Early this morning four team call out list members – Gill Leigh, Training Officer Elaine Gilliland, Paul Brain and Chris Tennant, and five of our new Trainee members – Carly Raines, John Dickinson, Kris Kilshaw, Scott Beresford and Naomi Horan, travelled in 2 of our team Land Rover vehicles to Green Withens Reservoir near Ripponden to attend this years Mid-Pennine Search and Rescue Organisation joint day excerise.

Holme Valley Mountain Rescue Team hosted and organised the exercise, and as well as the host team and our members, it was also attended by team members from Rossendale and Pendle MRT, Bowland Pennine MRT and Calder Valley Search and Rescue Team. The car park venue at the reservoir must have been the muddiest spot in the whole of the North West – the team issue PFDs were a must! (Webmaster, this refers to our Personal Flotation Devices / Life jackets)

HVMRT’s catering tent, keeping the troops fed & watered

Teams were deployed in groups of 4-5 members and a search of the surrounding moorland areas commenced by 10.00hrs. A total of 5 ’exercise casualties’ were located, treated and evacuated to awaiting vehicles, Unfortunately none of these were in the areas given to Bolton members. We were deployed to assist with an evacuation of an ‘injured’ mountain biker but only caught up with the party as they reached the road head – such a dreadful shame! Luckily Naomi was on hand throughout the day with a very large bag of sweets to keep everyone’s spirits up and the weather remained dry throughout, with the sun even putting in an appearance in the afternoon.

Bowland Pennine MRT and Rossendale & Pendle MRT’s vehicles

The exercise concluded around 15:30hrs when it was back to base to clean 2 very dirty team Land Rovers. The members who attended would like to thank Holme Valley Mountain Rescue Team for organising this event and providing a very welcome opportunity to train in a generally unfamiliar area.

(With thanks to team member Gill Leigh for providing this report)