Success! The Caving went ahead as planned and after 3 weeks of anticipation we set off in high spirits. After the most terrifying ‘team talk’ ever by Walter, one of the BDARRT leaders, in which he told us that there was a 100% serious injury rate for the 24 hour scenario we set off into the cave for part one. This consisted of lying around in uncomfortable positions for about 4 hours being mock casualties while the BDARRT trainees tried to keep us alive. Ralph was quickly left for dead as his tension haemothorax proved too much work for the medics who were using a triage assessment. Myles had the most fun having an IV fitted for real and promptly taking the whole litre bag of saline solution whilst being fitted into a make shift stretcher for his broken femur. Petes evening took an unusual turn at this point. Although his injury was abdominal lacerations (NB. top of the abdomen) his medic took the scenario far too seriously and decided to undress him. All of him! Valiantly playing along he put up with it and redressed at the first possible occasion… Only to be stripped again by the same person an hour later in a ‘Secondary check’ practice session. Curiously no-one else felt the need to remove all his clothes.
By this time it was 4 am so we took a break on the cave floor for some food and a quick nap. We were rudely awakened at 6 am with news that the next scenario, the rescues, would begin and would be water based. The first rescue involved extracting one of the Trekforce leaders, Jade, through the tiny cave system to an internal river which would mark the endpoint for the scenario. The process lasted 3 hours and we probably only moved her about 40 meters. Jade was strapped up all of that time with her face constantly passing millimeters from rocks and walls. The second scenario involved extracting the casualty, this time it was Ralph, up a steep muddy slope. This proved to be great fun and after a few mud fights and people slipping all the way down the slope and into the water at the bottom Ralph reached the summit in his stretcher. The fun ended around midday and we made our way back to Belmopan, exhausted but all in great moods – it is definitely going to be a highlight of the trip.
