Assistance to Ogwen Valley Mountain Rescue Organisation

A tough day for our neighbours, Ogwen Valley Mountain Rescue Organisation.  They had already dealt with two earlier callouts when they received two more calls between 5.30pm and 6pm.  The first call was to a man with an ankle injury at the top of Craig yr Ysfa in the Carneddau – as it appeared that there could be a long stretcher carry, ‘Oggi’ Team called NEWSAR with a request for assistance.  The first NEWSAR members on the scene had already had a full hill-day, providing safety cover on a fell race over Snowdon and the Glyderau, but they went straight up to assist with the stretcher carry – other NEWSAR members arriving soon afterwards were split between the stretcher carry and the second incident, which was a search on the Carneddau for two males who had become disorientated.

Whilst these two incidents were still ongoing, news of a THIRD incident came in (Oggi’s fifth incident of the day!) – a man had phoned to report that his 73-year-old mother had become exhausted on Glyder Fawr, and both of them were becoming very cold.  More MR ‘Troops’, including Oggi and NEWSAR members and members of Aberglaslyn MRT and RAF Lossiemouth MRT, went to assist and it soon became apparent that ‘mother’ could not walk down.  In the meantime, the casualty from the original stretcher carry had been evacuated from the mountain to Oggi Base, and the missing males turned up in Dolgarrog.  Members of Oggi and NEWSAR Teams who had already assisted in the previous incidents went back up on to the Glyderau to assist with the evacuation of the mother and son – the HM Coastguard helicopter from Caernarfon could not lift the casualty due to adverse weather conditions, so another long and arduous stretcher carry followed, with MR members reaching the road just before 5am the next day.

A challenging day, especially for Oggi team who put in a magnificent effort on five incidents over 15 hours.