2 November: The View from The Bottom
By Dave Wylie
The View from The Bottom
It was a bit of a late start. But then, it WAS the Sunday morning after the night before's Bonfire Bash. It was also a rather grey and drizzly day. Five of us - Al Metelko, Linda Crossley, Chris Williamson, Susan Glenan (on her first KMC meet!) and myself (Dave Wylie) - headed round to Ogwen in Linda's car. We walked in to Idwal from the big lay-by on the A5, and split into two teams at the foot of the slabs. Chris and Linda set off up "Tennis Shoe" taking their rucksacks with them, with the intention of continuing up above the slabs and walking off straight back to the car. Al and I took Susan up "Ordinary Route", which seemed an ideal choice given the wet conditions. We left our gear at the bottom, planning to come straight back down after doing the route. Both teams arrived at the top of the slabs at about the same time, and nobody fancied the notorious descent route down the gully. Chris and Linda stuck to their plan of doing a route on the Upper Tier and headed up "Lazarus". Al, Susan and I began to head back down the slabs. The pattern was for me to abseil first, followed by Susan, then for Al to dismantle the belay and down-climb. By this stage the ropes were soaking wet, and tangling with a vengeance. For the bottom pitch, Al lowered Susan off to allow me to abseil down nice straight (but still very wet) ropes, before he down-climbed to join us.
It was now exactly quarter past five in the evening - I remember looking at my watch. We could see Chris and Linda at the top of "Lazarus" on the upper tier, and we were easily able to shout up to them and hear what they shouted back. We agreed that Al, Susan and I would walk back down to Ogwen Cottage to wait, while Chris and Linda were going to "head left as you face in to the crag" and then walk down to meet up with us. Al shouted up "Have you got a head torch?", to which Chris replied "Yes". It was getting a bit gloomy by this stage, with the mist down and the days shortening towards winter, so they would probably need their torches to get down.
We set off down the path, and got to Ogwen Cottage at about twenty to six. "They'll be about an hour behind us", I guessed and the three of us then began to fill in the time by practising our mantleshelf techniques on the gateposts (and, in one case, the Pay-And-Display machine!).
After an hour and a half, we began to wonder why Chris and Linda were taking so long to get down. Al walked down the road to check that they hadn't gone straight back to the car (which was now the only one left in the lay-by), but they hadn't. He then walked part of the way back up the path to Llyn Idwal to see if he could spot any head torches, but there was no sign of them.
By eight-o-clock the three of us were getting a bit cold, and rather puzzled. Al borrowed my head torch, and ran off up the path to have another look. He went all the way to the bottom of the Idwal Slabs, then climbed part way up the descent route - shouting all the time for Chris and Linda as he went. He saw nothing, and heard no response. When he got back to Ogwen at around Nine, we discussed what should be done. The car was checked again, and it was still there with no sign of either Chris or Linda.
We went through the possible scenarios, and discounted the possibility that they'd walked off in some wrong direction or simply got lost. There was a chance that they'd got stuck on an abseil somewhere, or that one of them had fallen; but we still couldn't work out why there'd been no answer to Al's calls. By this stage, we were all getting concerned that something unfortunate might have happened. After going through the possibilities again, Al and I decided that we'd better call out the Mountain Rescue. Apparently it was my turn to do this, as Al had done it twice before and therefore it was someone else's go. So, at twenty past nine, I dialled 999 in the payphone, and asked for "Mountain Rescue". This set various events in motion, resulting in first a police officer, and then Tony Jones from the Ogwen Valley Mountain Rescue Organisation arriving, both in less than twenty minutes.
Everybody wanted details. We must have repeated the facts at least four times: How many people were missing, what were their names, how old were they, how experienced were they, where had they been seen last, when had they been seen last, what route were they doing, what colour jackets were they wearing, did they have torches, did they have helmets, did they wear glasses, etc., etc., etc. By this stage, Tony Jones had written out a note which we put on Linda's car, and we'd all been taken to the Ogwen Valley Mountain Rescue Headquarters - "Oggy Base". Perhaps another half an hour had passed.
Tony now wanted a decision from us. Did we want him to send up a team to look for Chris and Linda? He made it very clear that it was our choice, and that he wouldn't decide for us. He said that the team would happily go out and look, but he would be very unhappy if the missing pair "didn't want to be rescued". He also mentioned that the team had already been out three times that weekend. Various thoughts of Chris or Linda in serious trouble flashed through my mind as Al and I looked at each other in unspoken confirmation, so I said "Yes, send out a team". Within seconds, Tony had rung the pager number, and the team members began to call in. I'd stopped keeping track of the time by this stage, but it can't have taken much more than another half hour for the team to assemble and get ready.
Two rescue teams set out onto the hill. The three of us, the policeman and the rescue Landrover's driver waited at Oggy Base, watching Tony co-ordinate the search. We could also hear the radio messages coming in from teams on the hill, so we had a good idea of what was going on. The driver kept us talking through the quiet stages of the search, presumably trying to keep our minds from thinking the worst. Despite several cups of tea, and central heating, we were all "cold inside" as Susan put it. We were still trying to work out what could have happened, hoping all the time that Linda and Chris would be OK.
The searchers launched two flares from Llyn Idwal, (the second being needed after the first one shot off sideways and exploded in the Devil's Kitchen). They couldn't see or hear any response, so they then headed up into the Nameless Cwm and set off a third flare. At this point they reported seeing a light, and set off upwards to investigate. At quarter past twelve, the advance team made voice contact with Chris and Linda. They reported via radio to Base that they had confirmed identities, and that both of them were well. There was huge relief shared between the three of us down in the base, and we could at last stop worrying. The rescue team had to set up ropes to reach the two of them, and get them out of the area. The mood had lightened considerably now, and a radio message from one of the search teams trying to find their way back down was "It's not them that's lost, it's us!". This comment resulted in a rapid scolding back over the radio from Tony Jones. The two teams got back to Oggy Base, with Chris and Linda, at two-o-clock in the morning.
The de-briefing didn't take long, and Tony Jones didn't fulfil his threat to "Rip their B**=A3=A3*
