On one of Nigel Atkin’s SRT Masterclasses, there were various people just like me- eager to learn a bit about various SRT self-rescue tips and techniques. Lottie was one of these people.
These self rescue skills are ones you never want to use, but when you will want to use them, you’ll be really glad of them. But it’s one thing to “learn” skills. It’s another thing to be “good” at them.
When a ladder came up for sale and Lottie wanted to buy it, we agreed to combine the handover with a quick bit of skills practice at Garlands Pot in Giants.
We set each other scenarios like “this person is halfway up the pitch, can’t get up, they’ve been there for 30 minutes and are starting to get cold.”
“Jim” the casualty was quite uncommunicative for a tacklesack and didn’t once do what we told him to do. Never the less, again and again we got his incredibly unrealistic mass to the top of the pitch.
Despite the lack of real peril, I still found it intimidating. Perhaps it was the noise and the feel that if I dropped this pulley, I dropped it for real or that if I got this wrong, a tacklesack would get hypothermia.
But this is what practice and training and having a go is for – to get some of the stress out of the way to make space for calm if ever the situation needs these skills.
In the Caving Crew, every SRT leader has some level of proficiency in rope rescue etc and this is a good way to keep up those skills.
Thanks Lottie for the trip and opportunity to try and save “Jim” a few times!
Originally posted on this post on Instagram
