Coping in covid: how our mountain rescue teams have had to adapt

Often battling severe weather conditions, blizzards and high winds, it is not only the lives of the people who need their help that matter, despite all their training, the volunteers face dangers themselves every time there’s a call out.

Already laden with around 15 kg of kit, including avalanche response kit and stretchers, this time last year there was another threat added into the mix – covid.

Read more: Adventure Show presenter Dougie Vipond overcomes ski phobia to take on hills in the Cairngorms

Just how they were going to be able to continue the mercy dashes while adapting to the covid requirements around PPE and healthy safety, changed the way they operated. And their response to how they operated during covid is featured on the new series of BBC Scotland's long-running Adventure Show. It returns on Thursday with a winter sports special illustrating how Scotland's outdoor community is coping with covid restrictions.

Iain Cornfoot, who is the Cairngorm Mountain Rescue team leader. Photo credit: Peter Jolly.

Team Leader Iain Cornfoot, took over the helm of CMT last summer and had been working on how the team could actually operate in the months before taking over from long term leader and mentor Willie Anderson.

“At the beginning of the pandemic we really had to look at whether we could go on. We are all volunteers and there was a mix of people in our team who might have been shielding and we have six doctors as well who were the midst of it," said Mr Cornfoot.

“We had a meeting to discus it and it was decided we would continue. Albeit there was no access to the range during the initial lockdown, we still had to be prepared and for our volunteers to be able to keep their fitness level up.

“Our rescues would normally involve a full time team response and there are more than 40 of us. If you think about it our responses were always very hands on in terms of the team and treating any casualties so we had to completely change our approach to everything.

“Training was either done online or in small bubbles taking into account where people lived when movement restrictions were in place. As well as all the kit we need to carry we also had to source and carry PPE for any rescue.”

Read more: Covid memorial campaign reaches out to Scotland's artists

Cairngorm Mountain Rescue, which receives 25% of its budget from a combination of the Scottish Government and Police Scotland, sources the rest through partners and sponsors. They were grateful to receive a batch of PPE from Aviemore gin distillers Kinara at a time when hand sanitiser was in short supply.

“We had to strip everything back to basics of how we were going to be able to interact, how many people we could have on a call out," added Mr Cornfoot. "We would normally have eight people and a casualty in stretcher within a two meter close contact zone.

"We were aware of how the introduction of PPE could take the focus off some of the bigger dangers we face. With the use of PPE we still had to be able to do the job and for it or not make a rescue even more difficult or compromise on safety, but we knew we wanted to continue to go on call outs as long as people were fit and well and took into account who we had available depending on them or family members shielding."

Cairngorm Mountain Rescue Team feature on the Adventure Show about coping with covid

When restrictions were lifted, some mountain rescue teams saw calls out soar as people flocked to the hills and mountains last summer in a desperate bid to be outdoors. However, with some people ill-prepared or not carrying the right equipment mountain rescue teams were in demand in the Central Belt.

Mr Cornfoot added: "While other parts of the country saw a massive influx of people to the hills and mountain rescue call outs increase, we actually noticed a drop off. We had finished the previous year on 45 call outs, and although restrictions were in place for a large part of last year from last March, we had only nine call outs which were a combination of people injured on the hill and needing assistance to people becoming ill on a walk."

Being ill-prepared isn't something Mr Cornfoot could be accused of as he has been preparing for leading the team since he was a teenager.

His training with the the mountain rescue team began at the age of 15 and more than 25 years later he has clocked up around 2000 rescues.

Cairngorm Mountain Rescue Team feature on the Adventure Show about coping with covid

"One of the biggest changes in that time is how technology now plays a part and also the number of call outs seems to be going down," he added.

“I think aids such as GPS also helps people find their way more rather than a map and a compass and it’s easier for them to get out of a situation where in the past they would have needed our help. We might just have had a route card to help us find out what path a climber might have taken and even then they might have strayed off and taken a different route. There were times when we would have spent days searching for a site or the first we might have known someone was missing was when they didn’t return home or to their base that night. You could be searching for them for days or months and sadly recover their body when the snow begins to melt coming out of winter. That kind of thing stays with you."

The Cairngorm volunteers were also part of the search for two American F-15 fighter jets which crashed into Ben Macdui, near Aviemore, in 2001. The F-15 pilots were flying in variable cloud on a low altitude training mission and were lost from radar during an air traffic control handover on March 26.

Lieutenant Colonel Hyvonen, 40, and Captain Jones, 27, were killed instantly when their aircraft crashed while on a low flying exercise from RAF Lakenheath.

“We were involved in the search for the F-15s which came down. Now these were both pretty big, but because of the weather conditions at the time it took two or three days to find. We had to take into account the conditions and terrain and while there might have been a huge amount of debris, it still took time to locate it."

Despite the dangers they face, Mr Cornfoot, 41, says it is still rewarding to help people but there is also sadness when sometimes it can be too late.

He added: "With some of the technical rescues we have been involved perhaps with an avalanche, we can still be very proud of how we achieved that if it had been a very difficult operation. At times we are aware that when you have retrieved someone's remains after a couple of months it is grim but you are able to bring closure to a family and we know that is going to make a big difference to them and their grieving process.

"We still get letters from people when perhaps something will jog a memory and they write to us to say how thankful they are for everything the team has done. We are apart of a team and it is not the nicest thing to deal with bringing a body off a hill, but we know it is important to the families and they do appreciate what we do."

Adventure Show: Winter Sports, Thursday, March 11, BBC Scotland, 7pm to 9pm.

To find out more about Cairngorm Mountain Rescue Team go to https://cmrt.org.uk/