The team's first training session of the New Year saw a full rope set up under floodlights on the land adjacent to our station.
Now you may be thinking "but there are no cliffs there!", and you'd be right. However this gives us the chance to do a dry run - a full set up - but without having to worry about being close to the cliff edge. Neither do we need to venture far from base, and so we can use maximum time for training rather than travelling.
Before we started, we sent out an advance party to 'mine sweep' the area; dogs are frequently allowed on this grassy area at the edge of the car park, and quite why anyone can't be bothered to pick up after them is beyond me. The last thing we want to do is to contaminate our ropes and equipment and risk having to write it off, not to mention the health risks to the volunteers on the team. Six targets were successfully identified and removed before the area was given the all clear.
We practised a number of methods of hauling the casualty back up the cliff - both mechanical in the form of a petrol winch and manual in the form of 3:1 and 5:1 gearing systems which are created by the use of a rope fed backwards and forwards through pulleys a few times. Reminds me of my 'O' Level Physics - I knew there was a reason we did that!
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| Who remembers this from school then....? |
Everybody took turns at operating the line controllers which we use to feed out the main and safety lines when lowering the cliff technician over the edge, and when we were finally all done we walked back to the station for tea and a warm up.
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