Originally Posted by
IainR
Get off the hill..
If you are dangerously cold, uncontrollable shivering.. just get down.. if you hurt your ankle.. if you can get weight on it.. get off the hill.. don't take your shoe off and let it swell.. just get off.. no matter the pain.. unless you can get loads of layers from walkers on and you know help is close just get off the hill..
DNF'ing is perfectly OK.. this stoical bullshit we see too much.. 'never quit' 'a winner never quits' etc... just stupidity.
Broken ankles don't kill people.. hypothermia does.
On sea survival courses we're given minutes to live once we hit the water, even in summer we're looking at a few 10's of minutes before we die..
When you are wet to the core.. jacket or not.. the heat loss is extreme.. so if you are wet.. cold.. with no insulating layer.. get off the hill.. if the temperature is less than 10 degrees and you have a strong wind with the resulting wind chill you won't last long, you will be losing heat constantly... so you get cold, start stumbling, take a fall..
Runners seem to have this magical faith in a very thin layer of wetted out goretex... if you are active its OK.. but the moment you slow its useless and you need to get off or get insulation on.. we don't have insulation with us in almost all races.. so get off the hill..
The thing is the early symptoms of hypothermia are confusion and then tiredness.. so the moment you have any muddled thinking.. just get off the hill, but that's why you should just get off the moment you get uncontrollably cold.. Wendy Dodds found a guy lying down in the great lakes race the other year, he said he felt tired.. she undoubtably saved that guys life..
So.. what to do.. get off the hill.. what not to do.. stay on the hill.. of there's a strong wind you need to get out of that.. if you can descent the leeward side.. if that will bring you to safety.. get into woods.. but the main thing is get back to civilisation asap.