Brave Dave calls Mountain Rescue

I’m interested to know whether the people who are dissing him for his handling of the incident are doing it from a position of experience or not…

Holder of ML Summer and winter for 26 years. A few ‘minor’ issues, and one major one which you can see on BBC 999 programme if you care to review me.

I’m now going to back out the thread – the incident ended up with a life saved. Job done.

What I’m questioning is the skills and attitude of the chap at the centre of it all. Perhaps I’m over reaching there as well.

Indeed Matt. You were one of the people who doesn’t seem to be giving him a hard time for his actions in that video.

You had views on his other videos, and his editing style, but in terms of his actions in a high stress environment to try to stop someone dying, you haven’t dissed him at all (that I can see)

Not an ML, but a kayaking coach for approaching 20 years now, and hold various other outdoor quallies and do some events work in things like outdoor first aid – hence my focus on the incident management rather than the route, the terrain, etc. Have been involved in a number of dicey incidents, both on and off water – so, experience in a different field, but largely relatable. Don’t class myself at any kind of expert, but do hold myself to a standard, if that makes sense.

I’ve not expressed an opinion about the guy personally, just the situation and the handling of it. It’s the first (and probably last) of his videos I’ve watched. I’m not aiming to criticise him directly, and certainly not on a personal level. My ‘plan’ up there could well go straight out the window if I were in the same position, but as I said I do appreciate the video as a learning tool. Were that me, I’d be replaying the situation constantly in my head for a week or so after, whether on video or not, and beating myself up for things I’d see as ‘mistakes’, or things I have been trained to do that I forgot in the heat of the moment

The outcome in this instance was largely positive, and good on them for what they did. I’d hope that in the same situation I would do things differently, as I described, but get the same outcome.

My comment is from experience

Bit of military experience, mountain biking instruction and an experienced hill walker.

I’ve had to call mountain rescue out once, and get a casualty out to hospital ourselves 3 times.

Write up of my experience of having to call them out here – happy for people to tear into my own response.

Write of of Brecon Beacons rescue

Its the holes in the cheese model – from the video, my opinion on where they went wrong

Have you checked the forecast and conditions?
Have you got the appropriate equipment and skill for the conditions? (fail here)
If you’re going out, make sure someone knows where you are going, what you are doing and when you’ll be back, and what to do if you’re not back
Make sure everyone knows what to do if something does go wrong (fail here)
If something goes wrong, the first thing you do is make sure you don’t add to the problem (fail here)
The second thing you do is call help, telling them where you are, what the situation is, and what you are doing. They’d rather know and then you have to call them back and say it’s fine, than fetch corpses (fail here)
Going down the hill after them – that needs to be a fast, considered judgement call, not an impulsive one (fail here)
You don’t rely on the casualty to tell you what’s wrong – you do a proper head to toe check (fail here)
You don’t throw your gear all over the mountainside in search of the warm kit etc you need (fail here)

That video could easily have been a postmortem from them all sliding down the hillside, getting broken legs and freezing to death whilst a mountain rescue team tried to find them

I’ve described failing to save a cyclist’s life on another thread. I was second on the scene a few seconds behind a nurse. The point at which we gave up very strange sensations went through my head. I’d been mentally clocking time from the point I saw him slump on the bike and veer off into the ditch. Park up safely (it’s a hill on a busy ring road), run back, check for vital signs, work on getting 100kg or so that’s lying face down in the bottom of the ditch into a position it’s possible to properly check vital signs and do a heart massage, and fail. Drag him up to a position where we can (he weighed about the same as me and the nurse together) and all the time the clocks ticking and his brain is getting no oxygen because there’s definitely no pulse now just weird gurgling. Then there’s the realisation it’s futile, I notice the nurse shake her head, he’s probably had a fatal cerebrovascular accident and there’s nothing more to do. It took me a while to get over it, I think if the other person had been anyone other than a qualified medic it would have taken longer.

I found myself reassuring the nurse while she was reassuring me, she kept saying she hadn’t hit him, he’d just gone off the road on his own when she was along side him. I’d seen exactly what had happened, I’m a cyclist, I can’t help but watch a portly old man struggle up a hill. The shock to me was seeing a man die and not being able to do anything about it. The shock to the nurse was that she might be wrongly accused of having killed a cyclist.

Not watched the video, but having read right through this thread, BD does come across as a bit of a ‘Bear Grylls’ sort of bloke; not someone I’d be happy about going into a challenging situation with.
Steve Backshaw or Ray Mears, on the other hand…

Ray Mears I wouldn’t trust at all

its good to analyse incidents like this we can all learn

Its actually very difficult not to panic in emergencies. You do well if your panic does not lead to bad mistakes.

“if in panic or in doubt, run around and scream and shout. then go and sort it out”

Brave Dave has posted a follow up vid about this incident, would link to it but I’m on my new phone and can’t figure out how, sorry!

This it.

Brilliant video to show what can go wrong.

But – Snowdon in winter, no crampons or axes ? Looks to me like they got on a slope where it was freezing up.

And when the bloke went you don’t just set off at full speed after them.

I liked how he was just shoving stuff around the bloke when he found him and dropping his rucksack on top of him. No thought of their own safety at that point, or actually trying to assess if the bloke was genuinely able to breath etc just get him off the ground.

Very good as instructional video of what can happen and what not to do.

Other thing it made me think is you are stuck up there for a long time before help arrives. You need to know what your doing on a hill.

Thanks @dyna-ti

I can’t watch half an hour of his rambling – anyone care to summarise?

anyone care to summarise

Justifying his actions to his loyal worshipers followers.

The blokes a grade A bell end.

I think Tom has summarised is perfectly

anyone care to summarise?

Awesome man bumps in to fellow walkers on a hill in bad conditions

One of them falls down mountain side a good few 100ft over rocks.

Awesome man then tries to kill himself and other walkers getting to injured man.

Awesome man then tries to move injured man without actually checking he’s ok

Awesome man then runs off to get help

Mountain Rescue injured man, but awesome man is still awesome

Thank you. I’ll move on in life.