3#02 David “Heavy” Whalley : the Search and Rescue legend

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“There’s no greater feeling than finding people alive in the mountains.”

Episode 3#02 meets a legendary figure in Search and Rescue circles. A member of RAF Mountain Rescue for 37 years, David “Heavy” Whalley has attended more than a thousand call-outs, and saved the lives of so many people in the hills that he’s routinely been approached by rescuees during his lecture tours in the years afterwards. He’s managed rescue teams across the UK’s mountain ranges, ice climbed in Canada, helped orchestrate a successful expedition (and incidentally saved multiple members of less fortunate teams) on Everest’s north ridge, and been awarded numerous honours from an MBE to a Distinguished Service Award.

But there’s been a darker side to his career too. Amongst the impressive statistics of his time on the hill there are nearly 70 aircraft crashes which he’s attended in person. He was senior team leader during the recovery efforts following the Lockerbie bombing. He’s been part of teams attending tragic mountain-related fatalities throughout the hills across multiple decades. He’s no stranger to post-traumatic stress, a term which only came into common use once his career was underway. 

And yet, hear Heavy speak about this lifetime of service in the mountains, and he’s as effusive now as he was as a “wee, skinny laddie” who joined the RAF in 1971 (aged just 17 years old). He’s close to completing his ninth circuit of the Munros, and though he may be retired from RAF Mountain Rescue, nothing gives him greater pleasure than seeing the young generations of rescuers find the same joy in the job that he did for all those years.

Hear all of this, and enjoy an inspirational hour of a life lived to its fullest, in Series 3, Episode 2. 

> Find out more about Heavy here: http://www.heavywhalley.com/

> Read Heavy’s blog here: https://heavywhalley.wordpress.com/

> See Heavy’s recent award for “excellent in mountain culture” here: https://mountainfestival.co.uk/culture-awards/david-heavy-whalley-2023

> Follow him on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/heavywhalley

Listen, enjoy, tell your friends, subscribe to the podcast if you get and chance, and thank UKHillwalking.com for their kind support of this series!

[episode recorded on 23/03/23]

00:00 - Introduction

02:50 - Welcome, Heavy: “I was told to go away and put some weight on”, 5’4” but still able to handle himself.

05:35 - A lifetime in RAF search and rescue as an air crash expert. Losing aircraft crews training in the mountains. Handling nearly 70 aircraft crashes.

09:54 - “You can have the best team in the world, but if you’re searching in the wrong place you’re wasting your time”.

10:20 - “We’re working in conditions when other people don’t go out”... and avalanche warnings only started in the late 1980s. The benefits and challenges of technology.

14:20 - Working on the Lockerbie bombing, no knowledge of post-traumatic stress disorder and at the time, “It took me 25 years… and I’ve never got over it”. 

18:37 - Mountain rescue “is an amazing system, that we should all be proud of. But it’s a dangerous game”.

19:03 - Plenty of individual awards, but “unfortunately I don’t believe in these things. In the military you don’t have an option. They should