students and rescues....

[hell little caver]

Hi all
so emailed all the rescue team i think.... lack of replies so thought I'd use an altervine.. please help..

Hi my name is hellie brooke i'm the chair of student caving in the UK and am giving a talking for hidden earth about student caving and need some fugues and was wondering if you could help

so these are the questions
1 how many rescues have you had each year for the last five ( cave only)
2 hot many in each of those years have been students

if you know for a area or a team please help 

Hellie

 

[Benfool]

for DCRO, only counting cave rescues and not animals:

2014 (so far): 5
2013: 1
2012: 2
2011: 5
2010: 3
2009: 2
2008: 3

I don't believe any of these were student groups, although its possible that a few of these included cavers which are members of a student club.

B

 

[Fulk]

and need some fugues

Better contact J S Bach (he'd probably chuck in a few preludes an' all.)

 

[Pitlamp]

You can probably get the info you need by looking at the individual websites of the various cave rescue teams - or by looking at the annual incident statistics on the British Cave Rescue Council's website. (These may not distinguish between student / non student casualties though.)

Traditionally student clubs have been blamed for a high proportion of rescues - for example in the Dales there has often been reference to the "silly season" (early autumn). I never  thought that was entirely fair (and I've been a member of two rescue teams over a long period). It could simply be that students make up a high proportion of the caving community and also that they tend to be very active during their 3 years at uni.

Certainly in the Dales some of the most competent and successful clubs (in terms of cave discoveries) have been university clubs - think Kingsdale Master Cave, GG Far Country and Far Waters, Snatchers Pot (& many other Penyghent Gill gems), Penyghent Pot's Living Dead Extensions etc, Langcliffe Pot, Sleets Gill Cave, etc, etc, etc, not to mention the huge amount of cutting edge expedition work done by student cavers over the years.

Statistics need to be interpreted with great care - perhaps also allowing for who generated said statistics (which might have affected what information they saw fit to include / leave out).

Proceed with caution . . . . .

 

[Lazarus]

Fulk; naughty, but I did laugh a little, despite knowing very little of Bach.

Pitlamp; perhaps the question was asked by Hellie in an attempt to debunk the myth of the "silly season"? Gather the "statistics" that prove students are not as bad as portrayed?

 

[robjones]

The annual summaries published in Descent give the ages and genders of all those rescued - I'd anticipate that by far the majority of UK cavers in the 18-21 age group would be university students and so might provide a useful approximation.

 

[cap n chris]

I'd hazard a guess that student rescues have quite a lot of dynamics at play and it's not solely because they are students that the rescues occur, e.g.:

New term dates neatly coincide with the commencement of pretty appalling weather conditions, "Fresh" often results in a large influx of complete newbies who all need to be "processed" (i.e. taken underground) often in over-large groups, in less-than-adequate wet-weather gear (see first point), usually either hungover or still in the throes of booze, with inadequate sleep/rest etc., led trips often being supervised by some quite gnarly/capable/hardcore superfit mentalists whose idea of a suitable trip is something akin to Ogof y Daren Cilau wearing pants and flipflops "for a lark".

It's almost a counter-culture to clubs who have the intent of trying to gain and retain members, whereas with Fresh it's a case of "we've got too many, let's try and shake lots of them off now we've had their money".

If I'm wildly wrong then that'll be reassuring. 

 

[cavermark]

...in over-large groups, in less-than-adequate wet-weather gear (see first point), usually either hungover or still in the throes of booze, with inadequate sleep/rest etc., led trips often being supervised by some quite gnarly/capable/hardcore superfit mentalists whose idea of a suitable trip is something akin to Ogof y Daren Cilau wearing pants and flipflops "for a lark".

Is there some other way of caving then? 

It's almost a counter-culture to clubs who have the intent of trying to gain and retain members, whereas with Fresh it's a case of "we've got too many, let's try and shake lots of them off now we've had their money".

These days this doesn't seem to be the case (there's a lot of competition from all the other more glamorous "extreme" sports available like skydiving frizbee, unicycle snorkelling, monkey tennis etc.)

If I 'm wildly wrong then that'll be reassuring.

I hope you can be wildly reassured by Hellie's statistics!  (so to speak)

 

[John S]

Maybe the question should go to the older cavers and ask them -
How many times were your rescued as a student and how many times since

 

[nearlywhite]

This will be a bit of a boring post - apologies!

Statistics as to the proportion of student to non student rescues won't be greatly helpful. There are a few outcomes:
1) High proportion of Students
2) a 50-50 split
3) Low Proportion of Students
4) An indecipherable dataset - supplemented with anecdotes

Outcome number 3 is the only one that is... useful (and I hesitate to use that word). The issue here is that if you do come back and give X% for proportion of student rescues, that figure won't die and will spread as numbers are a crutch to any argument. Who knows how it will be used in future (I'm thinking more of the dealing with University Health and Safety Brigade)?

There are a few problems with the dataset:
1) How do you classify a 'mixed trip'?
2) As the DCRO data shows, we're dealing with small sample sizes (I have looked at this topic before...) and there are a myriad of problems associated with that namely;
3) It could massively vary from year to year, I'd hate for someone to do a repeat study

I do think that many student groups are inherently safer than 'adult' ones, I can think of 3 or 4 incidents I've witnessed in the last couple of months that would back that argument. There is a great onus on university clubs not to get rescued because it means a whole lot more to us (i.e. the club's existence).

Perhaps a like with like retrospective study comparing similar caver population sizes in both groups, amassing many caver years to show how long a student club spends underground before someone is rescued?

I shudder at the thought.

 

[damo8604]

These days this doesn't seem to be the case (there's a lot of competition from all the other more glamorous "extreme" sports available like skydiving frizbee, unicycle snorkelling, monkey tennis etc.)

I'm sure there is some kind of skydiving frizbee/monkey tennis variant played in the Belfry on most Friday nights

 

[cap n chris]

I'd have guessed they're more likely to fall into the category of gnarly/capable/hardcore superfit mentalists, hungover or still in the throes of booze, with inadequate sleep/rest and whose idea of a suitable trip is something akin to Ogof y Daren Cilau wearing pants and flipflops "for a lark".

Thankfully I'm mostly wildly wrong though.

 

[Pitlamp]

Maybe the question should go to the older cavers and ask them -
How many times were your rescued as a student and how many times since

But are they anywhere near as active or ambitious as they were whilst students?

As several people who have contributed to this topic have indicated - numbers must be interpreted with great care if any conclusions are to be useful.

 

[Peter Burgess]

Any initiative or project that leads to greater awareness of student safety while caving is good, even if founded on statistics of limited significance.

 

[Pitlamp]

Any initiative or project that leads to greater awareness of student safety while caving is good, even if founded on statistics of limited significance.

My view is that the background of the companions I cave with is really unimportant - but I agree that any initiative to improve caver safety generally is of value.

 

[Peter Burgess]

Of course, but if an initiative is focussed on one part of the spectrum, and delivered in a way that is appropriate for that community, it may have greater impact. A drive to improve safety amongst veteran cavers might focus more on the limitations of an ageing body!

 

[kay]

Of course, but if an initiative is focussed on one part of the spectrum, and delivered in a way that is appropriate for that community, it may have greater impact. A drive to improve safety amongst veteran cavers might focus more on the limitations of an ageing body!

And of course any stats has to look not just at the number involved in a rescue but the number caving in the first place.

CRO stats (from memory - I may be wildly wrong) show that a lot of rescued walkers are in the older generation. So should older walkers stick to canal tow paths? Not necessarily - a glance round Horton car park early on any morning suggests that older walkers make up the majority, so of course they accrue more rescue incidents.

 

[Pitlamp]

Good point Kay.

(Peter - I suspect you and I are actually singing off very much the same songsheet here.)

 

[Peter Burgess]

I know.

 

[JJ]

I will try and give my perspective as being a CRO member and controller for quite a number of years. The much fabled student "silly season" in the autumn has  passed and probably ceased at least 15 years ago.

CRO does not actively categorise if a party is a student party or not or on an official trip etc. Why should it - it's none of their business, same with permits etc. CRO does however normally record the ages of those assisted.

I have had a quick look back over the last 60 or so incidents where CRO has deployed underground and also relied on memory regarding the group. I think 9 or so have involved university student parties and around 10 have involved school/led student parties, or thereabouts.

JJ