A HARD-WORKING team of volunteers have endured a testing uphill battle over a hectic festive period.

Aberdyfi Search and Rescue Team have faced five separate call outs since Christmas Day, leaving loved ones and warms homes behind to go out and save stricken casualties from frozen terrains.

The team’s first call saw them abandon their presents and head out to help find a missing person on 25 December.

Fortunately the walker was located soon after the initial report was made and the team could return to their Christmas dinners.

Next the team helped save a 16-year-old girl with a damaged ankle after she slipped on a leaf-strewn, steep path near Ganllwyd on the following Wednesday.

Then, at around midday on Friday 30 December, call-handlers from the team received a request to assist North Wales Ambulance Service in the extraction of an injured person from a difficult and inaccessible position near Fairbourne.

The casualty, an elderly lady, had slipped on a steep bank and suffered a head injury from the fall at a remote cottage in the hills above Arthog.

Both the air-ambulance and a road ambulance were in attendance but neither could get close enough to move the woman.

A small party of volunteers transferred the woman onto a stretcher and lowered her down the slope to a rough track, from where she was then carried to the waiting ambulance for transfer to Bronglais Hospital.

Read the full story in this week’s Meirionnydd edition of the Cambrian News