Chasing helicopters

It was going to be a weekend with a lot of cave rescue activity! On the Saturday we had a rigging session, and on Sunday I was booked in for helicopter training. The idea is that it can happen that there is an emergency at a remote location, and the police decides it is best to drop our team off from the air. In my time this happened once; there was an emergency at the far end of the Llyn peninsula, and that is far away from everything. I didn't attend that rescue; a callout came, saying that you should only deploy if you could get to Porthmadog in a limited amount of time. I would not have made that. And it was from Porthmadog the helicopter would leave.

There are, obviously, some safety issues with helicopters. Especially if it can't land, and it has to winch the team down to the ground. So they want us to all be familiar with that. I had been trained on that before; some 11 years ago, with the Devon Cave Rescue Organisation. But the powers that be had decided that that was outdated, and I had to do it again. Hence that I now ended up getting ready with my helmet, gloves and goggles, the day after having already been underground with a small selection of the rescue team.

We were expected to gather in Llanberis a bit before 9 am. From our team it was me, and our equipment officer Tom. It has been organised by the Llanberis team. And getting there I found out that there were also delegates from the Aberglaslyn and Anglesey teams. (The latter is, obviously, lowland rescue.)

I was still at the base when I heard and saw the helicopter come over. A good sign! Soon we were right by it, greeted by the crew. They first wanted to do a bit of a spiel. After that, they would start winching.

The helicopter in Nant Peris

When they were done with the introductions one of them received a phone call. Bad news! It was a callout. They had to go. Serious business! But we had a backup slot at 2 pm. The lady from the Llanberis team checked who of us were available for that; several of us were. So slightly disappointed we all left. But not all was lost.

I got home and did chores, until I received a phone call. It was the lady from the Llanberis team again. The helicopter had struggled to land in Caernarfon, where it is based. Could we perhaps come to it, instead of it coming to us? And I could. So I did.

It was quite sunny when I arrived. Typical! The clouds that had hindered the helicopter were nowhere to be seen. We waited for everyone to appear (just 5 in total now) and then we got going again with the new crew. This crew extended the initial brief a bit; the first crew had only talked about winching us and our luggage, but this crew also wanted to practice winching a stretcher up and down. That requires people on the ground to help keep it stable.

When that was done we went to a helicopter that was running stationary. It drove us to a grassy bit (I think they didn't want to drop us on the hard runway) and then we were all winched out and back in. That got us ready for the real deal! So it took off.

Inside

Instead of then winching us out from a height, it returned to the runway. They had received another callout! Again, they were more needed elsewhere. We had got so close! But no cigar.

We were quite swiftly guided to the exit. We had a little chat in the sun, and then we each went our separate ways. I suppose this isn't enough to consider us trained up. We will probably have to do a day like this again! And maybe again. All the way until we finally manage to finalise the training. I can think of better ways to spend my time, but I can see why they want us to go through this. So I'll be resigned.

I was actually quite tired at the end of all that, in spite of in effect having done pretty much nothing! Oh well. I've shown my good intentions…