Wellbeing in Mountain Rescue

Wellbeing is quite fashionable these days. Academic Schools tend to have a wellbeing champion, and there are wellness days, and whatnot. And it reached Mountain Rescue as well. An email came around saying that would be a session about it in Plas y Brenin, and that we as a team (we fall under the Mountain Rescue umbrella) could send five people there. Unfortunately, then it fell quiet, and by the time we had a committee meeting in which we discussed it, I suppose all the other people who had been interested had already let their diaries fill up. But I hadn't. So I decided to go.

It was quite busy. There was a good turnout! There was a table where there was still space, and I sat down. Then some blokes came in and joined me there; they turned out to be from the Aberdyfi team (that's a fair distance to the south). The Ogwen team, who had got me and Tim off the hillside, and the Llanberis team, who put out a press release last year that asked people to please be sensible in the mountains as they had so many callouts they were at risk of burnout, and the Aberglaslyn team, that regularly gives us a ride to CRTT, were all there too. I was the only person representing a cave rescue team.

The lady who had organised the session was from the Oggie team, and the person she had contracted to deliver the session was from a charity I hadn't heard of; it turned out to be a charity that looks after the well-being of agricultural workers. Not quite the same as mountain rescue, but why not! One really hopes that a job as a farmer doesn't confront you so much with injury and death as a busy mountain rescue team does, but still; I had faith she had useful things to say. And she did.

She did a presentation that she regularly paused to open the floor for discussion. What did we think mental health was? What did we think we might need if we would have had a difficult callout? Would we be able to spot if one of your teammates was going through a bit of a rough patch? How should we address it? Things like that. And (some) people were quite willing to chip in with their own experiences. Aberglaslyn had recently been involved in the very tragic case of the four young lads whose car has come off the road. That came up a few times. But people rightly pointed out that it's not only the difficult callouts that might be heavy on people.

She also pointed out lots of resources: books, helplines, apps; the whole shebang. It was quite useful. 

A low point for me was that I felt the need to, at some point, call out casual misogyny of a chap on my table. But I still think such things need to be called out. And I did think it was relevant; it's not only the incidents that can get to you! It can be your teammates as well.

It overran a bit, and then there was lunch served. I got a bit distracted from that by bumping into a lady I had met in Machynlleth on one of the courses I had done there; we had exchanged details then, but never used them. She said she would get in touch. Maybe we could go and do something together.

Then I went to consume my share of excellent soup and sandwiches. I ended up accidentally sitting next to a bloke who had applied to also be a member of our team! But he had been very busy with work, so not filled out the paperwork yet. I hope he still will.

Then it was time to go home. Straight through storm Isha! In the morning it had still been quite calm, but by the afternoon, things certainly weren’t anymore. There was a very deep puddle on the road, a tree was blocking one lane, and the wind was just relentless. I was glad to get home without incident. This would be a prime day for ending up stuck between a landslide and a flood or something! But it didn't happen.

Our team doesn't currently even have a well-being officer, but I think we will sort that out in the next AGM. And I will just report back during the next committee meeting. I think it's good there is attention for this sort of thing!