless – but it should be part of the mindset of any volSAR deployment where the misper could possibly leave sign of their passage. Too much emphasis is often put on looking for the body of the misper, not a 20% partial print that could become the next LKP and shift the whole search in a positive direction.
How to deploy tracking in a SAR operation
This is part of the guidance that we give to candidates on the Level 3 Search Operations Management Course but is relevant for anyone involved in planning search operations and deployment of SAR assets for missing person search:
- Tracking awareness should be seen as a vital skill for all trained searchers deployed on the ground and training should reflect this, challenging team members and preventing skill-fade whilst promoting personal skill development.
- Search teams should be equipped and prepared for tracking re-deployment in the field.
- Acquiring information for tracking-trained search teams should be a vital part of witness and family interview techniques and efforts made to isolate footwear type and shape – social media photos, prints at home and so on.
- Tasking of search parties should reflect the potential usefulness of tracking, and time allowed for an initial search around the IPP for potential print candidates.
- Be ready to re-deploy search teams to another area/track if they discover a potential trail on the ground – this highlights the need for Search Managers to have a good awareness of the limitations of tracking and the relative importance of the information being fed back in to Search Control.
For most applications tracking should be seen as a vital SAR skill, not a specialism and subset of strange folk with feathers sticking out of their gear and castration rings on a trekking pole. Of course training contact time is limited for volSAR teams, but once those skills have been gained they can be maintained fairly easily.
SAR Tracking isn’t THAT hard
Unlike some of my clients, nobody is going to be shooting at you whilst you are tracking within a SAR context. Your search subject is unlikely to be actively trying obscure their tracks or slow pursuers down with traps and IEDs, and they aren’t a small and fast mammal scurrying across a forest floor without even turning over a dead leaf.
Humans (well, ones not trying to avoid capture) are pretty lazy and bumbling. We step into soft mud, scrape our feet across mossy logs and boulders and trample over leaves and twigs crushing them into the floor under our bulk. We wade through long grass and vegetation turning the leaves and blades of grass over to flag our passage and even discard plastic and paper objects from our pockets as we walk.
It’s why our Level 1 Tracking Technician course is run over only 3 days, and that also includes crossover with navigation skills and interoperability with other organisations and a final exercise – tracking shouldn’t be seen as a mysterious and ethereal skill, but nor should it be dismissed out of hand because your deployment plan doesn’t allow for it.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
TL;DR
Tracking is good and useful within a misper SAR context in the UK, but is often misrepresented by poor deployment and inflexibility of existing deployment procedures. There is also a lack of understanding by Search Managers who see it as an ineffective delay in the search operation and don’t ask pertinent questions when speaking to informants and witnesses. Tracking-awareness should be a vital part of any SAR search party members and be an intrinsic part of the training programme.
Tracking also has many limitations, and more so in the densely-populated UK where volSAR teams have to try and identify a potential subject-print early on in the search rather than hoping to the find the ‘sign of passage’ in the wilderness and following the resultant trail.
It’s also not that hard, and with a bit of training most competent SAR party members can become effective trackers.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
- Published in All Blog Posts, Articles, Bushcraft General, Emergency and Safety, EST Framework, Mountain, SAR, Skills, Tracking
The mystery of the Cwm Tryfan ice axe
The Mystery of the Cwm Tryfan Ice Axe
We found something long-forgotten on the slopes of Tryfan…
So, New Year’s Day 2018… chasing the last of that patch of snowy weather we decided to welcome in the new year with a gentle scramble to the summit of Tryfan (917m) via the Heather Terrace and then the South Ridge. This is a familiar route and we started late, quickly gaining height and feeling the force of the first storm of January.
Rather than Three Men in a Boat we were three men and an ecologist (who is also a girl called Rhian). We didn’t have a dog called Montmorency but we did make do with a cocker spaniel called Darcy.
The trip to the summit and back was uneventful (apart from my stirring rendition of Auld Lang Syne on the South summit), but as we descended the path out of Cwm Tryfan alongside the stream leading to Gwern Gof Uchaf something strange occurred…
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The Discovery
The exact moment of discovery wasn’t quite captured on camera (although it was faithfully recreated for the GoPro in the video below), but it went something like this:
Tom, also known as Dr. Tom (mostly because he claims to be a doctor, but we rarely see evidence of it) ventured a short distance from the well-worn path to relieve himself in the heather. As the rest of the group reached his general location he finished and strode back up to the track. About a metre before reaching the track he spotted something sticking out of the heather and bilberry:
It turned out to be a Grivel ice axe, showing some considerable signs of weathering. It was buried, shaft downwards, in the vegetation and there is nothing to suggest that it had been placed there recently.
So, had Tom just discovered a vintage axe in the vegetation right next to a fairly busy Snowdonia footpath?
After a bit of examination on site Tom shoved it in his pack and we continued our descent – hastened onwards by the promise of hot chocolate at the Siabod Cafe.
Later that evening we examined the axe (aided by beer). It is definitely a Grivel axe, and the wooden shaft showed some significant aging and was consistent with a few decades in the elements (albeit protected by a screen of mountain vegetation). Some very gentle research (aka asking Alex Roddie) suggests that it’s a 1960s model but modified for a slightly dropped pick to suit the changing style of winter climbing in the last half of the 20th century. The surface corrosion wasn’t total so I don’t THINK it can have been left out there longer than a couple of decades, but my knowledge of the corrosion rate of mountaineering gear alloys is sadly lacking.
Tom is claiming stewardship of the axe – as he found it, and he is now armed with a vintage ice axe so probably shouldn’t be argued with…
So if you’re reading this and have any information on either this particular axe (which hundreds of thousands of mountaineers have walked within inches of and not noticed) or just the model or anything else we will happily pass it on to Tom. Please get in touch through the comments below or via email.
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Location
I was too distracted by the thought of warm sugar and milk served by a grumpy landscape photographer to remember to grab an accurate grid reference, but it was approximately SH 669 595 (although I am happy to be corrected on that).
This is the general area – not far above the fenceline that is crossed near Tryfan Bach:
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Dramatic re-enactment of the discovery of the axe
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Gallery
- Published in All Blog Posts, Articles, Behind The Scenes, Personal, Skills
Outdoor Fashion Shoots in Snowdonia
Outdoor Fashion Shoot in Snowdonia
Location Scouting and Location Safety in the mountains of North Wales
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]It seems like 2017 was the summer of location work for Original Outdoors. We have been putting our experience of working in the world of outdoor adventure in North Wales to use as consultants and location scouts for several years, but this was a busy summer for us.We were contacted by Claudia from German production company Natural Born Explorers for a project they were working on for a European outdoor clothing and equipment retailer. They had already chosen Snowdonia as a general area for their shoot but wanted some help finding locations, gaining permissions and just the logistics of shooting in a different country. After several Skype conversations and emails we narrowed it down to some key areas in the mountains and forests of Northern Snowdonia.
Then it was down to the usual pre-shoot planning – working with landowners to gain permissions for commercial photography on their land, timelines to make sure we had enough time on location to get what the client needed and be in the right place for the ‘golden hour’ at sunset. We also needed to keep an eye on the weather and make sure that the entire crew were equipped for several days in the mountains.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”7885″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”7900″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”7890″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Any plan that relies on the weather behaving itself or natural light falling in a certain way cannot be too rigid, especially in the mountains. In a few hours we can go from 5 metre visibility, to blue skies then back to heavy cloud and rain. If you only have a few days to get the shots required then you need to be flexible and respond to the challenges thrown up. So that’s what we did – we bounced back and forth between locations, chasing the best of the light and hiding from the weather when it came in and making the most of the sun when it showed itself.
The photographer, Lars Schneider, and the rest of the Natural Born Explorers team all showed that they were not only comfortable in the mountains but they were competent outdoorspeople. The locations chosen were not just footpaths and flat ground easily accessible from the roadside, they included rocky scrambles and ridges requiring a walk-in of 2hrs or more.
The Original Outdoors team was also there as a safety backup in case anything went wrong (or to spot the calamity before it occurred) but the only medical or rescue assistance we had to give was to a member of the public who had suffered a lower-leg injury after a rockfall nearby. They literally hobbled down to the middle of our group, where I offered and delivered some first aid and called in mountain rescue to meet them. Other than that the safety kit stayed in the bags and we spent the days eating biscuits and occasionally looking out for incoming clouds![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”7908″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”7911″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”7902″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Snowdonia and North Wales as a whole is a smart choice for outdoor adventure brands looking for locations to promote their clothing and equipment. 30 minutes drive from a central point like Betws y Coed could take you to a raging river, rocky mountain top or deep and mossy forest. The diversity of locations, good access and landscapes that look a lot wilder than they might actually be works well for international brands too. If you frame a shot just right, or make sure the background is neutral then that rocky ledge or forest trail could be in Oregon, Patagonia or New Zealand. We have a few days doing similar work lined up for 2018 already, and I suspect that we will be seeing more in the next few months.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”7887″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”7907″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”7910″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_media_grid element_width=”3″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1513168937192-fc2cda18-8608-8″ include=”7911,7910,7909,7908,7906,7905,7904,7903,7902,7901,7900,7899,7897,7896,7895,7894,7893,7892,7891,7890,7888,7885,7884,7886″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
- Published in All Blog Posts, Behind The Scenes, Company News, Mountain, Mountain General, Skills
How to put together a first aid kit for the outdoors
How to put together a first aid kit outdoors
Wilderness personal medical kits
How do you put a first aid kit together for the outdoors? Or a bushcraft first aid kit? Are first aid kits for mountain biking different to ones for kayaking?
Carrying a first aid kit in your rucksack or in your personal kit is pretty difficult to argue against. The problem is – how much do you carry, and what exactly do you carry? Once you start going down the road of visualising every possible emergency medical scenario and wanting to ‘be prepared’ for it. Before long you end up carrying several kilograms of equipment that in all likelihood you will never use – but you somehow feel that you need to.
The reality is actually a lot simpler. There are two important points to remember for outdoor emergency first aid:
- Training is the absolute most important thing you can put your time and money into. Knowledge weighs nothing and the most important lifesaving techniques require good personal skills but little to no equipment.
- If you are on your own in the middle of nowhere then the options open to you self-treatment are actually very limited.
With that mildly-sobering thought in mind – how do you put together a first aid kit for the outdoors?
The answer is dependent on several factors:
- The environment you are travelling too/through and specific hazards it may contain
- The length of trip
- Distance/time to evacuation and medical care in case of emergency
- The number of people (and animals) in the party
- The existing medical conditions of those in the party
- The training and skill level of those in the party
- The activities you are performing
- Your carrying capacity (rucksack, canoe, vehicle, porters etc)
For example – the medical kit for a 5-week sailing voyage to the Lofoten islands would be different to that of a solo lightweight backpacker on a 3-day summer trip in the Cairngorms. For the former a Bag Valve Mask (BVM) and full suture kit would be appropriate but would a little ridiculous for the solo hiker.
I have used various medical kits in my work over the years. In my time in a Mountain Rescue team I carried a small personal first aid kit that contained a minimal number of items and drugs – but it was designed to be pooled with the other kits carried by fellow rescuers to form a larger and more comprehensive kit. I supplemented this with items purchased myself such as Tuffcut shears and nitrile gloves. When working as a remote-area medic as support on long-distance races and outdoor challenges I was either carrying a very comprehensive kit issued by the company employing me, or I was given a budget to supply my own equipment at my own specification. I have also put together my own for various trips, plus also kits for Original Outdoors staff and freelance contractors to use when working with our own clients. Each case has been slightly different…
The easy answer to “what’s the best outdoor first aid kit?” is – they all are. The real skill is choosing or building one that suits where you are going, what you are doing and what you’re doing when you get there. To that end I’ve put together a video on the decision-making process that I go through for any trip or scenario, and the items I carry in one of my personal kits:
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First Aid Kit Contents
The list below is based on the items shown in the video, with links to buy them directly from Amazon. Some of the brands or sizes are slightly different or only a few representations of what I carry. The items are not listed in order of importance, just to roughly match the order from the video.
I’ve also put a link to the Lifesystems first aid kit which is a very similar off-the-shelf kit that I can personally recommend – even if it’s used as a base to add other items to.
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Nitrile Gloves
Get them in any colour other than red or black – you need to be able to see if blood suddenly appears on them when giving a primary or secondary survey as it will steer you towards a major bleed you may have missed.
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Resus Face Shield
An item of personal safety that should be somewhere easy to reach but can also make your CPR technique more effective.
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Anti Bacterial Wipes
Great for cleaning up after dealing with a minor wound and preventing your kit contaminating everything it touches.
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Alcohol Hand Gel
Be aware that carrying alcohol in your first aid kit may cause issues when travelling to countries where alcohol is banned or severely restricted
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Normasol Sachets
Sterile topical solution in sachets for careful application over wider areas.
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Sterile Eye Wash Pods
Sterile topical solution in pods for washing foreign bodies from eyes.
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Fabric Adhesive Dressing Strip
Adhesive dressing strip on a roll for making custom plasters/band-aids for tricky areas like between fingers.
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SteriStrips
Temporary adhesive suture strips for wound closure.
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Blister Plasters
Being able to treat or manage a blister can make the difference between carrying on or turning around to go home
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Non-Adherent Dressings
General use dressings without any adhesive.
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Triangular Bandage
I have yet to use one of these as a sling, but they are quite useful for holding other dressings on or wrapping over wide areas.
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Wound dressings (Various sizes)
Absorbent wound dressings in various sizes
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Travel Mirror
Great for reaching places that the eyeball can’t!
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Glucose Gel
Glucose gel for hypoglycemic emergencies.
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Round-Tip Scissors
Small scissors with rounded ends for safety
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TuffCut Shears
Tough shears for emergency clothing removal
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Tweezers
For removal of small foreign bodies
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Microlance Needles
Tiny sterile needles for making small holes to drain blisters etc
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Disposable Thermometer
Of limited use in a first aid environment but helpful for long-term monitoring of a patient
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Tick Removal Card
For safe removal of ticks
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CAT Tourniquet
Not for general carry and must be trained in use
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SAM Splint
Useful but heavy and other items can be improvised to replace it.
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Lifesystems Mountain Leader First Aid Kit
A comprehensive and well-designed outdoor first aid kit.
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- Published in All Blog Posts, Articles, Bushcraft General, Emergency and Safety, First Aid, Mountain General, Personal, Skills, Tools and Equipment, Videos
The role of Mountain Rescue
The role of Mountain Rescue?
What job should UK mountain rescue teams be doing?
Below is a quote from the wife of a UK Mountain Rescue team member, posted on the Facebook page of a regional newspaper on a story about Police pay:
[pullquote style=”left” quote=”dark”]They farm more and more of the “unpleasant” work out to organisations such as mountain rescue teams who have to pick up the dead bodies from farm and road accidents. If they are not happy, leave and become self employed and find out how hard the real world is.[/pullquote]It’s an interesting one. Should MR teams be retrieving bodies from farm accidents? Are police forces ‘farming out’ work to unpaid civilian volunteer teams?
The history of UK mountain rescue teams is usually rooted in a community response to incidents happening in their area. The first teams came about following the rise in popularity of mountaineering without a system of rescue and medical care being in place that could deal with the inevitable accidents. Mountaineering clubs gradually improved the skills and equipment they held through the early 20th Century, formalising first with the First Aid Committee of Mountaineering Clubs, which later became the Mountain Rescue Committee. The efforts of groups of mountaineers and clubs, often working alongside the RAF Mountain Rescue teams set up to deal with the rescue and recovery of downed aircrew, became the MR teams that are busy in the hills and mountains of the UK still. The underlying principle that linked them all is that they are “saving lives in wild and remote places” – the mission statement of Mountain Rescue England and Wales (although now missing from their website).
The role many of the teams under the Mountain Rescue England and Wales banner today is varied. The busiest teams in the U.K., such as Llanberis MRT work almost solely on callouts involving lost, missing or injured walkers, climbers and other mountain-goers. Occasionally they deal with other incidents in their are where their technical expertise is crucial in accessing those areas. The gradual rise in callouts over the last decade have been attributed to many things, from the increased popularity and success of tourism promotion or the new possibilities for finding hiking friends and groups that social media has allowed. Mobile phones, cheaper outdoor equipment or just more people wanting to experience the mountains for themselves have also been blamed. Whatever the reason, the busiest teams are generally getting busier.
The quieter teams tend to be away from the popular mountain and outdoor recreation areas. They may have hundreds or thousands of square miles of wild and remote terrain in their ‘patch’, but the operational tempo is a lot lower, numbering in single figures for some teams. However these teams still work to a professional standard, with the same equipment and the same unpaid volunteers trained to a level unmatched anywhere by a salaried job in the U.K.
UK rescue teams have become involved in high and low-profile incidents away from the mountains for many years now. Missing person searches in rural and urban areas, flooding and severe weather events, murder inquiries, technical rope and water rescues, crashed aircraft and a lot more besides that isn’t always public knowledge. A quick read through the newsfeed of Mountain Rescue England and Wales shows a number of non-mountain incidents peppered amongst the usual lost or injured walkers and climbers. Like the fire service, UK mountain rescue has evolved into a set of teams that perform a role the other emergency services cannot. Where this started is difficult to unpick though – how and why did mountain rescue drift away from the mountains and onto the streets and fields?
I think for most teams they could see something happening in their community, and they knew they had the skills and personnel to help. It may be a missing child or vulnerable person, or somebody in a situation that could be resolved using techniques honed in the wilderness. In the first instances at least. For some teams (and I must stress the ‘some’) the potential diversity in their role was a way of improving their awareness and getting some publicity for their relatively quiet teams. It’s all a question of cash…
Like all modern charities each mountain rescue teams have to run like a business, even if everybody involved is an unpaid volunteer giving dozens of hours each month (or week!). Their customer is the general public, whom they rescue without charge and (normally) without criticism. The customer pays for this service through fundraising and donations. Not everybody pays, but those who do drop a pound coin into the collection tin or bequeath hundreds of thousands of pounds to rescue teams essentially fund their operations. A small amount is now given to teams by various government funds, but the vast majority of rescue teams in England and Wales does comes from the general public. The problem is – who are you giving money to? Is it the team that you see fundraising in the local town centre but have otherwise never heard of, or the one you saw on the evening news the night before as the reports came in of a daring rescue of a family in terrible weather? I bet it’s the latter. If you live somewhere decidedly flat and travel to climb, hike or otherwise play in the mountains then you may donate to a team that covers the are you visit more often, but generally speaking the teams that receive the most donations are the ones with the highest profiles.
Some teams are quite literally millionaires, or very close. The operational costs of a rescue team can be from £50,000 to over £100,000 depending on what that team needs and what they buy for team members, and that is usually without the hidden costs that are absorbed by team members and their families. Fuel, personal equipment, lost work time and so on. All teams need those donations and you can donate to a more central fund, but this is a relatively new concept still and you can still see the differences in the funds each team raises on the Charity Comission website. It must be said however that the busiest team is not necessarily the richest – Llanberis Mountain Rescue team and Ogwen Valley Mountain Rescue Organisation share a border and have a similar number of incidents when averaged out over a number of years – but OVMRO are decidedly better off than LMRT. So is it public profile or incident frequency that leads to more donations? Or is the type of incidents responded to that tips the balance?
And does it matter? No. A team isn’t raising money to buy a yacht or to give back to shareholders – a team raises money to buy equipment, train personnel, maintain buildings and do something that nobody else can do.
I have some (limited, and gradually becoming less relevant) experience of this. I was a team member, then Training Officer then Deputy Team Leader of a North Wales Mountain Rescue team, and briefly Operations Officer for the regional association. During the time I was there the team evolved from mainly performing missing person searches in rural and semi-rural areas with the occasional rescue or recovery of a hiker, climber or other person in the mountains. The team actually covered the biggest area of any team in England and Wales, and also responded to requests for assistance from police forces in neighbouring English counties. A quick calculation gives me an area of approximately 8,000km² at the time I joined – later shrunk by the formation of lowland SAR teams in those counties. During my time there the team developed and improved it’s technical rope and water rescue skills and got involved in some ‘interesting’ incidents as a result – flooding and water incidents, rope rescues in quarries and steep slopes on the edge of town centres, major missing person searches that dominated the headlines for months and sever weather incidents like heavy snow. For a couple of evenings one winter the North Wales Mountain Rescue teams were effectively the only ambulance response available for most areas – the local ambulance trust just didn’t have vehicles that could respond. Another evening I sat for hours (snowed in) in the farmhouse, an Airwave radio set in one hand, a couple of phones in another and a laptop on my knee and coordinated the response of several teams in North Wales as they were rescuing stranded motorists from cars on lonely mountain passes, evacuating residents from remote houses and generally being selfless and saving lives. Other colleagues spent days in the North Wales Police control room acting as a point of contact and giving expert advice to all other agencies and performing a role nobody else there could do.
And that’s the answer – Mountain Rescue teams (and their Lowland equivalents) do work that the other emergency services just cannot. If every MRT in the UK decided to close up tomorrow there would be hole in the provision of care, rescue and emergency response that the other services cannot fill. By proving time and again they cannot be matched and by doing what they do well, with professionalism and with virtually no cost to the taxpayer they are bound to be called on to work away from the mountains – and they will respond because that’s what they do, and it helps them continue to do it. You cannot blame emergency services for calling on a resource that is professional, trustworthy, versatile and, crucially, free to fill in the gaps of what they can do. You cannot also blame teams for capitalising on the increased and diverse range of callouts to raise their profile and get more donations. It’s a symbiotic relationship that both parties created – if mountain rescue teams hadn’t continually offered their services and proven that they could do what others could not then they wouldn’t be called to do those things now.
To close, to be critical of frontline emergency services officers because they have expressed concerns over the way they are being used is missing every point. Their disquiet with the role they perform has little to do with the role that UK Mountain Rescue teams have come to perform. Responding to events away from the traditional theatre of mountains, crags and moorland IS the modern face of Mountain Rescue in the UK, it just varies from team to team. To tell them to “leave and become self employed and find out how hard the real world is” ignores the fact that nobody is forcing MRT members to be part of their team – just as nobody forces you to run your own business.
Mountain Rescue teams do something incredible, and so do police officers. If you attack either because of your (voluntary situation), you’re an idiot.
- Published in All Blog Posts, Articles, Bushcraft General, Mountain General
Visiting Fortis Clothing
Visiting Fortis Clothing
Last month I was down in Cornwall and Devon doing some promotional work and foraging around on the beaches of the south coast – and I couldn’t resist diverting to Axminster on the way home to drop in on Fortis Clothing, a family-owned and British-made outdoor clothing and equipment brand. I’ve used their kit (under their old brand, Country Covers) for a couple of years and I kept promising to come and visit their home base. On the phone the directions couldn’t be clearer – “we’re almost across the road from River Cottage HQ and there is huge carved bear outside the gate”.
Right. Can’t miss it then…
I met Oliver Massy-Birch who gave up some of his time to go through the range, show us around their factory and go into detail about the history of the company, the Fortis brand and who their customers are.
I went there just to visit and make a couple of short films, but in the end I couldn’t resist and parted with cash for one of their waterproof S.A.S. smocks – look out for the review in the coming weeks. Most people who know me know that the last thing I need is more kit, but the Fortis quality and design standards impressed me, especially after speaking to their designer and realising the research and development behind this gear. Seeing the showroom and factory in their old family sheep barn reminded me a lot of our own roots in a family business, and in a few minutes I could meet everybody involved in the process of designing, building and marketing this equipment which is now used around the globe.
You can only buy their kit through their website, at their showroom and at one of the many country shows and fairs they visit throughout the year. It’s well worth seeking them out to decide for yourself if their kit is up to scratch – but based on a few weeks of use of this new smock in the woods and on the mountains I think you’ll be satisfied.
- Published in All Blog Posts, Articles, Bushcraft General, Foraging, Mountain General, Outdoor Gear News and Reviews, Videos
VIDEO: Keela – new bushcraft clothing from a British brand
VIDEO: Keela – new bushcraft clothing range from a British brand
We caught up with Tony from Keela to talk about their new bushcraft and country range of outdoor clothing
I have used Keela clothing both in my time in a mountain rescue team and more recently we use it for our staff on our bushcraft courses, and advise our consultancy clients on choosing it for their PPE. We have also seen it on the backs of members of the armed forces, emergency services and outdoor professionals when we are working alongside them on our courses and events – this kit works, and we are looking forward to trying out their new heritage and bushcraft range.
- Published in All Blog Posts, Bushcraft General, Outdoor Gear News and Reviews, Videos
VIDEO: Paramo and the new Alta III Waterproof Jacket
VIDEO: Paramo and the new Alta III Waterproof Jacket
Richard managed to grab a short interview with Helen Howard from Paramo Ltd at the Outdoor Trade Show 2015 to ask her about the Paramo Directional Clothing System, how Paramo works and the new Paramo Alta III jacket and how to care for Paramo garments.
We have used Paramo waterproofs and other items for many years now in all conditions and we trust them to keep us warm and dry whatever we need to do – we were keen to speak to Paramo about their new jacket the Alta III as it looks like just what we need for our next few adventures, and Helen was kind enough to give us a technical demo.
The 10th anniversary of the Outdoor Trade Show (OTS 2015) saw manufacturers, distributors and importers of the biggest outdoor brands in the UK come together to showcase their new and existing product lines to the outdoor trade.
- Published in All Blog Posts, Articles, Bushcraft General, Mountain General, Outdoor Gear News and Reviews, Videos
How to join a mountain rescue team
How to join a Mountain Rescue team…
Whilst doing that awful but necessary thing of trawling through a long list of social media feeds earlier this week I came across this blog post from the Ordnance Survey – ‘Become a Search and Rescue Volunteer’.
At first glance, it seems to be all OK – references to a wide range of SAR volunteering opportunities and agencies, with references to the experiences and training policies of those agencies. All good.
Apart from the bits which are either made up, poorly researched (hopefully the author was presented with duff info) or just complete cobblers…
I spent the best part of a decade in a Mountain Rescue team in North Wales. I have blogged about it previously and occasionally we make reference to a certain skill or anecdote to demonstrate a point when teaching on a course. During my time in MR, I became the Training Officer and eventually a Deputy Team Leader so oversaw the recruitment procedures of both the team I was a member of, and other teams, for a number of years. I want to make clear here that my contribution to UK Mountain Rescue team world was insignificant – there are hundreds out there who have done a quarter-century or more volunteering for MRTs around the country. I did have a beard though…
As we occasionally get asked about joining an MRT by clients and others we work with, I think that my experience (and the experiences of our staff) would be valuable to those of you who are looking to join a mountain rescue team in the UK. I don’t claim that the guide below is definitive, but hopefully I have captured all of the relevant points. This guide is based on my experiences in an Mountain Rescue England and Wales team but most of the points should be relevant to Lowland SAR and other volunteer SAR teams.
1. Ask the team
This might seem obvious, but go and speak to your local team. If you don’t have a local team then you might have to move… (I do know people who have moved areas to be part of a team!).
Each team is an individual charity, and member of a regional organisation (which is also a charity) which in turn is a member of a Mountain Rescue England and Wales. Currently MREW is still largely a guidance and coordination body, representing the member teams at a national level and providing some centralised funding and training opportunities and advice on legal matters. As such, each team is (mostly) a law unto itself, with a unique identity and structure. The identity of the team is often created by the history of the team and the types of callout (‘job’) it is asked to assist with. In North Wales there are 6 MRTs, and each one is culturally distinct from its neighbours. The experience one would have joining one team would vary noticeably from the experience of joining another, even though their bases may be less than 5 miles apart as the crow flies…
By seeking out the members of a team (don’t stalk them, they don’t like that) then you will have the best chance of finding out directly what the recruiting procedures for that team are, when they recruit, what their requirements are and so on. For example, the team I was a member of required a good basic outdoor skillset (navigation, basic ropework, good fitness, good personal skills) plus the ability to turn up to 75% of training sessions (roughly 45 per year) and to assist with fundraising etc. The neighbouring team required a much higher personal technical ability but less in the way of commitment of time.
The best places to speak to the team you are looking to join are through their website (look for ‘Secretary’), their social media or by looking for places the team will be publicly displaying, such as a fundraising or publicity event. The worst times are:
- During a callout (this happened to me, whilst packaging a casualty into a stretcher prior to a helicopter evacuation!)
- In the pub – often the team will retire to their local after a callout or training session to unwind. Probably not the best time to be asking searching questions…
Teams are used to being asked these questions – often you will get re-directed to a certain page of their website or asked to submit a form. Most teams only recruit once a year so it may be several months before you hear anything more about your application.
2. Look at your own skills
Now you have (hopefully) found out what is likely to be required of you then you can examine what your skills are. Most teams have a multi-stage recruitment procedure, with an interview, practical skill assessment and probationary period before you are taken on as a full trainee. You will normally get good notice of these assessments/interviews, so use the time wisely. As above, the standards required for a hill recruit will vary from team to team, but the normal desired level for the ‘perfect’ recruit is:
- The ability to navigate in all weathers to an 8-figure grid reference from another 8-figure grid reference. This is to 10m accuracy, and slightly higher than normally required for outdoor navigation. This is the level we teach on our Intermediate Navigation course.
- The ability to tie several knots – including variations on the Figure of Eight, Clove Hitch, Italian Hitch, Bowline and French and Classic Prussiks.
- Knowing how to ‘look after yourself’ in the mountains. You are the people who come to assist those who have buggered things up – you are worse than useless if you don’t know how to regulate your own body temperature through use of your kit, how to cross a steep grass slope safely and just how to cope with poor weather and still function.
- How to work under direction as part of a team.
- Have a reasonable level of fitness. You don’t have to be a mountain athlete, but you will be expected to walk uphill with a reasonably heavy rucksack (15-18kg) without stopping every five minutes. If you can get from, say, Pen y Pass car park to the summit of Snowdon and back in less than 4 hours then you are in the right area.
- How to do all of the above in the dark. At 3am. When you have to be at work at 8:30am.
It is not crucial that you have ALL of the above skills, but it is a good target to aim for. The team will normally have a training procedure to ‘fill in the gaps’, whilst also giving you the specific technical skills required. In the weeks before my initial interview I was manicly practising my navigation whilst wearing a heavy rucksack. I kept a bit of rope by the toilet and practised my knots regularly – even though I had been climbing for several years! I soon discovered that the ropework in Mountain Rescue had little in common with climbing, and much more in common with industrial rope access.
3. Look at the jobs the team gets
A common ‘mistake’ made by prospective recruits at interviews I helped to conduct was that they knew little of what our team actually did. They had a general idea of Mountain Rescue being all about helicopters and hanging off cliffs, whereas the reality for our team was lots and lots of searching fields and woodland at night. In the rain. Whilst the missing person was happily asleep elsewhere, oblivious to the drama they were causing.
You can normally get a good feel for the types of jobs the team gets from its website, social media feeds and occasionally an ‘annual report’ it may publish. The teams that actually get involved in technical rescues on big hills every weekend are relatively few – most teams deal with missing person incidents, spot-pickups from rolling moorland and even water rescues. By having a good knowledge of the team and the jobs they get you can demonstrate that you are fully aware of what you intend to volunteer for, and what the team expects of you.
4. Speak to your family and employer
This is a big one, and often overlooked. When you join a Mountain Rescue team, your family join with you. People tend to get into trouble at mealtimes, just before bedtime and when you have booked to spend the day together with your significant other. Although it may be very exciting for you, your family may soon get tired of you buggering off into the night every time your phone goes bleep. You also have to keep a rucksack packed and in the boot of the car, your phone close to hand (most teams use SMS to alert their team members, not pagers these days) and maybe limit your evening alcohol intake. Whilst your attendance is not expected 100% of the time, most teams monitor attendance at training and callouts as there is little point having an experienced, skilled and valuable team member on the books who cannot turn up. Everybody in the team is in the same situation – which is why the inability to juggle ‘team life’ with real life is often cited as the reason for somebody having to resign. It was the same for me – there came a point where I had to decide if I was going to put more and more time (already 20+hrs a week) into ‘team life’ or into the business, and the business won.
Your employer may need to be supportive of you joining MR as you will be occasionally losing lots of sleep to the search for a missing person, or add the extra mileage to a company car. Most people in Mountain Rescue are self-employed, shift-workers or retired. We even developed a term for those who were able to turn up to jobs in the middle of the day during the working week – “Silver MR”…
5. Look at your bank balance
Mountain Rescue is expensive. Again, this varies from team to team, but usually you are expected to mostly supply your own kit. You will probably be outfitted with waterproofs, fleece and other protective clothing and maybe a helmet and harness. Your boots, rucksack, headtorch etc etc are usually down to you to provide. Fuel is rarely reimbursed (teams cannot afford to normally, particularly those with large areas to cover and few donations) nor is wear-and-tear on your vehicle. I calculated that being in Mountain Rescue cost me approximately £2-3,000 per year. Unless you live within running distance of the MR base, chances are that you will need an income of a certain level in order to take part.
6. Put in the time and be prepared to wait
For most teams, there is a waiting period between recruitment and actually hitting the ‘callout list’. This might be a few weeks, it might be a few months. It normally becomes frustrating, particularly in that period between feeling like you have reached the required standard, but the team still wants more from you. This is quite a good training experience for being an operational member – the saying “hurry up and wait” could have been coined just for volunteer SAR jobs. It is normal to go through the rush and hurry of getting to an RV, only to discover that crucial information still needs to be gathered before you can be deployed…
7. Look to the future
Okay, maybe this one is more about what happens after you join. Well, there are a number of ways you can progress within the Mountain Rescue world in the U.K., as loosely structured as it is. You can become trained to a high level of technical skill in rope and water rescue, learn advanced remote-area first aid procedures, study the mathematics and statistics of missing person behaviour or just become really, really good at loading and unloading a Land Rover.
There is a lot more I could say, but the guide above reflects the experiences of both my own time in MR and that of my staff, my friends and others we have spoken to. Most agree that it was much more involved and committing than they first anticipated, and that they had to adjust their expectations as they went. They also agree that they largely enjoyed the experience, but for one reason or another there came the time for them to leave and move on.
I hope some of the above helps.
- Published in All Blog Posts, Articles, Bushcraft General, Emergency and Safety, Mountain, Mountain General, Skills
International Distress Signals
International Inland Distress Signals
In European and North American countries there are commonly recognised distress signals for use by persons in distress to communicate with the outside world:
Europe
In the mountains and remote areas of Europe a signal (a noise such as a whistle blast, or a light flash) should be repeated 6 times within a minute, then a minute pause, followed by a further 6 signals within a minute. This cycle should be repeated until rescue arrives.
A rescuer responding to this call should respond with three signals within a minute, followed by a minute’s pause.
North America
Here the rule is of ‘three’ – three flashes, three whistle blasts, three gunshots or even triangles of three bright objects. If the signal is repeatable it should be followed by a minute of no-signal, and then repeated.
Wherever you are in the world, a regular signal in an unusual place for an extended period of time should attract attention. To communicate with a helicopter or other aircraft then use arm signals – raise both together to form the letter ‘Y’ to indicate a positive, and lower one arm to form the letter ‘N’ to indicate a negative.
- Published in All Blog Posts, Articles, Bushcraft General, Emergency and Safety, Mountain, Mountain General, Skills
10 things you didn’t know about mountain rescue
10 things you didn’t know about Mountain Rescue
This blog post is mainly about volunteer Mountain Rescue teams in England and Wales, because that is the area I have direct experience of. But after talking to some international SAR team members I have had the pleasure of working with, there are some aspects that I’m sure they will recognise!
I spent the best part of a decade in a voluntary Mountain Rescue team. By the time I resigned in 2013 I was a Deputy Team Leader, and represented the team and regional organisation at national level on certain issues. This gave me the opportunity to see the way other teams did things, and to notice those areas where ‘MR’ did things differently to other emergency services, and the way that differed from the public perception.
This blog may be controversial for some, but that is not the intention. It was the sort of thing that I always wanted to share with people when I was still a team member, but couldn’t for one reason or another. It is based on my observations from my time – as such it won’t apply to every single team member, and may paint a very simplified picture. My advice is to treat what follows with a certain amount of suspicion, but bear it in mind next time you read about or see Mountain Rescue in the news…
10. You don’t get paid, but it costs you a lot to do
The first part of this may seem obvious – you don’t get paid, but you have to give up your free time and accept a little risk so you can help folk less fortunate than you. The second part – that being in Mountain Rescue is quite expensive – is less obvious. This varies from team to team, but generally you are expected to fund the majority of your personal equipment, all of the fuel/wear and tear for your car (it is very difficult to be in MR without owning a car). This is without the loss of hours at work, the loss of sleep (most weekday callouts happen after dark) and the stress it puts on family life.
A couple of years ago I worked out how much it was costing me to remain in Mountain Rescue, partly through curiosity, but also to help put across the true cost of running the team to potential donors. Including driving to training, driving to meetings and fundraising, driving to callouts (the team I was a member of covered probably the biggest acreage of any team in MREW, to drive from one end to another could take 90 minutes or more), buying and replacing equipment (you had to buy your own harness, helmet, boots, rucksack, basic clothing, head torch, compass, emergency equipment, maps etc) I quickly got to about £2,000 per year. I could have continued but it was worrying that I had made it that far!
Like all charities, Mountain Rescue has to be an equal-opportunities organisation, and no discrimination based on sex, race, gender or any other factor. This doesn’t really apply in terms of income though – you have to have some kind of disposable income to be an active member of a mountain rescue team. I have more than a few friends who have had to leave because of the financial pressures of it all, some with decades of service. This isn’t because of an unwillingness to pay something towards team member costs, it is mainly because teams do not have the funds to do it.
9. It’s like taking on a second job
Money isn’t the only way being in a Mountain rescue team requires a great commitment – you have to give up a certain amount of time too, and probably more than you may think. The team I was in required a 50% attendance at training and callouts. Other teams have different rules, but ours was close to the national average from what I could see. The team trained 4 times a month, and had roughly 70 callouts per year. A callout might be over in 15 minutes, with the missing person being found before we had moved a muscle, or may go on for days (or weeks). Depending on your responsibility within the team you also had to attend a certain number of fundraising events and meetings. When I resigned I was spending on average 5-15 hours per day on Mountain Rescue-related matters. My car always had a fully-packed rucksack and spare clothes, boots and maps in it and I had to watch my mobile phone like a hawk, ready for the SMS that would signify the next callout. People expect it to be all about hanging out of helicopters and running up mountains with stretchers (some teams do much more of that than others though, it must be said), but any organisation that has 50 or so ’employees’, a small fleet of vehicles and lots of specialised equipment requires a decent amount of admin time. This is on top of the fact the team is a charity, and many of the decisions the management of the team make have to allow for this fact. As such, if you arrive in Mountain Rescue with a particular skillset, such as accountant or mechanic then you will find yourself pressed into service in a suitable role – Treasurer or Vehicle Officer for example.
8. It isn’t one big organisation
The ‘parent’ organisation for Mountain Rescue teams in in England and Wales is, funnily enough, ‘Mountain Rescue England and Wales (MREW)’. It is a registered charity, and represents the 50+ member teams at a national level. This does not mean that it has much control over the individual teams though – MREW is not like the RNLI with a central management structure and funding. Each team is a charity within its own right, with its own operational structure and methods. The various teams work together under regional associations, and often have a neighbouring team they work closely alongside.This comes a surprise to many – they have heard of ‘the Mountain Rescue’ and expect it to be the same as ‘the Police’ or ‘the Fire Service’. The differences between teams are only really apparent to those who work in or alongside the teams, but they are quite marked. Gradually teams are starting to do certain things in the same way, but it is a process that has required some to be brought around to a new way of doing things, often with great protest. As communication between teams and other emergency services improves they have had to adopt some common working practices to make things run smoothly. Water rescue is the area that probably demonstrates this best, with teams training to the same standard as other UK agencies so they can work together on major incidents.
7. It’s all about the politics
This will vary between teams, and to a greater and lesser degree within the same team as the years progress, but petty politics make up a good deal of the energy that goes into running a Mountain Rescue team. As everybody in a team is a volunteer, with no pay scale or strict hierarchy (in terms of human relationships, not operational matters which tend to run smoothly) then there is room for bickering, arguments and differences of opinion on every subject you can think of. The charitable status of the teams matters to – every decision involving money could be subject to external review in years to come so must be done ‘properly’. I recall an argument about whether we should get three different quotes before buying washing up liquid for the kitchen at the rescue base…Meetings tend to happen in the evenings, and run on for hours. This means you bring the stresses of work and home to an already tense environment, and personalities clash where they probably wouldn’t in a paid working structure. I don’t think you can escape this in the way Mountain Rescue is currently organised, but it can make a difficult job much harder at times. Of course this doesn’t really occur at ‘team member’ level, but the effects of it do trickle down and can affect morale, operational effectiveness and team member retention.
6. Nobody knows what you do
The main message that MREW and the member teams has tried to put out there to the public is that “we’re all volunteers, we don’t get paid and we’re not funded by the government”. 99% of the public I spoke to in my time in MR assumed that we were all like retained firefighters, or fully-paid employees who sat at the bottom of the mountain with a big yellow helicopter. More alarmingly, this opinion was shared by many in the statutory emergency services. A lot of Fire and Rescue Service officers I spoke to couldn’t really understand how Mountain Rescue worked, were uneasy with the volunteer status, and unwilling to work with us in some cases as a result. I can kind of see their point though – in many worlds ‘volunteer’ is synonymous with ‘well meaning amateur’, implying that there is a professional, paid equivalent out there somewhere.One of my favourite examples of this was a ‘rescue’ on the gentle, grassy sloping side of some Welsh hillock somewhere. The ‘casualty’ (who had been rescued before by the team, and was becoming something of a nuisance) demanded that “as a taxpayer, I should be getting lifted off by a helicopter”. She became rather irate at being informed that as her injury was being ‘slightly cold’ on a Summer evening 500m from a main road she could probably manage to walk down with us – loudly protesting that she paid our wages and would speak to her AM about this.
5. The donations often don’t go to teams that need it
None of the teams (as far as I know) in England and Wales receive government funding as such. Occasionally grants are made from Police or MREW, and big corporate donations are not uncommon. All teams are charities, and none have paid employees.
Some teams are, technically speaking, millionaires though.
Let me explain – how well-known a team is is often down to the number of callouts it gets, and the types of callouts they are. In North Wales for example, one regional newspaper would be sold in an area that 5 or 6 Mountain Rescue teams will cover. The two or three busiest teams may have 10-15 callouts between them in a midsummer weekend – the quieter teams may have one, or none. Which teams will the paper maybe feature a story about? And which teams will people be more likely to know about? It’s effectively branding in reverse – you recognise the name that keeps being put in front of you, so when you come to donate to a team (by doing some sponsored trek or climb), which one are you likely to give it to?
People also donate to teams that have rescued/recovered them or one of their friends or family. As they may live many miles away from the mountains they are likely to be donating to a team based in an area that covers one of the ‘destination’ mountain ranges, like Snowdonia or the Lake District. The busiest teams attract the most donations – and they have a huge outlay to match it, so they need a greater share of the funds – but the quieter teams have to actively fundraise for their money. It may cost between £50,000 and £100,000 per year to run a team, much more if they have to replace a Land Rover (£30,000 with modifications), buy water rescue equipment (about £700 per person), buy new rope rescue gear (£2000-£5000) and so on. A busier year in terms of callouts often means a greater income for the team, and a quiet year is great for mountain safety, but could put the team into serious financial trouble as a result. I always try to encourage people to donate to a quieter team rather than just going for the one they have heard of because it featured on Countryfile…
4. Most of the callouts don’t involve mountains
Despite the name, Mountain Rescue teams in the UK tend to perform an all-round specialist Search and Rescue role. The fact they have to operate in a wide variety of environments, can perform large, detailed and organised searches efficiently and are pretty much self-sufficient in the field has made them the favourite organisation to call for many missing person cases. My first callout was in the town centre and suburbs of a Welsh coastal town, and I have searched industrial units, an abandoned hospital, car parks, housing estates, rivers, forests, mountains, fields, hedgerows, mountains, cliff faces, motorways and even a firing range. A missing person case tends to occur closer to urban and semi-urban areas, as most missing persons are not walkers and climbers but the elderly, very young, mentally or medically unwell. The other major ‘type’ of callout is the despondent, often somebody who has given notice of their intent to do harm to themselves, and then disappeared into the countryside. In the past decade Mountain Rescue teams have become a major part of response to flooding and water rescue incidents across the UK, and their are older examples of teams being used in other major emergencies.
3. Availability, not merit
Selection processes for new team members can be quite tough – maybe 25-30 potential candidates applying each year, whittled down to 6-8 trainees over a month of selection. One of the major factors, as well as fitness, personal skills etc, was the amount of time they could dedicate to the team. This might seem obvious, but if a team is only made up of people with ‘proper’ jobs (unlike mine!) that run 9-5, Monday to Friday then there will be no way the team can properly respond to a callout at 2:30pm on a Tuesday. So a mix of shift workers, the self-employed and retired tend to make up teams. At 8:00pm on a Sunday you are likely to have 20-30 of the 50 team members available, at 4:00am on a Monday, 8 hours later, you might only have 10 because the rest have to be up for the morning commute so can’t turn out. It is one of the major limiting factors of Mountain Rescue response – you never know what you will get! This trickles up to officer positions etc – there is generally some kind of skill requirement, but for everything below Team Leader then you are likely to be running unopposed for a position. Finding somebody who is able to give the huge amount of time and energy it takes to become an Equipment Officer or Training Officer is rare, so they will probably get in regardless of their qualification. This does not mean that if somebody is in that position then they do not deserve to be there – it just means that they may not have had the opportunity to show why they are the right person for the job (Officer positions are normally awarded on election by their peers, so most must think they deserve to be there!).
2. No other organisation can replicate what they do
There are many different faces to the emergency services in the UK – and voluntary agencies like Mountain Rescue and the RNLI are actually quite low down on the scale when it comes to emergency planning and legislation. In the later years of my brief Mountain Rescue career I sat in on many regional meetings of the ‘Local Resilience Forum’. This group is essential to a well-organised response to any type of regional emergency, and the voluntary agencies always had a key role to play – but suffered due to lack of paid staff, not having a ‘manned’ control centre or similar. What was also clear from the wide variety of incidents I was a part of in my time was that the other 999 agencies – Police, Fire, Ambulance – couldn’t immediately replace what Mountain Rescue did. It was not unusual to turn up to an emergency callout – a fallen climber in a quarry say – to find the Fire and Rescue Service arrive at the same time, and there be a brief exchange to decide who had primacy and who would actually perform the rescue. Each service has their own way of doing things, but we always seemed to have the advantage of flexibility and adaptability. My friend likened it to a canoe and a super tanker – a big ship has more capacity and resilience, and more support behind it, but a canoe can turn quickly and get up the small, interesting rivers and streams.
Mountain Rescue in the UK has also been the source of innovations in missing person search strategy, and are called upon to provide specialist search assistance to the Police and other agencies. When you consider that to become a Mountain Rescue Search Manager you have to have several years of experience, then attend a week of training, then develop your skills ‘on the job’. The closest Police equivalent might spend one day of their compulsory training course on missing person search strategy – the bulk of their training being about finding hidden items and anti-terror operations. Although definitely ‘civilian’ in outlook and speech, the way many Mountain Rescue teams operate on the ground is more like the military, and this often became clear in major incidents and training exercises – the ‘Big Three’ of Police, Fire and Ambulance would do their thing (and do it very well), but Mountain Rescue would align itself more with the Army or RAF who were present. If the future of wilderness Search and Rescue in the UK involves paid teams, I suspect it will take more from the military than civilian worlds.
1. It will undergo huge changes in the next 10 years
Because of all of the factors above, because of the changing way the UK deals with emergencies and Search and Rescue, because of changes in information technology and communications, because of new challenges, Mountain Rescue has to evolve – and is doing so. In the past 5 years big leaps forward have occurred in standardised training, vehicle livery, fundraising, terminology. Some very clever individuals have created invaluable tools, like SARCALL and SARLOC which make the rescuers lives much easier. Closer working ties with other agencies are being built, and the capabilites of Mountain Rescue are being better understood.
I have no idea what will come next, but I suspect the trends of having a unified approach to training and operations, fundraising and publicity will continue. Callouts will continue to rise, and Mountain Rescue will become less about ‘mountains’ and much more about ‘Search and Rescue’, covering all terrains and in all weathers.
Well done folks.
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