South Eastern Mountain Rescue Association Blog

I`ve just returned from a weird and wonderful adventure with South Eastern Mountain Rescue. The annual summer pilgrimage in Ireland when 30,000 people walk the stony worn routes to Croagh Patrick.

This year is my first visit, and we travelled 6 hours north to sleep on a gymnasium floor in Rice College in Westport -camping indoors was how they described it - to rise very early and report to Mayo Rescue base and be tasked with work on the mountain. Teams from all over Ireland were sent up in shifts to maintain a chain. Studying all the different teams was interesting in itself.

The cloud came down and we had fog, drizzle and rain continuously until the mountain path was churned like ready mixed concrete! The devoted pilgrims looked like a procession of characters from some strange carnival. Many walked the long route barefoot! One scrambled on all fours. There were little ones, old ones, yoga gurus, the disabled, young roughnecks, women in skimpy outfits, travellers, an American wearing a T shirt with the slogan "I make stuff up" who held an audience all the way and confronted people with silly "Hey, don`t I know you from Tinselstadt in Germany?" then flashed his T shirt.

There were whites and blacks, fat and skeletal, cameras and TV crews, sponsored walkers, ancient eccentrics....mindblowing to watch all of this. And every so often we were given applause as MR crews "doing the good work" (unquote), carrying such heavy loads etc. - mildly embarrassing as we plodded up and down.

We in our team did two stretcher carry-offs. There were 16 casualties taken off during our shift, which ended 6.30pm and the pilgrims were STILL coming up the mountain as the day was ending.

Amazing. Incredible. I slept hardly at all, and arrived home at 1am this morning, filthy, wet and worn out. I think I have my wife worn out replaying the tapes as I remember some of the sights we saw. There were three Germans, I`d guess, who, among the filthy laughing throng, came down from the summit with serious faces; Mum, Dad and daughter maybe 16 years old. They were in rain capes and were slow and immaculately clean while everyone else was muddy and dirty from falls and scrambles. We saw large grown women fall headlong among the rocks, caught off balance, and we had our hands full carrying a casualty already.

The team members were very supportive and we all enjoyed the spectacle and the work. Most amazing of all was to pause, stand and listen……to a sound like distant seagulls, the scrunching of rocks and stones, and the static effect it all created.

You can tell I`ve been impressed….

A huge thank you to all my friends and team mates!!!

Robin