Lots of First Aid and Incident Management stuff, broken limbs, shock, blood and gore everywhere. Just another typical few days at Dallam...
Having spent a half day going through much of the REC2 course syllabus it was off into the woods where there were plenty of casualties waiting for us (and a party of primary school kids and staff looking very concerned). Coming across a climber with a broken fib & tib and his badly shocked partner was pretty straightforward - until the rockface that he'd fallen from began to collapse around us. It's surprising how quickly priorities change: a quick pick through our kit and an improvised stretcher (bivvy bag) appeared for a quick and dirty evacuation, followed by some "linear origami" resulting in a full-on stretcher from a 50m climbing rope. Padding this out with a couple of Karrimats and co-opting another couple of climbers and we were off for a brew in no time.
Friday was a wet one. Literally. Pinned kayaks, broached canoes, entrapped paddlers; you name it, we hummed it. The last set-up, sprung as a complete surprise, involved a pinned canoe, a paddler crushed between it and the rocks above an undercut, vertical bank. On the far bank from where we were working.
I reckon that getting the paddler out of the entrapment, assessed, splinted, onto a "stretcher", assessed again and moved to safety inside 20 minutes was no mean feat. Certainly faster than the ambulance would have arrived and entertaining for the dog-walkers at Devil's Bridge. Hopefully I'll never have to do it for real, but it's good to know that the tools are in the box.
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