This weekend saw the team being filmed for BBC’s The One Show. The final footage is still being recorded and edited and the 2 1/2 minute feature will air in the New Year. The article follows the team on a practice version of a typical callout where a casualty has sustained a fracture dislocation of a lower leg and needs to be stretchered off the path that runs up to England’s highest mountain, Scafell Pike. Read more…
This month saw significant effort on the block work and cladding. Also, the radio mast was delivered and installed on its foundation. At the end of the month the floor joists were delivered.
October has seen the roof sections installed along with cladding and block work. The ground source heat pump manifold has been connected. The last few pictures show the view from inside the building for the first time, with the two garage openings visible, gear-up room, control room, lobby, office, wet room, drying room and plant room.
Wasdale Mountain Rescue Team have a specialist capability for Flood and Swift water Rescue. This consists of a dozen trained and accredited ‘technicians’ who are responsible, together with other MRTs and partner agencies for responding to flooding and water related incidents. MRTs have made a significant contribution in responding both in Cumbria and elsewhere over the last few years. For these Technicians to retain their accreditation they need to undertake at least two days additional Read more…
Following the completion of the ground preparation last month, September has seen significant progress above ground. Here you can see that the steel frame has been erected and that the block work has started. The garage entrances are now visible nearest the camera and some of the cladding has been delivered to site.
The new base now has an electricity supply and drainage. Steel work is due to arrive on site very soon and the construction above ground level can then begin.
Two team members being winched down to the fell  above Pikes Crag to attend to an injured walker on the summit of Scafell Pike
This year’s Wasdale Mountain Rescue Lingmell Dash saw a disappointingly small but experienced field of 13 set off down the valley by Jen Fraser, who founded the race in 2002, on her return from New Zealand on holiday. A round trip of four and a half miles with a 2500 foot climb saw Yorkshire raider and England international Ben Mounsey of Calder Valley lead from the start. Ben was never headed in the lung bursting Read more…
July has been a busy month with drainage and pouring the concrete foundations. The concrete is ready to accept the steelwork frame of the building. Next month should see the electricity connection being installed.
Some of June was a bit damp but there was progress on the installing the heat exchanger array for the ground source heat pump. This is now covered by soil in the picture on the left. The picture on the right now clearly depicts the outline of the building and car park in preparation for laying the foundations.
The team is holding an impromptu BBQ on Saturday 8th July at the Gosforth Hall Hotel. Our hosts Rod and Barbara have offered to put on a hog roast and other meaty BBQ type morsels with suitable vegetarian options to help support the team. Food will be available from 18:00 hrs. Come and have a chat with the team – It would be great if you could make it.
Copeland Community Fund were kind enough to invite us to their event this week celebrating volunteers in Copeland at Whitehaven Golf Club, which saw 140 volunteers attending from many different volunteer organisations. At the dinner we were asked to use our craft skills to build something and so the obvious choice was a model of the new base. Here it is with Debs putting the final touches to the new base diorama with model casualty, Read more…
Only a week into the new build and things are starting to take shape on the ground. There is the outline of the new building, the car park and in the adjoining part of the field the ground is being prepared for the ground source heat pump array.
Great weather on the slopes of Middle Fell for crag training, albeit a little chilly on the Northern side of the Wasdale valley. The 3-station round-robin training session took in setting up belays, lowering systems and casualty handling on steep ground.
At the Baker Mallett offices in Westlakes last week, Wasdale Mountain Rescue Team signed a contract to build a purpose-designed new base near Gosforth in Copeland. This is the next step to bringing the new base concept to reality and follows an allocation from the Copeland Community Fund (CCF) of £218,043, earmarked funding from the Lake District Search and Mountain Rescue Association (LDSAMRA) of £12,000 and an interest in land granted by the Nuclear Decommissioning Read more…
Duty Team Leader Paul Cook has analysed last year’s incident statistics. You can read his report here.
2nd year apprentices from Energus made a donation of £351.58 to the team last month. Each year they select 3 charities to raise funds for, which they have been doing for the last 4 years. The cheque was presented by Abigail Elsworth, she was one of a 8 apprentices who got involved with the charity work this year,
The perched block at the top of Lords Rake has fragmented and is now in bits close to where it was stuck. There are some loose boulders where it was standing. The largest bit looks to be fairly well bedded into the scree. The rake itself is just as loose as ever.
Wasdale Mountain Rescue Team (WMRT) has today been informed that its application to the Copeland Community Fund for a significant proportion of the cost towards a new base for WMRT has been successful. It has taken a significant amount of work to achieve this funding, from team members and a number of personnel external to the team. Without this support, dedication, by all involved the funding application would not have been successful. So WMRT would Read more…
The team’s only remaining search dog, Ollie, died recently after a short illness. He was 9 years old. For at least the last 35 years the team has always had one or more search dogs, and between them, they have attended hundreds of searches in the team’s patch, Wasdale and Eskdale, as well as the rest of the Lake District, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Northern and Southern Scotland, including the air disaster at Lockerbie. The dogs were Read more…