The team’s activity has picked up over the past month, with nine callouts from the end of August through the last week of September. Once again, the trend is an uplift from 2023, where across the same period last year, LMRT was called upon on just three occasions.
These call-outs have predominantly been in and around Abergavenny, but we’ve also travelled to the eastern edge of our patch with an incident in Worcestershire. In addition, there have been a couple of occasions when we’ve gone out of the area to assist our neighbours, the Central Brecons team.
The August Bank Holiday saw us in action close to home with a call out to assist an injured walker on the Skirrid. As the team gathered and prepared to head up to the casualty, the Coastguard helicopter from St Athan arrived on the scene very rapidly. It lifted two parties of people to the summit to assist the initial party that had headed up on foot. Working with the Coastguard paramedic, the team stabilised the casualty and transferred them to the waiting helicopter before they were airlifted to hospital.
The month ended with a call-out from Dyfed-Powys Police to rescue a walker on Table Mountain above Crickhowell who had slipped on uneven ground, injuring their hip and arm as they fell. After providing thorough medical care on the hill, the patient was stretchered down to a waiting ambulance and onwards to the hospital for further care.
September has seen a mix of incidents involving injured walkers and mountain bikers plus missing person searches. All this has been interspersed with the scheduled team training sessions that have included both on-the-hill skills training as well as medical focussed sessions aimed at both our qualified casualty carers and the wider team.
The monthly Sunday session saw the team gather at Blaen y Cwm for a full day of activity. However, plans were swiftly abandoned following a request from West Mercia Police to assist with an incident in Malvern. As 28 team headed off to help we can only apologise to any drivers who were heading up the Grwyne Fawr valley to be met by a stream of LMRT vehicles heading the other way!
Longtown Mountain Rescue Team
