With no prior-knowledge, the team arrived down on Saturday morning to attend a regular 11am training session to find a full-scale exercise was under-way. At 1058hrs the team phone rang “Howth Coast Guard - For Exercise Only, We have a group of lost mountain bikers on the cliffs. Their friends have not met at their planned time. 2 of them will meet you at the summit car park.”

The team was mobilised and on arrival at the summit they learnt that a bike had been spotted over the cliff edge along the south-eastern facing cliffs. searches were coordinated from Balscadden, Howth summit and Upper Cliff Road to pin-point the location.

At 1145hrs visual contact was made with the casualties on the rocks below by team ‘Charlie’. One lying flat on their back unable to move while another had tried to climb out and was stuck mid-way. With a considerable distance from road-access the van was manoeuvred to the closest trail-head and the climbing gear unloaded. With only narrow tracks, the quad was unusable and team ‘Charlie’ set off downhill with the ropes while ‘Alpha’ & ‘Bravo’ moved towards the location.

The location had been chosen to provide considerable difficulties in gaining a solid anchor. With all the resources in place, physical contact with casualty (1) on the rock face was made at 1215hrs in the form of a rescue strop / walking casualty harness to secure them. They were made safe by lowering to the bottom and the suspected spinal injury. While the first climber began to examine casualty (2) a second climber descended to treat the broken wrists of casualty (1).

The twist arrived as all information began filtering through to the team leader. A third bike had been found on the cliff top, meaning another casualty existed. With obvious large blood-loss (thanks to the descriptive notes pinned on the nearby rock) 1/3 of the team had to be drawn away in a large area search leaving nothing but the chance to lower a third rescue climber with spine board & stretcher.

Casualty (3) was found unconscious ~1310hrs treated on-scene and stretchered to a nearby ambulance at the road access. Meanwhile down below casualty (2) was on an extremely difficult steep ledge to transfer them to spine board. At the cliff-top the team were having great difficulty in positioning the 1m iron stakes on the rocky outcrop, normally sledged into soft ground. The tripod needed serious innovation to get it steady as near to the edge as possible.

At 1340hrs the whole team began the haul of the now packaged spinal injury of casualty (2) and retrieved them very quickly on the block & tackle system before carrying the stretcher up the steep narrow paths to the ambulance and passing onto medical professionals at 1358hrs. Returning to the cliff-top again the proceeded to haul out the walking casualty and remaining rescue climbers by 1410hrs.

Thanks to Adam, Richard, Poppy & Conor for letting us rescue you!

Posted by admin on Monday, March 5th, 2007 at 6:27 pm.