Make some tea.
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Probationary Member Six Month Assessment. Reek Sunday, County Mayo, Republic of Ireland.
Onsite 48 hours (Friday to Sunday) - Training 3 hours, operational 10, pub... a few.
Operational members: CVSRT 7, DWMRT 10, other Irish MRTs circa 90 operation and base members.
Public numbers on the mountain estimated at over 20,000 during a 12 hour period.
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Friday morning early wake up call from our baby daughter. Hungry as ever. Feed, shower, breakfast for the adults shaking off yesterdays wedding haze. A relaxed morning chatting with old friends over breakfast. Coffee. Car packed, then drive for four hours to Liverpool airport. Quick food stop for the screaming baby and decaffeinated adults at a mega off motorway garden centre. Quick superhero change in the baby changing toilets into team branded kit. Quick drive before getting dropped at the airport to meet the other members of the team at departures.
Ballistic path flight to Ireland. 50minutes in the air, barely enough time to get the trolley around let alone drink the two bottles of wine the woman beside me buys. Saying that, she tried her best. We land at Knock International Airport with a runway built to 747 landing standards, a single roomed porta-cabin and ancillary Duty Free building the only clue that it is actually an airport. Welcome to Knock Airport, the start of your pilgrimage to the basilica, and gateway to Croagh Patrick, Curach Phádraig, the mountain of Saint Patrick. To locals, The Reek.
Car hires collected, 7 team members with kit crammed into two compact cars, turn left off the airport grounds straight onto a single track road with passing places, turn right onto a narrower road with no passing places. Not exactly the easiest airport to access in the country. Eventually the N5 and off to the hostel. Foxford, Boholo, Castlebar, Westport, finally Murrisk and the base of the mountain. It’d be another 40 hours before we’d get a glimpse of the top hidden beneath the clag from the moist air driven up off the Atlantic.
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With its top less than 1km from the sea, and rising 764m from the coast, Croagh Patrick is notorious for poor weather. Any wind or rain that comes off the Atlantic is accelerated up the west facing corrie, along the shoulder of the mountain to beat against the summit ascent known as The Cone. With an average gradient of 28 degrees and its steepest section at 44 degrees, this was where we were to be stationed with other mountain rescue teams for the day of pilgrimage called Reek Sunday.
Reek Sunday pilgrims follow the path of Ireland's patron Saint. Patrick, who is said to have walked up the mountain barefoot, to sleep at the top and perform a service at sunrise the next day. No pagan connotations obviously. Pilgrims do the same, walking the mountain, many barefoot, at some point over the last weekend in July. Many many the ascent to attend one of the hourly masses performed at the summit church. Numbers have declined in recent years and long gone are the heydays of Reek Sunday where over 50,000 people could be expected on the mountain.
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After a break from travel for coffee and Cherry Bakewells at the back of the hostel, we made our way to dinner at the local eating pub. Another short trip to the drinking pub where we were due to meet members of Dublin Wicklow Mountain Rescue Team (DWMRT) and a few more local beverages before bed. Just a few. We’re working. Maybe one more.
Early doors and most CVSRT team members were up and about. For some, young baby wake up patterns embedded in sleep deprived brains are difficult to shift. Everyone ready, vehicles packed, and off we were to Doo Lough at the base of Ben Bury. The aim was to train with the DWMRT kit that’d we would be using for the weekend. Different stretchers, team calls, movement patterns; all had to be worked through so we could function as one on the mountain on Sunday. A few hours working and talking, grunting, pushing and lowering, and it was time for lunch at the local farm shop. Food ordered, chatting with the owner who was stunned that we had come over from Yorkshire, before being told that food was on the house. Free food for 17 very hungry people who’d ordered as much as they could. We were stunned and appreciated the generosity, each of us leaving a substantial tip to cover part of what we gorged.
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Back to the hostel and people’s feet were getting itchy for the mountain. 5 of us ditched the team kit from our bags, stashed our MR branded gear and went for a fast moving hike up the mountain, bordering on a run. An hour and twenty minutes later we were on the top having passed several hundred people on the way up. It was sinking in how difficult a mountain this was going to be to perform a rescue off with the constantly moving scree and boulders of the Cone. A poor weather forecast for the day ahead was going to give us a very tough day with the possibility of no helicopter cover. We were lucky to have a break in the clouds so that we could see the view over Clew Bay and realise how arduous a walk this would be for the pilgrims the next day, many of whom you would not class as hillwalkers, let alone members of the outdoor community. Less than 40 minutes later we stood at the bottom having descended past many of the walkers we’d passed on the way up.
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Gear was packed away, bags ready for the early morning start, before we drove to Westport for a team meal with CVSRT and DWMRT members. Three courses later, bloated and sleepy we were told to put our money away as the Dublin team were picking up the bill. Again, random acts of kindness. 9pm, a final kit check, hill food made, bags into the car for a 2am start. Bedtime.
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Reek Sunday:
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0200 – Up, kit on, toilet stop #1, coffee, second coffee, toast, third coffee, toilet #2.
0230 – In the car, roll from hostel towards Mayo MR team base a 40 minute away.
0320 – Coffee, stew for breakfast, toilet stop #3. Unpack team kit and split among all members, pack the rest onto the stretcher with lifting strops and wheel attached.
0400 – Leave the base, head up the first part of the Reek, a bog, tussock racing ground. Drag kit.
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0455 – Reach the shoulder, head for med tent, 300m vertical height gained, rest for 10mins while waiting for deployment. We know we’re going to the top, DWMRT always gets the top.
Pilgrims are already walking to the top in the traditional night time ascent. Some are worse for wear than others, maybe a few too many drinks in Campbells under their belts?
0505 – Radio shout to deploy to the top, surprised….not at all. Thank you sir, may we have another?
0600 – In position 60minuites earlier than any previous year, worked very well as a team despite the amount of walkers already coming down from the summit. 400m height gained. Very tired now.
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0600 – 0730 – Spread across the summit and 100m below the summit. Sat in a group shelter talking poor show with other DWMRT members, occasionally looking out to make sure no one is dead. Relatively quiet, but constant stream of pilgrims. Likely lads in local football jerseys come past fresh from the nightclub, pissed to high heaven, chanting something about pilgrimage and penitence that I probably shouldn’t write.
0736 – Redeployment to the base of the cone….400m below us. We “misinterpret” orders and redeploy 200m lower at a known hotspot that wasn’t being covered at the time. Lowering the stretcher on a V belay with full kit in a bivi bag looks like we’re taking a corpse off the hill. Quite a few explanations needed to passers by. Also quite a bit of people skills needed as they are intent on walking through our ropes whether we like it or not. UK accents garner some very confused looks from the locals. The legacy of Cromwell is not forgotten easily in these parts. Local belligerence is amusing.
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0800 – 0915 – Group shelter cuddle time out of the rock fall line while the weather craps out all around us. Four shelters in a row like a line of giant mutant Skittles. Lots of people now, constant stream of them, very quiet, visibility about 20m at best.
0900 – Need a piss, so we all get out to stretch our legs. Vis up to about 40m and we spent some time out watching the parade of silent focused zombies trudge past with the occasional stumble. The odd person takes the faster, safer fell race route down, I nod in silent agreement with two fell runners who were out for the spectacle.
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0900 ish – Fast descending walker takes a fall, lands face first, tumbles a further 20m before coming to a rest. We wait to see if he gets up. He doesn’t. DWMRT team member crosses the moraine to him. Arm flag, paramedic crosses. Arm flag, two more over, two more up to stop falling rocks and move people out of the rock trap above. Rest of us strip the stretcher for med kit, and ropes. Definite evac. We’re on a 40 degree gradient a lot of loose rock above us.
0900 – 0930 – Bleeding stemmed, arm and shoulder splinted, pain care underway. We move across moraine with all team kit, pilgrims are kindly asked to move aside so we can get there.
0930 - 0945 – Patient being packaged into vac mat and winter cas bag, medication upped, a lot of screaming, kishu doing well as a visual block. Many people walking over to have a gawk, politely asked to move along just in case they may get hit with a rock from above. They only move when we point out their safety, not that they should respect a person in pain.
At some point, the clag started to lift and we heard a heli inbound. Coast guard s92 landed, we were on coms to find out if we could use it, sadly it was for a cardiac that had occurred. We were notified that 5 events had occurred within 20mins of each other. ICRO – Irish Cave Rescue, were acting as runners trying to get more kit on the hill where it was needed.
0945-1030 – moving belay with 10 on a V back rope attached to stretcher with 6 out riggers and one navigator/person herder at the front. Strenuous moving the stretcher down the steep slope, down meter high drops where brute force is the only option. Regular stops to check ABC on cas and reassess what we were planning. Finally, flat ground, wheel stretcher to med tent.
As we arrive to the med tent are told we’ve a heil inbound from the Air Corps, worried about the head injury we got bumped up the line. Looking back, we see two more teams split and head for a single point high up the hill, a sixth injury. All stretchers are currently occupied. New teams are moving up for shift change and go into action, moving their kit into place having had no rest from the initial movement from the ground level base to the shoulder of the Reek. They get a further 7 injuries in the next 6 hours. Coast Guard and Air Corps provided amazing cover when they could fly. We were very lucky that the casualties happened later in the day when the clag lifted.
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1035 – Quick team briefing on the heli type we have inbound. Military craft we don’t normally deal with. Smoke popped. Heli lands hot and stays hot, abnormal loading procedure for us, but there is a bit of a rush on. Cas transferred to heli stretcher, much smaller than what we use. Paramedics brief each other. Load casualty onto heli, downwash even directly under rotor is less than a s92 so not as bad as I expected. Cas flown to Castlebar hospital with DWMRT vac mat and winter cas bag.
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1050 – We end shift in 10 mins. Team debrief from DWMRT paramedic on medical treatment given, thoroughly in depth. DWMRT TL debrief on how we performed, then the CVSRT TL chips in. Repack stretcher to leave the Reek. Radio to base that we are off call. General feeling of being a useful member of society prevails in the team. Time to walk off. Pack kit, start to lug it out on a flying V.
1140 – Get to car, change into dry clothes, eat two bowls of stew and a packet of Fruit Pastels, toilet.
1200 – drive back to airport. Ditch rental car. Check in. Drink a beer. Get on plane. Sleep.
More please.