A group of very experienced mountain bikers were enjoying their weekly ride on the moors, when one of their members, a 44 year old man from the Cuddington Heath area of Cheshire, suffered an accident, resulting in him being unmounted from his bike.

The incident location was on the Darwen Moor access track to Darwen Tower, directly above the local place name of Aggies Staircase. From within the group a GPS reading was obtained and a 999 call was made to NWAS (Lancashire locality) A&E Control. At least two other members cycled down the Stepback Brook track to the Roddlesworth information centre to meet up with the responding ambulance.

Because of the moorland location, LAS Control immediately paged out at 19:48 Hrs for the Teams assistance.

Thanks to the excellent information from the informants LAS were able to pass accurate RVP and incident location details to our Team Leader.

Team members arrive on scene and assist the LAS crew with the casualty

With this evening being our training evening 31 Team members, some already at our base and some on route, were immediately dispatched to the Roddlesworth Information Centre RVP.

The casualty is helped onto the team’s Bell Mountain Rescue stretcher

Our first two members reached the RVP at 20.05 Hrs and met up with the informants and were guided to the moorland incident site. Our Team Leader then arrived at 20:08 Hrs, followed by BM2 at 20:10, BM4 at 20:12 and BMs 1 & 3 at 20:20. At 20:21 our first two members had arrived at the casualty site, where the casualty was being well looked after by his companions. The casualty had suffered a very serious fracture of the upper arm. Shortly afterwards our main rescue party arrived on scene, having escorted up the responding LAS crew.

A large stretcher party begins the descent from Darwen Moor

Continuing into the sunset, the team approaches the bottom of the moor/

The injuried man was in considerable pain and was treated with Entonox (MRT) and then with painkilling drugs (LAS), a stretcher evacuation commenced at 21:05 Hrs, fortunately just as the midges were coming out on this very warm and muggy evening. Although Team vehicles had accesed to within half a mile of the scene, the track was too bumpy to consider transporting the man down in a Team vehicle, instead he was stretcher evacuated back to the ambulance RVP at Roddlesworth. By 21:42 Hrs the ambulance departed for Blackburn Hospital.

Team members form a handover chain, used when carrying stretchers over particularly steep ground

Arriving safely back at the roadhead, the casualty is assisted into the LAS ambulance

This is turning out to be a very busy month for the Team this being our 20th seperate incident of the month so far.