Kate_Gilliver's blog

When we arrive at Base we find a set of plastic buttocks lying on the table in the mess room. On the floor of the garage is a plastic head and torso. We don’t find the plastic limbs that would have made up a plastic man, but we don’t need a complete body for tonight’s training session, just bits of one.

I am lying in a small gully near to the car park at Pont ar Daf. It’s a perfect winter day: bright sunshine, clear skies, snow on the hills, and the perfect temperature as I lie in my sleeping bag admiring the grasses encased in ice, at least until the sun reaches my position and frees the grass from its frozen prison. I have a fantastic view of Fan Fawr from my hide-out and pass the time between being found by SARDA dogs taking photos and dozing. Make the most of down-time.

Saturday. I’ve been up Corn Du with Mike and Searchdog Coire in conditions that were pretty unpleasant, it’s been snowing all day, more heavily inland than where I live on the coast. I settle down to watch the Calcutta Cup match as an interested neutral and 20 minutes from time the pager goes off.

Winter has returned to South Wales and the Met Office Mountain Area Forecast for the Brecon Beacons is highlighting a risk not just of hypothermia but of frostbite as well. So despite being hardened to lying outside for long periods of time in any weather as a Dogsbody, I’m actually quite relieved it’s Geraint and not me chosen to be the casualty for the Thursday night mini exercise.

“Just to let you know, there’s going to be a helicopter landing on your garden in a few minutes.”
“Nae problem,” replied the utterly unfazed hotel receptionist.

It’s midnight; I’m relaxed and ready for bed and I’ve just heard the kettle boil for my hot water bottle when the pager goes off. A couple of hours later I’m on a steep hillside in the Rhondda navigating for Mike and his SARDA dog Coire.

I’m shooting down the river on my back, pour down a chute between a rock and a hard place, and get a face full of white water. “Swimmer – rope!” comes the shout from the riverbank. I instinctively put my arms up to catch or snag the rope that should be zipping across my path. “b******s!” the voice shouts as the rope falls behind me. “Swimmer – rope!” yells another would-be rescuer further down the bank. I put my arms up to catch or snag the rope that should be zipping across my path. “Sorry, Kate,” the voice says contritely as it falls short. I drown. Virtually.

I’m assured that yes, the small grey rucksack containing the ‘Little Dragon’ device used to provide warmed oxygen to hypothermia victims really does have curled up in it, snoozing, a small dragon like Idris from Ivor the Engine. “Draco dormiens nunquam tittilandus” (let sleeping dragons lie) is the motto of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, so it’s with some trepidation that I open the bag and pull the dragon out into the cold garage.

They’re not ‘newbies’, they’re the Foundation Group. My intake is no longer the Foundation Group, we’re probationary operational members.

Pen y Fan is the highest point in southern Britain. It is a mere 93 feet short of making life impossible for those masochists attempting to complete the Welsh 3000ers in one day. It is also a relatively easy hill to climb, a 3km walk from Pont ar Daf with an ascent of 450 metres along a very well defined path known as ‘the motorway’. Within easy reach of the occupation centres of South Wales and accessed from a trunk road, it’s a very popular mountain.