‘He was actually cracking jokes’: a volunteer on the 54-hour Brecon Beacons cave rescue | Wales

It was when the text message suggested volunteers bring a sleeping bag that Dr Peter Dennis realised he might be in for what he politely refers to a “protracted operation”. But little did he know he would not return home for three nights after the longest rescue mission in Welsh history.

The ecologist from Aberystwyth University had heeded the call last Saturday to join the search for an injured caver in the Brecon Beacons who had fallen a mile into the 43.5-mile (70km) “intestinal” network of Ogof Ffynnon Ddu, which translates as Cave of the Black Spring.

The medics first on the scene established it was a stretcher job: George Linnane, an experienced caver, had suffered leg, jaw and chest injuries after falling in the Cwmdwr caverns when a rock bridge gave way.

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'Accidents happen': rescuer says caving is safe after Brecon Beacons incident – video

Going the “easy”, quick way out was not an option. “Easy”, in caver world, involves “a long, flat-out crawl which is only 40 or 50cm in diameter in places”, explained Dennis, a veteran caver who is chairman of the British Cave Rescue Council.

The long way round it was. Had his day gone to plan, it would have taken 38-year-old Linnane about three hours to reach the surface from where he fell. Instead, it took a team of almost 300 unpaid volunteers from 10 teams around the UK 54 hours to get him out as they passed his stretcher from hand to hand through some unimaginably tight spaces.

“We reckon we had about a third of the rescue capacity of all our teams across Britain and Ireland mobilised and working on this rescue, which gives you an indication of the significance of it,” said Dennis.

The rescue, coordinated by South & Mid Wales Cave Rescue Team, required much lateral thinking. “There was one point we were faced with a slightly downhill, muddy wet slope and no footholds. It looked quite tricky for carefully managing the stretcher so a colleague, Joel, chirped up, ‘Pete, we can do this!’,” remembers Dennis. “We lay down, Joel shoved his boots on my shoulders, and we formed a human ramp down this mud slope and basically the stretcher was slid down over our faces and chests.”

Teams carried the stretcher three hours at a time, swapping over to combat fatigue and cold. “Heads drop, you get very tired. It’s extremely exhausting carrying the stretcher over waterfall cascades – just imagine carrying a heavy load up a river above the surface,” said Dennis. The reason so many people were needed was to form “an avenue” to pass the stretcher along. Linnane is “fit – but he’s a big lad, a rugby player sort”, said Dennis.

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On his second trip underground, on Sunday morning, Dennis helped to carry Linnane along a rift – a high, narrow passage. “We had to turn him 180 degrees to present him to a rigging team so he could be lowered down a cliff. It was very tricky. It was hard work raising his chest up to the wall to get his legs pointing downwards.”

Linnane remained lucid and in good spirits throughout the ordeal, said Dennis. “He was actually cracking jokes, which showed he was on a level above just survival mode. He was listening to what people were saying and commenting on that. That’s what filled us with optimism that it was just time that we needed, and not that there was some critical deadline to beat.”

The casualty was surrounded by friends, said Dennis. “A lot knew him … there was a lot of telling him who had arrived, people he knew, and saying, ‘Don’t worry, George, we will get you out.’”

Linnane must not feel guilty about the rescue, insisted Dennis. “If he felt guilty about it he’d soon be told that was silly, because that accident – his foot on that rock bridge – could have happened to any caver and he was just the unlucky one who put his foot there on that particular moment.”

It was 8pm on Monday when Linnane was finally brought to the surface, a round of applause ringing out in the thick fog. Dennis celebrated with a mug of tea. Nothing stronger: “I had to drive home at 11pm.”