Michelle's Blog number 2

Michelle is one of our 2011 probationary members. We asked her to write a short blog series describing her experiences on the probationary member training programme. Michelle is a regular visitor to our facebook page if you'd like to leave her a comment

What a hugely rewarding summer it’s been so far!  The past few months involved an intensive skills program to train up as capable search and rescue volunteers. The initial phase of required training is now complete and probationary members are finally callout operational! This is a much anticipated milestone for the new members, and even as I type this I have one eager eye on my phone with my rescue kit prepared on standby for my first official callout. (Watch out for the next blog post that will include the updates on how that went!). The post below summarizes the highlights of the incredible experiences of the past few months.

My first highlight has got to be the very professionally run search and rescue training that I’ve been lucky enough to have the chance to do. This has been both on land and helicopter-based. The picture on the left captures Geraldine Murphy and myself getting winched for the first time by the Irish coastguard as part of heli-operations training. This and the crag work are definitely the more exciting and adventure filled side to mountain rescue and a huge amount of fun to take part in.   All the recruits have been going through crag training, search and rescue operations, patient packaging and completed the all-important Remote Emergency Care training to ensure that as a first responder we have all of the skills and training needed competently assist in an emergency. The skills I’ve been learning have been eye-opening. I now firmly believe emergency care treatment should become mandatory training in secondary schools in Ireland so that not just rescue folk but every person in the country has the awareness of the correct actions to follow if they need to help save a friend or loved one’s life.  

The second highlight from the past few months has been the extensive fitness training that myself and team members have been undertaking. This has included challenging ourselves with frequent mountain running training and rock climbing to really push individual fitness levels in the team to peak standards. This training culminated with the 129km Wicklow Way Relay where the rescue team training took on a team challenge to complete the course.  This really united the team through regular sports training sessions but particularly provided an additional unexpected challenge when one of our very own team was actually rescued as part of the event.   

The final and biggest highlight over the past few months was experiencing first-hand how the team rose to the challenge of bridging the funding gap when recessionary cuts in government funding severely threatened team finances. The rescue team addressed this by running a hugely successful sponsored 32 km night-hike for over 300 local hikers. This event was a big personal milestone for me.  Leading 300 people through safely over 32km of through mixed terrain of the wild Dublin-Wicklow mountains by night was a big challenge. The night navigation training practice and fitness training of the past few months proved invaluable on the evening as Kieran Creevey (from the Great Outdoors store) and myself guided our own team of 20 folk over the rugged and remote course. The final result was this fun snap of my team next morning with everyone exhausted after hiking all night long, but having the time of their life. 

That’s it for this post, but watch out for the next update that will share experiences of the first official callout with the team!

Hope everyone is enjoying a safe and adventure filled summer out on the Dublin and Wicklow hills,

Thx for reading,

-Michelle