On this fine winters evening with plenty of snow on our local moors, eight members of Bolton and District Round Table joined us for a stretcher sledging exercise on the slopes of Winter Hill.

Bolton and District Round Table’s Chairman Craig Knights had kindly made the team his Charity of the Year 2009 / 2010, resulting in a £1,000.00 donation to us on Wednesday 13th January 2010.

Joining the eight Round Tabler’s were 24x Team Call Out list members and all 10x of our Probationary members, even former Bolton MRT / SARDA now retired search dog team of handler Dave Marsh and Search Dog Chi put in an appearance.

Conditions for the exercise were excellent with completely clear skies, temperatures of around minus one, plenty of snow underfoot and all (well most) of the usual deep boggy sections of the track up to Winter Hill well frozen over.

With a scenerio of an advance party of team members having come across two hypothermic casualties, the joint Bolton MRT / Bolton and District Round Table rescue party set off on to Winter Hill flats with two stretchers and other rescue equipment.

Can you see Orion in the back ground ?

Miniflares and hand held Distress flares easily illuminated the ’exercise’ casualty site to guide in all the ’rescuers’, with the flares lighting up a vast area of the moor thanks to reflections off the snow.

Soon both ’casualties’ were on the stretchers, and thanks to the extensive snow cover it was an easy stretcher sledge back to the car park, rather than the more usual stretcher carrying.

The Round Table members played a full part in all the proceedings, reporting they’d had a fantastic time avoiding peaty holes, ditches, streams, and crunching through snow and ice.

The evening ended with all having a social drink in the Wilton Arms pub.
The team would like to thank Bolton and District Round Table for their support of the team in 2009 / 2010, and for their members obvious enthusiasm on this exercise and interest in the team.

(Please also see ’news’ articles dated Thursday 19th February 2009 and Wednesday 13th January 2010)