Early this morning three very experienced mountain bikers set off for a ride taking in the Tockholes area. At just before 09:00, one of the experienced riders, a 61 year old male from Bolton, took a fall resulting in suspected multiple injuries. His two colleagues immediately dialled 999 and requested the ambulance service.
Very quickly (at 09:07) we were paged by North West Ambulance Service (Lancashire) EOC Air Desk to respond to this incident to assist the responding land ambulance crew.
With team members already mobilising to the location and to collect team vehicles, at 09:19 a more detailed full team callout pager message was sent. Our first team member, David Cook arrived at the Royal Arms Public House, Roddlesworth RVP at 09:23, and made his way to the nearby incident site, joining the ambulance crew, who were already in attendance, at 09:28.
Our first team vehicle Bolton Mobile 1 arrived at the roadhead at 09:36 and equipment was quickly despatched to the incident scene within Tockholes No.2 plantation.
By 09:59 the casualty evacuation commenced arriving at the roadhead just as the North West Air Ambulance Helimed 08 landed in nearby fields at 10:10. Suffering from suspected fractured ribs, a head injury and a possible shoulder dislocation, the casualty was then transferred into the care of Helimed 08 which departed at 10:37 for Royal Preston Hospital.
For a short period the road alongside the Royal Arms Public House was closed to allow the safe passage of the casualty on the stretcher between the woodlands and the helicopter landing zone.
We would like to thank the two friends of this mountain biker, and his partner who arrived from a nearby address, for their understanding whilst we dealt with the injured man.
This incident represents the sixth mountain bike accident attended by the Bolton MRT in 2014. (2013 – ten mountain bike incidents)
The following resources were involved in this incident:
- NWAS (Lancashire) EOC Broughton Air Desk despatcher
- NWAS (Lancashire) Emergency ambulance – two crew from Blackburn ambulance station
- NWAS (Lancashire) Rapid Response vehicle – Advanced Paramedic
- NWAA helicopter callsign Helimed 08 – Blackpool airport crew captain/pilot, and aircrew paramedic
- Bolton MRT
- 24 team members on scene
- 3 team Land Rover Mountain Rescue ambulance vehicles
We would like to thank local tenant farmer John Smith (New Barn Farm, Roddlesworth) for this kind understanding of the requirement to land Helimed 08 in his stock fields and for his immediate assistance in ensuring sheep were kept a distance away from the aircraft.
At the conclusion of this incident we met up with long-standing friend of the team (and former Team Leader of Bowland Pennine MRT) Peter Taylor who was out in the same area for a Sunday walk with a colleague BPMRT member.
Coincidentally in regards to BPMRT whilst a small number of our team members were enjoying a post-incident breakfast at the nearby Vaughn’s Country Café, four passing walkers stopped to make a small donation to us as it turned out that one of the walkers present had been rescued a year ago, after injuring herself in the Dunsop Bridge area by Bowland Pennine MRT. The walkers made this donation as a general thank-you to all who volunteer for Mountain Rescue.
We would like to thank Bowland Pennine MRT for the use of their Winter Hill radio repeater which greatly assisted in the management of this incident.
Kind comments were received via Facebook from one Simon McLean, of the friends of the injured mountain biker today:
“Thanks from Rick and myself for doing a great job today getting our injured friend out of the woods and into the helicopterGet well soon Dave”
