Now Ye're Talking - to an expedition training, travel safety & first aid expert

Venturesafe

RasTa wrote: »

What exactly could have went wrong even if they summited at 925m?

Well if I take all the worst case scenarios !!!
In that case if they had continued on, they would have lost visibility at the top. No compasses or maps with them, no local knowledge and the north and south prisons ( cliffs ) not far away.
So disorientation, unable to get off the mountain, falling down a cliff all pretty quick things to happen.
Then as the mist, wind and rain hit in the temp would have dropped dramatically, then with added windchill, cotton T Shirts, no shelter, no wet gear, no food, not acclimatised to cold ( Spaniards ) they would be in serious danger of getting hypothermia really quickly.
In a typical example where the temp was a nice 19 Deg C leaving the car the temperature could drop by up to 1 Deg C for each 100m of height, with an easy wind of 15 kmh, temp probably something like 8 Dec C on top. If you are wet, hungry and tired with no protection body cools rapidly.
As hypothermia kicks in they could have started to suffer with the umbles ! which is mumbles, stumbles, fumbles and poor decision making, back to getting lost falling of cliffs as well as lots of slips, trips and falls.
With no phones, and no one out walking there would be no chance of a rescue.
If they had managed to get down without hypothermia or slipping in the wet or twisting ankles in their runners, they would have been in danger of wandering , due to poor visibility, into the Range Impact Area which is littered with unexploded ordnance !!
I don't remember how long the weather stayed down that day, so they might have been lucky and had it blow over them reasonably quickly but it could have been down for the night!

Ubbquittious

What would be your knife of choice for trips in the wild?

Venturesafe

Ubbquittious wrote: »

What would be your knife of choice for trips in the wild?

I always carry a swiss army knife, only knives with corkscrews !( glug,glug)
For the bushcrafty / survivally stuff I use Mora companions, strong, sharp, non slip handles, plastic sheath and cheap as chips, twenty odd euro.
You could spend 400 lids on a Ray Mears work of art knife, but then you would be afraid of your life to use it, damage it,lose it or sharpen it !! ( nice knife mind you, and I don't have one Santa)

Boards.ie: Niamh

Thanks for all of the questions and answers on this one, it's been quite interesting!

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