c_yeager
Oh yes, you are of course correct that rescuing someone at 10,000 feet is exactly the same thing as rescuing someone at 4000 when the weather is identical
That is not what I said. What I said was, that the worst conditions are pretty much the same.
Carnedd Llewellyn is a mere 3,491 feet at it's highest point, on which I have been in winds well in excess of 100 mph; with heavy clothing, pack, ice/snow climbing hardware you could dig in the front points of your crampons into the ice, lean forward and "hang" at something around 40 degrees with your arms spread. The updraft was so strong up our descent route it would lift and throw you back over the top; picture one of those updraft type wind tunnel machines used to simulate freefall during parachuting. We had to lay prone, crawl and pull ourselves down over a hardpacked cornice onto the snowface to descend.
Another afternoon in the same area, coming down off another snow and ice climb we encountered downdrafts that came in intermittant gusts across a lake. At something
less than 2,000 feet. They were so strong that it was impossible to withstand them any more erect than a braced huddle on the ground. Getting caught offguard meant an uncontrolled (and uncomfortable) fast trip over many yards of some very rough ground.
Others have no doubt experienced worse, perhaps in Scotland - or in the Cascades. But the differences will be academic to flying. The "hills" in North Wales are littered with plane wrecks going back to WW2, and the abruptly changing weather kills people on a regular basis.
As it happens, there are peaks higher than 10,000 in the alps (and the himalayas), where climbers, hikers and tourists get into trouble, get stranded or killed on a regular basis. The airborne SAR operations face the same problems.
Fleetwing,
The Westland Wessex is a helicopter (these replaced Westland Whirlwinds used in the early 70s - I think they use Seakings now but I have not been over that side of the pond since '95). They operate out of RAF Valley on Anglesey Island off the North Wales northwest coast; the helicopter SAR training base, among other things, for the RAF.
http://www.rafvalley.org/history.htm
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