Mountain Rescue The Right Way

Mountain rescue techniques in the Himalaya have been fashioned after rescue systems in the Alps and the American Rockies. The tendency has been to concentrate on sophisticated helicopter based rescue systems whose focus is on evacuation of the dead or wounded at high cost. This often restricts rescue to fully insured Western climbers. Little time has been spent on studying alternative rescue systems tailored to Himalayan conditions, that is, until Indian climbing enthusiasts — Parmindar Brar, Mandip Singh Soin and Dr. Ranganath Pathak — decided to do something about it.

Brar is an officer at the Ministry for Energy, Soin runs a trek agency, and Dr. Pathak serves at Safdarjang Hospital — all are from Delhi. As climbing partners in the Western Indian Himalaya, they noticed the utter lack of mountain rescue facilities and as a small effort they set up the Himalayan Evacuation and Life saving Project (HELP), with seed money from the London-based lnlaks Foundation. Edmund Hillary, Everesteer and New Zealand´s High Commissioner to India, serves as HELP´s patron. As Brar, HELP´S President, explains it, transplanting Western rescue systems to the Himalaya simply will not be very effective. In the French Alps, for example, helicopter and rescue crews are on constant standby, the climbing area is small and well mapped, radio communications are ubiquitous, rescuers are well trained, and hospitals are only minutes away by chopper.

In the Himalaya, says Brar, the area to be covered is vast and climbers are few and far between, so it is not possible to have rescue teams on standby in each valley. Cumbersome regulations and lack of equipment make communication very difficult, and training is negligible. Additionally, it can take up to a week to get a helicopter rescue organised, at prohibitive cost. When an accident occurs, the most critical period is the 24 to 48 hours following, so that by the lime a helicopter arrives, most people actually requiring rescue are already beyond help.

Low tech rescue

The three climbers from Delhi decided to set up a pilot rescue system in the Himalaya. But first they first visited Scotland, Wales and Chamonix, centers for European climbing, and trained on the latest techniques in low-tech rescue off snow, ice and rock faces. They learnt the latest in pulleys, ropes, jumars and stretchers. What most impressed them was a unique stretcher-on-a-wheel. Brar made a quick pencil drawing and upon his return had it duplicated at a welding shop behind his house in New Delhi.

As a pilot project, HELP set up a rescue post at Tapovan, which is beyond Gangotri and a day´s walk upstream from Gomukh. Between August and October, they trained climbers, high altitude porters and villagers from the area. The training was divided into two components: medical and rescue. The medical aspect dealt with acute mountain sickness, as well as with the rudiments of first aid, including the use of splints, bandages and drugs. The rescue training dealt with how to bring stretchers down sheer faces and through deep snow, how to make do with ropes and karabiners, and how best to evacuate out of a mountain altogether. "There will always be a need for helicopters, but we feel that communication and training are the key," says Brar.

Better communication

The kind of training provided by groups like HELP, or the Government mountaineering institutes in Darjeeling, Uttar Kashi and Aru (in Kashmir), combined with adequate communication, seems to be the key for the future of mountain rescue in the Himalaya. As far as communication goes, things seem to be looking up for climbers in the Western Indian Himalaya. It is reported that J&K Tourism is setting up a communications network which will cover the entire Nun Kun area and most of Kashmir. It is also reported that Uttar Pradesh Tourism is considering setting up a communications system. Rescue systems will be much more effective once these networks are in place.

But neither helicopters nor sophisticated radio gadgetry will be of much use without rescue training, which is where HELP hopes that its pioneering effort will act as a catalyst for the rest of the Himalaya. They are convinced that their low cost rescue alternative is the only viable one, through which more and more local people, including high altitude porters, will learn rescue techniques, not only in the western and eastern Indian Himalaya, but elsewhere: in Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan. Ultimately, local inhabitants will benefit as much as the occasional mountaineer who has a mishap.

(For further information, contact HELP at 81141, Safdarjang Enclave, New Delhi 110029.)