What goes on behind the scenes after you dial Mountain Rescue? Team Leader Alistair Read talks us through the whole event, from the moment they receive the call until they kick off their boots at the end.
Alistair Read performed his first rescue with Ogwen Valley in 1981. Back then, there was no GPS, no mobile phones; the only way to get hold of Mountain Rescue was to have someone scramble down the hill to the nearest phone or hope that someone back home raised the alarm. Since then, almost everything about Mountain Rescue operations has changed, except for its first responsibility.
Al Read has been part of OVMRO (Ogwen Valley Mountain Rescue Organisation/Sefydliad Achub Mynydd Dyffryn Ogwen) for almost 45 years and an Operational Team Leader since 1999. This is one of the busiest Mountain Rescue teams in the UK, dealing with some of the most challenging and consequential call-outs.
In 1949, when the government signed off on the use of morphine in rescue situations, teams were permitted a supply of three ampoules each – except for Ogwen and Glencoe, which were permitted six. This year, in six short weeks, they dealt with five fatalities.
The team is based in the Ogwen Valley, where the majority of its call-outs occur. Its operational area extends north to the North Wales coast, covering the whole of the Carneddau massif, eastwards to the Conwy Valley, including the mountain biking areas around Betws-y-Coed, and southwards to Moel Siabod and the summit areas of the Glyderau.
Tryfan accounts for 30-40% of their rescues. In 2023, they received 182 call-outs, and numbers continue to rise. Some of those calls require little more than encouragement and directions over the phone, while others necessitate helicopter assistance or a long evacuation by manhandled stretcher. Here, Al talks us through what happens on the other side, after someone calls for help.
Reacting to the call
“I’m alerted by an SMS on my mobile phone, which is never turned off. That message, from the police call-handling system, will be sent out to six or seven local team leaders, and one of us will take it on. After that’s confirmed, if we can, we’ll text the casualty with a link from Phonefind/SARLOC. That helps us to identify where they are. They tap the link, and about 30 seconds later, we get a reported location from their phone by text and email.
"Hopefully, the person is still holding on to the phone when we find them! If people keep clicking that link, the accuracy improves. It will certainly put us in the right valley, and very often, we can be down to tens of metres. If we can, we’ll call the casualty and have a conversation to gain more information.
"We’ll give a bit of advice: stay where you are, put extra clothing on, and if you’ve got food and water, take that. If we’re dealing with an injury, we might be able to give some initial first aid advice. Any information gained in that call helps determine what we do next; whether to put the team on standby or go straight to call-out.
"Going straight to call-out usually means that an initial response party of two or three team members will be out of the door within 15-20 minutes. They will go lightweight, fairly quick. Their main role is to gather information and stabilise. If they can sort the problem and help someone walk off, great. If they need more help, then we’ll be building capabilities back at base, at Bryn Poeth.
"As a team leader, I’m trying to come up with a plan to get the right people, with the right equipment, up to the incident site as quickly as we reasonably can. Some incidents – major falls, cardiac events, strokes, drownings – are high priority, and very quickly, we’ll get a lot of people onto the hill with the relevant equipment. For those, we will quite often ask for a helicopter. But if the weather is poor, we’ll be on foot. It will take time.”
Reaching the casualty
“Depending on the job, we go and collect what we think is the right equipment. That’s then loaded into the Land Rover or carried up to the helicopter landing site. But sometimes it needs to go on foot. The premise for our equipment is that it should be transportable by a person – but that doesn’t mean it’s easily transportable.
"Half a stretcher is still 7-8kg on your back in addition to what you need to look after yourself. I’ve almost been blown off my feet carrying a stretcher in gale force winds. It’s the biggest sail going. Every gust of wind tries to knock you over. I’ve been out in knee-deep snow with a rucksack weighing probably 25kg before.
"With every footstep, I was up to my knees in snow, and without poles, I would have been flat on my face. That’s slow going, but then, when you get there, you’re really hot and sweaty, and what comes next often involves a lot of standing around in the cold. We could be out for 14 hours. It’s a long day, so you need enough food, water and clothing to keep you warm and dry in those environments.
"Without it, it’s easy to become uncomfortable and, potentially, another casualty. I’ve been out wearing a full set of Gore-Tex Pro winter waterproofs complete with a belay jacket, water running down the back of my neck, the wind howling, and still freezing.”
Locating the casualty
“If we can speak to the person, we can often locate them. There’s a lot of local knowledge in the team and quite a few hotspots where people get stuck. For example, on Tryfan, loads of little tracks coming down the North Ridge lead into just a couple of locations. In those hotspots, we’ll tell them, ‘stay exactly where you are, we’ll come to you’.
"Team members will get close by and then we’ll get people to start shouting and blowing their whistle if they have one. At night, we’ll get everyone to flash their torches. Those observing from a distance can see where the casualty is, where the rest of the team are and direct them in that way.
“Often we’re operating with a very incomplete picture. Someone dials 999 and the phone dies. Or someone from home, with very little information, calls it in. At that point, we’re searching car parks. If we haven’t found the car, what happens next? We’re searching caravan parks, campsites, roadsides, and going down to pubs. At that point, things are really concerning. Those are often really difficult jobs.”
Planning the evacuation
“When we find someone, we conduct an assessment. Most of our team members have a Remote Rescue Medical Technician qualification which covers the likely difficulties experienced in the mountains. We spend more time on this than normal first aid assessments, but it helps us to better understand what the potential medical needs are and to work out how to approach packaging for evacuation.
“If they’re breathing, talking, and just stuck, you see that fairly quickly. They may need a bit of confidence and coaching. If someone’s had major injuries, team members will be thinking about what needs to be done to preserve their life and get them off the mountain.
“Often, a broken ankle is going to require a stretcher. I have had people walk off with broken ankles, but I wouldn’t recommend it because it is so painful. We’ve got a stretcher with a wheel which makes moving easier, but we can’t use it in every case, and certainly, in years gone by, it was often a long carry. About three or four years ago, eight of us ended up carrying someone off the top of Y Garn all the way into Llanberis. It was a huge descent and we were absolutely exhausted at the end of it.
“If we need a helicopter, that will be requested through the police who pass it on to the Aeronautical Rescue Coordination Centre. They undertake an assessment as to whether or not we will be granted use, and I’m grateful that we can often make the case. We have a common radio channel, so we can talk to the aircraft and guide it in: ‘we’re currently in your two o’clock. Keep flying on that vector. You’ll see us, we’re dressed in red.’
“Flashing headtorches are an absolute giveaway for aircraft flying with night vision goggles. They can see them from miles away. Then, when they get close by, they’ll transition to white light so that they can see clearly where they will be operating.
“If we don’t have our stretcher, they’ll winch theirs down. I’ve carried people out on the aircraft stretcher before because the weather’s changed and the helicopter has had to leave. If they’re on that stretcher, they’re staying on that stretcher.”
What happens after the rescue?
“Hopefully, if the casualty is going to hospital, there will be an ambulance we can hand them to. Or, if it’s safe, they might be driven there by family or friends. Afterwards, we’ll have a debrief and a cup of tea, then pack up and go home to get some sleep before work in the morning.
“I get back to the vehicle, take my wet kit off, put my dry kit on, and lay the wet stuff out in the back to dry. I’ve left base before now, and 10 minutes down the road received another call. So you turn around, it’s back to base, and the wet kit’s going back on.
“As team leader, we’ve also got paperwork to do. A report for every incident. Those statistics have become increasingly important. If we don’t record where the incident happens, we don’t know where the hotspots are. If we don’t record what happens, we don’t know the best training to put in place.
"Our records show that, last year, of 180 incidents, we dealt with 35 broken ankles and, of those, three were complex breaks. We need to train team members to deal with those because they are commonplace, painful, and potentially limb-threatening if we get it wrong.
“If there’s been a fatality, there’s more to do. We might have to prepare a report for the coroner or appear in court. Team members who’ve undergone Scenes of Crime Training will examine the site as part of the investigation, looking for evidence.
"Last year, we had two fatalities who fell very long distances and, in both cases, when we were working those incident sites, it was slippery as hell underfoot. At one, I stopped the investigation short. I was trying to find evidence of where a fall started but was at risk of falling myself.
“Sometimes, talking to other agencies, we have to remind them that this incident took place in the mountains. A broken ankle can kill you in winter.”
Know the hazards
From start to finish, this is a lot of work. It begins before the boots even go on and in some cases extends for days and weeks after the casualty has been delivered from the mountain. “There’s an awful lot going on, and we have to be quite careful to make sure we get it right,” says Al. “We don’t always. We do our best but sometimes maybe the best could be improved.”
When asked about the main hazards at the time of year we interviewed Al (winter), his answer is not ice or snow. “It gets dark much earlier than people expect,” he says. “By 5 pm it’s a challenge to navigate and by 6 pm you definitely need a torch to move around.”
And there’s the danger of peer pressure, especially through social media. “You might see someone on social media who’s had a great time doing something like Crib Goch. But when you get there the weather’s very different, your experience base is different, and you’re having a terrifying day.
“Don’t be afraid to change the plan for something different and less challenging,” Al recommends. “The mountains are a wonderful place to be, but have a bit of thought and take care when things get exciting.”
3 ways to prepare smarter for mountains
To avoid having to make an emergency call, the best thing you can do is to prepare well. Mountain Rescue, in partnership with AdventureSmart, have come up with three key questions to ask yourself before setting foot on the hill. For more detail, check adventuresmart.uk
Do you have the KNOWLEDGE & SKILLS for the day?
In winter, your ability to navigate in poor visibility needs to be much sharper than in summer as, in full winter conditions, even large key features can be obscured by snow. You should also know how to walk in crampons, kick steps and perform an ice axe arrest.
Do you know what the WEATHER will be like?
In winter, it’s wise to check the days before as well as on the day so that you have a full idea of the snow conditions. Also check the avalanche forecast for the area. If there isn’t one, reading forecasts for the rest of the country may be informative.
Do you have the right GEAR?
As well as plenty of warm layers and adequate navigation equipment, you will also need winter tools, hydration and nutrition. Carrying a power bank is wise, as cold weather can shorten your phone’s battery life.