Team supports Winter Hill Fell Race by providing Standby Rescue Cover

Today the team provided its usual standby rescue cover provision for the gruelling Winter Hill Fell Race, organised excellently as ever by Horwich RMI Harriers and Athletic Club.

Now in its 30th year (the team has attended every event), the course takes in an 11 mile route with 2700 feet of ascent, centred on Winter Hill, starting and finishing at Rivington Hall Barn.

This year, 36x Call Out List members, provided cover at each of the nine checkpoints, with ’spot pick up crews’, radio links, start/finish liaison and control and communications (MRT radio network only).

In addition four members of our Support Group, Iain Clarkson, Julie Thompson, Steve James and Amanda Strickleton provided an endless supply of bacon, sausage butties (with a choice of sauces!), soup and hot drinks to the team from our purpose built Catering Trailer.

187x runners plus 2 unregistered, entered the race today, which took place in low visibility foggy conditions, with freezing temperatures. A handful of competitors retired from the race, and a selection missed the cut off times as the marshall stations shut down, with the low visibility conditions causing navigational issues on the course. Thankfully, as last year, none of the retirees required our medical services.

The team is happy to provide standby rescue cover for this event (as with other fell running events on our moors) and to support our local fell running community.

The Winter Hill Fell Race is the first race we provide cover for across the year. The next race we are covering is the Darwen Dashers “Mr Sparkle’s Dark ‘Un Fell Race” on Friday 24th February. This race has not been run before and starts at 19:30 from The Royal Hotel, Tockholes.

During todays standby rescue cover our Team Leader received a direct notice call from United Utilities Ranger Joe Grima, regarding an injured hill walker with a fractured arm in the vicinity of Stepback Brook, Roddlesworth.

Our Team Leader and our BM4 vehicle with 4 crew on board responded to this incident after first liaising with NWAS (Lancashire) Control.

Upon arrival on scene it was quickly established the casualty had managed to walk down to the responding ambulance and we were stood down.

This is recorded here for informational purposes only and does not feature in our incident listings.