After a full day spent organising and running a fund raising day at Wasdale Head, including an auction that finished at 11.00pm members of Wasdale Mountain Rescue Team were relieved to be in their beds by midnight but not so relieved when they were called out at a quarter past midnight to rescue a gentleman attempting the Three Peaks Challenge who had slipped and tumbled about 30 feet into Skew Ghyll. The man was treated Read more…
The team was well represented at the Gosforth Show last weekend. Plenty of raffle tickets were sold for the upcoming Kern Knotts Crack weekend.
Iona Frost-Pennington and her husband Peter visited Millforge to understand a little more about the team and the way mountain rescue is organised regionally and nationally. Iona and Peter live at Muncaster Castle and together with her father own the estate. Recently she was appointed by the Queen as the Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Cumbria. The Lord Lieutenancy role goes back many hundreds of years and is there to be present at all royal visits Read more…
A small but select band of runners assembled at the Wasdale Head Inn on Saturday for the tenth running of the 4.5 mile 2500ft Lingmell Dash Fell Race. This race combines fast flat running on the valley floor with a lung bursting climb to the summit where race organiser Tim Brooks (Wasdale MRT member) was sitting waiting for the runners ahead of the plummeting drop back to the finish. At 1400 Adam Naylor proprietor of Read more…
The team is holding a fundraising weekend based at Wasdale Head over the weekend of the 2nd – 4th September. On Friday evening from 7pm Cat Like Thief and other bands will be playing. Saturday will see a wide variety of activities all day including Mountain Rescue displays, Art Workshop, Duck Race, Raffle, Treasure Hunt, Bouncy Castle & Live Music. At 9pm we will hold the auction of walking gear. Sunday will see a similar Read more…
Last Monday the team practised evacuating a casualty from a gorge or gully using a cableway. This involves setting up a rope system to manoeuvre a stretcher from one side to the other whilst also being able to raise and lower the stretcher. This post contains a fifteen minute video of the exercise.
Does the sight of such rubbish fill you with dismay? This is what happens every year when we have the three peaker hordes. I am sure that many other walkers are also to blame when they decide to unload their rucksacks and make the place look like a rubbish tip. Well done to those walkers who make the effort to take their own (and others) rubbish away.
A BBC News article about how a photo taken on a casualty’s phone enabled the team to locate them. This was the second rescue of the day and the middle of three in 24 hours. A Grough article on the rescue is available here. The story also featured in Saturday’s Telegraph.
“A walker turned up safe and well after spending the night on the Lake District fells when he got lost.
Three mountain rescue teams were involved in a major search for the man on Tuesday when he phoned for help saying he was lost somewhere on Crinkle Crags in Great Langdale…”
Read more at Grough.
The Wasdale team will be out and about over the forthcoming Bank Holiday weekends.  On Monday 2nd May the team will be supporting the national body during the Mountain and Cave Rescue Awareness day by giving two female mountain rescuers an early send off from St. Bees beach where they will start their Coast to Coast challenge walk in support of the national body’s benevolent fund (MREW).  As they make their way across Cumbria and Northern England Read more…
The team will be involved in two events on the Bank holiday Monday following ‘The Big Wedding’. Mountain and Cave Rescue Awareness day is Monday 2nd May and across the country, teams are carrying out various fund raising and safety awareness programmes. Wasdale MRT will be down on the St. Bees beach with our rescue landrover to see the two ladies off as they cross Cumbria and the North East, calling in on all the Read more…
More than £30,000 is to be given to Cumbria’s fire service and a mountain rescue team to help them deal with future flooding emergencies. Wasdale MRT recieved a grant of £12,135 towards swift water rescue equipment. Read more on the BBC website.
Nearly twenty team members spent their Sunday practicing crag rescues at Diamond Crag in Eskdale. This was the first opportunity for many team members to use the new MPD lowering devices and practice important crag skills.
An example conditions post. All of the Scafell and Scafell Pike’s gullies still have hard compact snow in them so crampons essential for gully climbing such as Lords Rake. Happy walking.
The team’s annual dinner was held last night with a great turnout (around 35 I think). The Strands Inn was the venue and Mark and Lesley Corr did us proud with a great value menu. Thank you to all those who cam along on the night and thank you to their wives, husbands and partners who supported us last year. We took the opportunity to present 25 year service awards to Richard Longman, Gordon Starkie Read more…