A Horrid Day With A Happy Ending Thanks To Penrith Mountain Rescue Team & The RAF

Well yesterday was one of those days that was glad to be over though todays hangover is starting to kick in so wish it had ended sooner.What should have been a brilliant day with friends training for my trip to Spain in oct with me aiming to do my hardest trad leads and seconding turned into a nightmare when a friend had a bad fall.
Having just complete my first lead of the day a very easy warm up to loosen everything up even climbed it in my five ten tennies to see how they performed on rock my climbing partner noticed a friend had miss read a guidebook and had started leading a route beyond her normal grade so as we ran back up to the top of the route to drop her a top rope to be lowered off as i had set the anchors up and as the rope was being lowered I heard the sound no climber wants to hear a scream followed by a sickening thud and crack of a helmet.
With her boyfriend cradling her and in shock & her coming in & out of unconsciousness & my friend flapping I had to take control of the whole situation,luckily I had been allways told to prepare for any situation in the mountains & know how to handle any event in whatever conditions.
So after making sure she was in a stable condition checking for any obvious external injuries & making sure she wasnt moved at all and was kept conscious I had to dial the emergency services the police first then they put me in contact with mountain rescue now the most frightening and shocking thing about mountain rescue in the UK is they are all unpaid volunteers receiving no government funding at all they even have to pay tax on all the equipment they need & pay for it themselves vehicles,clothing medical kit.They are all highly trained keen climbers walkers etc with medical skills training etc which they finance via public donations there are 12 teams alone in the lake district with 450 volunteers on 24 hour call out 365 days a year plus the SARDA (search and rescue dogs association).Each team has to raise a amount of roughly £30,000 a year to just survive.
So the fact this team managed to assemble and get to the crag in the short time they did leaving work families etc is amazing one was on top of a mountain miles away but still managed to get back to his car and race across the county to arrive!
So after speaking to them on my mobile I had requested we would need air ambulance(another self paid group cause of lack of funding) to evacuate her as we were in a remote valley they on my evaluation was made to call in the big guns mainly the RAF's search and rescue helicopter team so after guiding the mountain rescue to her and speaking direct to the chopper pilot via my mobile the sight of the massive yellow sea king helicopter thundering up the valley was a great relief after doing one loop after spotting me they managed to winch a man down hover over the rock face and lower a stretcher down & with the help of the mountain rescue who had immobilised her against injuries she was lifted out off 30 degree scree slope to hospital where luckily she was treated for only minor injuries nothing was even broken so the next time i see a little wooden mountain rescue donation box in shops etc i will be putting a few notes in it not coins for a few years to come.
http://mountain.rescue.org.uk/