'You never know what's round the next corner': the perils of mountain rescues

Sunday 27 January 2013

THE rescue operation at Glen Coe last Saturday involved a helicopter scrambled from HMS Gannet, Britain's busiest search and rescue helicopter unit, which is based at Prestwick.

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A day earlier, a Sea King Mk 5 from Gannet responded, in the early hours, to an emergency in the same area.

A lone climber with hypothermia had become stranded on a ledge in freezing weather in the 3658ft Stob Coire nan Lochan. The conditions faced by the search and rescue team were probably the worst they had ever encountered.

Pilot and aircraft commander Lt Cdr Craig Sweeney, who flew the Sea King on the Friday, gave the Sunday Herald an insight into what it is like to attempt a rescue in an environment as hostile as Glen Coe. He said: "The problem with the mountains is that you never know what is round the next corner. "The flying can go from being fairly routine to very challenging in a very short space of time."There are lots of weather effects, too, including winds which can give us up-draughts and down-draughts. If you're in a down-draught area, you need a lot more power to stay in the air and hover; in an up-draught situation, you need a lot less power."We have a 3D picture in our minds of what the winds are actually doing, but that picture can become quite complex in the Glen Coe and Ben Nevis regions. The winds can change quickly, particularly if they're in excess of 30 knots. "A 50-knot wind can mean you're in down-draught one minute and up-draught the next. "You need to react very quickly as a pilot to these movements, especially if you have someone dangling below the helicopter at the end of a wire."Events can be further complicated by blizzards, snow or rain, which all lessen visibility.On the Glen Coe rescue on January 18, the Sea King worked in extreme darkness and freezing temperatures. Aircrewman Dave Rigg was winched down to the spot where the climber's torchlight was, but at 100ft down on the wire, the snow was so thick that the rescuer could not make out the helicopter above him.On board the helicopter, Lt Cdr Martin Ford, unable to see Rigg, had to use fingertip touch on the winch to sense whether or not his colleague was on the ledge with the climber. As Ford and Rigg communicated verbally, Sweeney and his co-pilot, Lt Jon Wade, struggled to control the 9.5-tonne helicopter in fierce down-draughts and up-draughts.After the rescue, Sweeney described the conditions as "probably the worst I have ever experienced in the mountains".

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'You never know what's round the next corner': the perils of mountain rescues

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