Revisiting Ed's Slope A Follow Up To An Intense Day On Crib Goch

Hands up if you like greasy wet rock. Not me. On a day like this, I don't really have a lot of choice to be honest. I love that, like a hole in the cloud, making me see right down the valley. Whoa, I'm sweating. Slippery rock up here in the clouds. I could just clear it any second, that's what I'm hoping. Whoa, look at that. I am back on Crib Gough again, but there's a reason I'm up here this time. Not just because I want a bit of a run around the mountains by myself, because I'm actually retracing the steps from a little incident that happened six months ago. If you subscribe to my channel, you might have seen the video. A video called An Intense Day on Crib Gough, featuring Canberra's Mountain Rescue. If you haven't seen it, then you should, because this video is about it, so it'll make no sense otherwise. Oh crikey, look, those three lads over there. I was just chatting to them when I got up and one of them recognised me and said, oh, you're off YouTube, aren't you? Ed, Ben and Tom, shout out to them. I just warned them that the North Ridge is pretty slippery coming up. But yeah, I'm back on Crib Gough. I'm going the route we went, and I'm going to go back to where Ed had his accident, because the video I put up, I knew it'd get a lot of attention, just because of what it is. A lot of people asking questions, a lot of people making presumptions as well, which aren't all correct, as always happens when you put a video up on YouTube, especially a controversial one. So I've come back, I'm going to revisit the accident point, maybe even find Ed's boots, because he did lose them when he fell down. So if you've seen the video, last time I was on there, I took my mate Rory, and it was absolutely howling a gale. It's funny enough, because today, completely still, not even a breeze. It's rare that you get that up here. Right, just come over the Crib Gough pinnacles, get to the end of Crib Gough. There's a certain familiar little slope. But before we go any further, in my video I had more than enough information about where the accident happened, but when I saw people's feedback on different forums or threads elsewhere and stuff, I realised that quite a lot of people seem to have misplaced where it happened, and in fact, some of them are putting it well over half a mile further along this ridge than it is. Right, here we are at the top of a rather steep grassy slope, and I'm going to go down and I'm going to trace the route that Ed slipped. Now, let's look at the surroundings quickly. It's not windy, which is great, obviously misty. It's wet though, the grass is wet, and do you know what? What would be really silly would be me to retrace the steps where Ed had an accident, and for me to have the same accident. That would be stupid. So what I'm going to do is put on some spikes. Right, these are micro spikes. You would not use them on serious winter conditions, but for slopes like this, and for light amounts of snow and ice, they offer that extra traction. There they are, absolutely fantastic, makes a world of difference. Obviously, it doesn't mean I'm immune from slipping still, so I've got to be real careful. Right, so I think, let's try and remember this now, we've descended about this much of the slope. It was spread out kind of diagonally a bit. Yeah, it's starting to clear up. Yeah, we're actually going to get some sort of view further down, that's nice. And I believe Ed slipped somewhere around here. I heard Rory shout. I looked round, he was just bouncing down on the grass there, on his arse, but then he turned over on his front there, and he just flipped over that edge there and disappeared. Just like that. So I've measured it on the map, he slipped 150 meters. I said it's about 200 when Mountain Rescue were asking me, but closer to 150 I think. Still far enough. Still 150 meters further than you'd want to slide down a mountain. Oh Christ, I'm going, I'm going, I'm going. Imagine if you'd hit that. Oh yeah, that'd just slice you open. And that's the rock where it stopped. Tony was already sat by it, I stopped here, Rory was sliding there, he's like, Dave, mate, and I just kind of pushed him, and we were sat here, looking into the mist. Where is he? Right, guys, very easy to become secondary casualties when you see someone else in an emergency situation and you're just like, ----, but you've just got to think, no, pause, make sure you're safe, the people with you are safe, or no one's going to be able to help the, both the casualties just falling off. Came down here, zigzagged across, that's where I was helping Rory down. I think this is where I was like, yeah man, I think we're dealing with a dead person. ****, **** me, I think we're dealing with a dead person. I sort of see the speed he went down. Tony went on ahead, because obviously he's looking for his mate. That's another thing, some people seem to think that all four of us were one group, we weren't, we were two groups, it was me and Rory, and then Tony and Ed, who we bumped into at the end of Crib Gough. So that guy was called Ed, his mate's called Tony. He's, he's fucked. Oh Christ, where could he have, how far could he have gone? So I was helping Rory get down these bits, then you've got to find this balance of like, getting down like, slow enough so that you don't have an accident yourself, but at the same time, wanting to really hurry up, because for all I knew, Ed's down there, unconscious, face down in a puddle or something. So like, every second counts when you don't know where the casualty is and what their status is, so coming down here felt like it took forever. Oh Christ, we're going to have to come out and rescue. Where the **** is he? Stop! Right Rory, just make sure the same does not happen to us. Come on mate. This is not terrain you want to slide down. Poor Eddie. It's about here that, um, Tony started calling Mount and Rescue. Have you got any signal? 999 and ask for Mount and Rescue, no, ask for police, and then they get Mount and Rescue. Rory! Ah, ----, I better do it with Rory in here. Get sat down here Rory, so you're safe. I'll keep going. And then, unbelievably, heard Edd shout out. Although at first it was like, what the hell was that? Because obviously the wind was howling. We heard him shout a couple of times. Oh, Edd! Edd! I can hear someone. Rory, be so careful man. Edd! Not only does it tell me he's actually alive, but it tells me he's conscious, which is amazing, and he's breathing, which is fantastic. It's always good if you're conscious and breathing. Eddie was laid on that plateau down there, but obviously couldn't see him for a while because of the mist, so I was just like, coming down here shouting out for him. Where are you? ****, I can't believe he's conscious. Where are you mate? Oh, ----. Guys, he's here! Oh, **** me. Edd, man. Right, Eddie's boots and his trousers are going to be somewhere around here still. I think I remember... No way, that might be one there. I mean, if you think about it, it's not going to have gone anywhere. His boots aren't going to have blown very far in the last six months. I remember coming here, I could see his trousers just there. I saw one of his boots, which is that one I think I'm going to now, and I just did not know what I was going to see when I got around the corner. Did not know what state Eddie was going to be in. Oh, Jesus Christ, mate. ------- hell. Oh, ----. Look at this. To all those people on the YouTube comments and stuff saying, you were all wearing trainers. It's like Eddie was wearing walking boots. Here's one right now. Good argue, mine aren't boots because they don't have ankle support, but they're Zambalans, and I don't like ankle support. I like the flexibility and lightweight. I might take a picture of that and see if I've got 4G and send a picture to Ed. But anyway, he was laid right there on this slope. First things first, get you ******* off the ground, mate. Right, can you feel any brakes? You can see the direct line he must have taken. That is nasty as. Hello, sheep. You can see the pig track is not far away. It's about 100 meters. It's still quite a steep slope leading down to it. Actually, let's talk a bit about first aid because that came up a bit in the comments. Right, so I'm a mountain leader, yeah? Qualified mountain leader. And as far as first aid goes, all that means is that in order for me to do my training and then my assessment, I had to do a two day mountain and wilderness first aid course. That's all you have to do. It's a great course, teaches you a lot and all that, but it's just two days, two sets of eight hours in a classroom for some of it. You do role play for some of it and at the end you pass, right? Unless you're an absolute idiot, you pass. But there is a massive difference between role playing in a car park on a sunny day in Sheffield and actually suddenly being in the thick of it with a real life, very serious casualty in front of you in awful conditions and having to think there and then of what you're going to do. There's a massive difference. I've done the wilderness and first aid twice because you have to renew it every three years. Just done the courses that you need to do and guess what? This was my first ever super serious mountain accident and I'm going to guess that 99.99% of people who have done those first aid courses have never had to actually apply them in any way because being present at an accident is actually quite unlikely. So when I was coming down towards Eddie after hearing him shout out, I had no idea what I was going to see when I got around the corner. I'm stood there, I'm just looking at him because I can see his head is just bleeding. It looks heavily like it was pooling in his hood and stuff. I couldn't see how bad the cut on his head was because his hood was up, there's just blood everywhere. I was looking at that, I was like, right, okay, what do I deal with first? Then he says, good God, I'm freezing or something like that. My legs are freezing. Okay, my feet are freezing. Yeah, right, bring all your stuff. We need to get him off the cold ground fast. And that just like, right, okay, of course he's absolutely freezing cold and we are in dire conditions, like this guy has not got long if he stays in snow and ice like that. Trousers ripped off, heavily injured. I was carrying a two-man shelter, not one of the, some people think it's one of those orange survival bags, it wasn't, it was a two-man shelter that you can climb into. Couldn't really climb into a shelter with Ed in that condition, but I got it out, it's obviously windproof and stuff, so I was trying to get it underneath him, wrap it around him, get some protection from the wind and the ground. It was all very rushed. I know there's a procedure of like, test this, do that, do that and that. But as I'm getting my stuff out, I just want to know if there's anything obvious, like the obvious stuff before I can start patting him down, trying to feel for like breaks and things or like extra bleeding. The mode I was in was getting off the ground, like that just sucks the heat out of his body. So that's basically what we did, like worked out, he's probably bust a leg or something because he was in agony if he touched his leg, which turned out to be a fractured femur, which is, that is a big bone to break. He was complaining about his wrist all the time, so just presume that was broken and it was. Didn't know it at the time, but he'd bust a bone in his neck and two bones in his back. Obviously that's really serious, and with a casualty like that, you've got to presume that they've got like a bust neck or something, so you don't just start dragging them around or like turning them over or moving them and stuff, and it just makes the injury worse. I've had people in the comments saying, oh you didn't do that properly or blah blah blah. It's like, well I didn't move him, I was aware of that danger, but I was also trying to insulate him, and it's very difficult to insulate somebody who is, first of all, laid on their back with their head lower than their body, and also just you can't move them because they're broken and in so much pain. So I had to move him a little bit, but I didn't move him myself. I asked him to move himself, with the thought being that, you know, he can feel what suddenly hurts or whatever, and he's not going to just suddenly jolt himself in the wrong way, whereas somebody dragging him around might. Roll over onto your back, and then that's it. Christ, oh my leg. Oh your ******* head mate. Right, now lift your head slightly. Christ almighty. Keep talking to us anyway, right? Right. Now you're really ripped off the further up there, that's why you're cold. In an ideal world he would have not been, had to be moved at all, and right, could have got Rory there, could have got Tony down, we could have all just like lifted him up at exactly the same time. It wasn't going to work like that. First of all, Tony was up there on the phone to Mountain Rescue, didn't want to come down in case he lost reception. Rory's there. Me and Rory are not going to be lifting Ed. He's a big guy and he's smashed up. We're not going to be both like just picking him up, keeping his head completely straight with his back or anything. That wasn't going to happen. Best I could do was ask him to move himself to a slightly better position, and I put a backpack under his head to just kind of keep it all straightened out as much as I could, but that was the best we're getting, especially when we're trying to insulate him. Right, can you put that over him? So yes, of course it wasn't a perfect procedure, but you know, this was my first time. Everything wasn't just going to like click, oh yeah, I know exactly how to do all this, and so bearing in mind where we were, what the conditions were like, and the nature of Ed's injuries, and the fact there's only a few of us there, there was no way we were moving him. So luckily we were able to get through to Mountain Rescue straight away, and Tony was able to give them the GPS coordinates where we were. So then it was just a case of trying to keep Ed warm, and I say warm because like he's not warm, he's freezing and we can't warm him up, but we can try slow down the rate that he's cooling long enough for Mountain Rescue to reach us, so Ed doesn't die by the time they get to us. So that became the name of the game, wrapped him up as much stuff as we could. Very little could really do to be honest, because we can't move him. All right, get that foot. Jesus, get that right round him. There were comments on the video saying like, oh what you should do is one of you should have laid down next to him to block the wind and share body heat, and it's like mate, yeah I'm sure in a textbook it says to do something like that, but look around, the ground is absolutely freezing. If one of us laid down next to Ed to block the wind from him, then guess what? We've got two casualties of hyperthermia. There are obviously some real experts online giving advice, and I can listen to them, but there's also a load of idiots just giving like dumb advice. It's like, have you even watched the video? Oh yeah, the thermal blankets, right, so I put a shelter around Ed as best I could. I had one of those survival blankets as well, didn't bloody get it out because I forgot where it was. It was in another pocket from my first aid kit, which at another time I thought yeah, that's where it is, but in the heat of the moment I was like, just forgot it was there. So that was an error, big error on my part, but now I keep two thermal blankets and I know exactly where they are, so won't make that mistake again. When I went down and the three or four guys came up to help us, they had a couple of blankets as well, so got that around Ed, and plus they were gathered around him as well and making jokes and stuff. It was just good for the morale at that point, so thank you to those men. Funnily enough, one of them was like, you're brave Dave, aren't you? When we were down there away from the accident, he says, you're brave Dave off YouTube. I said, yeah, and he goes, mate, I've got an apology to make. Me and my friend, we had a few beers one night, we went on one of your videos and we were giving you loads of grief, and I was just like, what the ****? I do get a bit of grief from my videos, but to come face to face with someone who's been doing it, it's kind of funny, and we're just like, what? We shook hands and he was just like, I'm sorry mate, I'm sorry, and I was like, don't worry about it, get it all the time, and a bit of humour just over there whilst Ed's just dying over here. That guy sent me a really nice message on Facebook after. And then of course, after ages, mountain rescue turned up. First guy came from across there, came out the mist, blew the whistle, and everybody just came flooding in, and that was a bloody relief. When that guy first came out, he was just by himself, came down here, I was just like, ****, because I think we'd been waiting for an hour and a half. It's about that, but it felt like we'd been waiting for 10 hours, because when you crouch down there around someone shivering like crazy, so seriously injured, just dying in front of you, you just think, oh Christ, and there's nothing else you can do. That's the most frustrating part. All I could do was go down, try and find help, come back up over and over, but even then it doesn't, it's not going to help Eddie really. It was almost just for me to feel like I was doing more. So that was a very long time, and when they turned up, you just think, oh thank God, professionals have entered the building. And then they just took over, me, Rory and Tony stepped back, they gave us these great big warm foil jackets to put on, because we were all pretty cold as well. I'd been running up and down, which would kind of warm me up a bit, but Rory and Tony had just been crouching my head the whole time, and they were cold, they were shivering. They had a doctor on the team, which was great. They got him on a stretcher, that took quite a while to kind of prep him to get on a stretcher, I remember watching that, and obviously they got heat packs on him. I guess they inject him with something as well, to just get rid of the pain, knock him out for a bit. And then they carried him up that way, over that brow, down to the pig track, and then from the pig, down to the miners, which is quite a steep slope. So they had it attached to a rope, guy at the top belaying it, 100 meter rope, all the way down to the miners there. And then they had this cool little contraption, you put a wheel on the stretcher, the Land Rovers can come along the miners quite far, so they'd get Ed and that, drive them off, and then the rest of us got lifts as well, and go back down to Nant Paris, the mountain rescue, for the debrief. It was interesting going there, because I've driven past it enough times. Went for a debrief into the little kitchen, got pizza and chips and biscuits laid out and stuff. That's when I realised how hungry I was. Rory told me after, that during the debrief, he was trying not to laugh, because as the lady was speaking to us, I was just eating biscuits, but like, picking one up, just slotting it in my mouth, like a letterbox. Just, swallow, next, I wasn't even thinking about it, but he was like, almost got the giggles watching that, because I guess after, after an intense afternoon like that, a lot of emotions running and stuff, sometimes you just kind of burst out laughing over silly things, and there's a massive relief when they told us that Ed was, you know, he's in a real serious condition, but he was stable. We could hear the helicopter, because obviously the helicopter couldn't come here to pick him up, because the wind was just ridiculous, and it's fog, but down at Nant Paris, there's an area where the helicopter can, could land. They prepped him in there for about an hour or so, and then we heard it take off and go to Liverpool Hospital, whilst we were still in the debrief. She was asking us questions about what happened, what were we doing up there, all that stuff, because at first they thought that we were a group of four, and I was like, no, no, no, we're two groups of two, and we only just met them there. Tony is Ed's friend, me and Rory were separate from that, we would just happen to come down the same route to get to the pig. She said, to be honest, we all had the right kit for the conditions. I think she just meant, we were all in jackets, warm clothes, waterproofs, proper boots, so she didn't need to, like, bollock us for, for just heading out in the mountains in, like, a t-shirt and a pair of shorts or something. She actually congratulated us for having done a good job of doing our best to try and keep Eddie alive before they could turn up and take over. So that was nice to hear it from them, because, you know, I'm pretty sure that they deal with enough people that they're not afraid to hold back and tell people that they were idiots, or they were completely unprepared, or they're time wasters, whatever. I'm sure they get a lot of that, so for them to not say that to us, it's quite nice. Finally came out of Mountain Rescue and drove back to Clamberris, and I dropped Rory off, and Tony drove off to go see Ed in the hospital, obviously. I was just sat in the car by it was dark, there's rain blowing in, like a storm blowing in, I was just looking out going, wow, that was quite an intense day. I think the video is just fascinating to watch, because there's nothing quite like it out there. Lots of comments on the video saying things like that, how it kind of opened people's eyes to the dangers, but also opened their eyes to how awesome Mountain Rescue are, and that was another thing, because in the video I explained Mountain Rescue are volunteers, they're not a paid service, like the fire brigade, or like the police, or something, and I think a lot of people were not aware of that. They thought that they're, you know, paid by the government, always on standby, second you need them, they come rushing up, it's like, no they don't, and there's two things to take away from that. First of all, they're volunteers, so they're completely reliant on donations from people, so bloody well donate. I explain how to do in the other videos, set up a direct debit, £10 a That's all you need to pay. Enough people do that, it's sorted. The second thing was, because they're volunteers, they're not just constantly on standby, they have their own lives, which means even if you're able to call them straight away, like we were, like Tony got on the phone within a minute of Ed falling, they still took about an hour and a half to reach us, because they're scattered around doing their own things, living their own lives, at work, or with family, or out and about. They get that text, or I don't know how they do it, I think it's text, they have to drop what they're doing, they have to find a car, they have to drive to Nant Peris, they have to kit up, they have to get briefed on what's going on, they have to set out in the Land Rovers to the nearest point they can get them to, and then they have to set out on foot, in awful conditions, to come find people. That's going to take a long time, so even if you're lucky enough to be able to phone them straight away, you cannot presume they'll be here in 10 minutes, they won't be, and there's not a helicopter magically coming to rescue you either, necessarily. The weather, if it's bad, the helicopter can't get near you, so you can't rely on that. The lesson from that is, pack kit to sustain body heat whilst waiting for mountain rescue in an emergency. It doesn't even need to be extreme conditions like it was for us, it could just be a cloudy day. As soon as you are unable to move for a long period of time, you realise how cold things get and how fast. Throw in a bit of rain and the wind picks up a bit and suddenly everybody's shivering, everybody's in a bad way, and people start dropping like flies if they haven't got the right kit to keep them warm. So that's a big takeaway from the video as well. Might seem obvious to some people, but to a lot of people it won't, it'll be news to them. Fascinating experience, fascinating video, and just mega pleased that Ed is going to make a full recovery. I mean that was six months ago, he told me that it's going to take about a year from the accident until he's fully recovered because of how serious the bone injuries were, but hey, a year recovery is better than just dying on a lonely mountainside, so everything went well. And I found one of his boots as well, so I'll get that back to him. Yeah, the mountains baby. Bloody love them, but just be careful, because the mountains do not give a ---- about you the second you mess up on them. So in summary, because I've talked a lot on this video, yes I know what I did wasn't perfect first aid, and I really want to learn more and more first aid, so I'll be much more proficient, much more confident, and for it to just be straight in my head when I need to know it. So I'm going to find more courses to do, might just do that one again and again. If anyone out there runs first aid courses like that, hit me up and maybe we can arrange something that I come along to some of your courses and do them in exchange for, I don't know, promotion of something, I don't know, because they're not cheap and I want to do loads of them, so that's quite a lot of money. So I just want to get really good at it. Second thing, never underestimate how slippery grass can be. So from now on, carry my spikes every time I go out, doesn't matter what the conditions are, just have them in my bag so I've got that option of coming down steeper terrain if I have to, but preferably don't have to do it. Find another option. Third thing is bloody set up a donation to Mountain Rescue. If you're on the mountains regularly or even semi-regularly, just donate to them every month. It's so easy to set up, it's £10 a month, you won't even notice it, and it makes such a difference. So they are volunteers relying fully on people like us donating a little bit of money every month in exchange for possibly having our lives saved, or definitely in exchange for them saving other people's lives. And as people who enjoy the mountains, we're all one big team really, so let's look out for each other by donating to Mountain Rescue so that they can do the hard stuff and save people. If you're a beginner who would like to experience these mountains or maybe those mountains over there or whatever, let me know because I'm a mountain leader and I love taking people around these places and showing them this stuff. Whatever your ability, we'll find something to match it and we'll have a great day out. Yeah, iambravedave.com. So thank you for listening to my very long ramble about when young Eddie fell down this ridiculous slope and stopped there and things got real. Okay everyone, stay safe out there and I'll catch you later on. Bye!