After the OMM

There was some frustration about this checking process on all sides. The Police didn’t seem to understand the nature of the event and felt everyone should be quickly accounted for. But then they were fielding the calls from worried relatives (resulting from the clichéd, overhyped and inaccurate media coverage) and unable to answer them and the information from HQ was not reaching them ... or the national media.

On the other hand when the Police contacted Mike Parsons to tell him everyone had left the Sheep and Wool centre and he asked for the names of those who stayed there ... he was told they’d not been taken!

Earlier in the day an RAF Sea King had passed over, clearly searching for the remaining competitors, and at one point it landed so the crew could talk to the rescue team. (It was not asked for by the race and as has been said in the forums the RAF supply this service as part of their training. There is no additional ‘taxpayer cost’ and the MRT teams are all volunteers supported by public donation.)

In fact several MRT members were competing, including the leader of the Cockermouth Team, who called them up when he got to the mid-camp at Gatesgarth.

Here there was an injury to a volunteer from the Glossop Scout Group, sustained when both mess tents blew away, injuring his leg and knocking him unconscious. (This may have been the head injury reported in the press.) He was dealt with by other members of the mid-camp team initially, and then by the event first aider Andrew Wilson - a serving paramedic - whilst awaiting the arrival after 40 minutes of the local ambulance service. Andrew and the local staff then decided to take him off to hospital with suspected knee and neck injuries.

According to Mike Parsons the condition of the mid-camp was really the tipping point for the decision to call the race off – rather than the weather conditions on the hill. The rising flood water forced vehicles to be moved and then threatened the power supply for the cabins installed at the two finishes, then the accident took place and the organising team felt maintaining the mid-camp was no longer feasible in the conditions.

The press accounts of 13 injuries may have been inflated by being combined with other incidents not related to the race, but the full details on this have yet to come out. Cockermouth MRT told me they attended two fractured ankles and one marshal with mild hypothermia, and the female competitor rescued after being washed downstream was helicoptered out with other walkers (not competitors)who were in difficulties.

There was also a major rescue undertaken by the Kendal team who sent me this comment;

Whilst the media were hyping up the search for missing people that never was in the Borrowdale/Honister/Gatesgarth area, across the way in Langdale the real search was on for three genuine missing, under equipped walkers in upper Oxendale/Red Tarn area.