FIRE crews, paramedics and police rescued a critically-injured climber who plunged from a cliff top at Lindley Moor yesterday.

Dozens of emergency workers rigged up a 200-metre rope-slide - suspended over boulders, walls, fields and a country road - to lower him into the waiting air ambulance.

Thankfully, the dramatic operation was just an exercise to hone everybody's life-saving skills.

The ``injured" mountaineer was played by rope rescue instructor Gil Griffiths.

His role was to pretend he had suffered a serious head injury.

Soaked in fake blood, and with a gaping leg wound straight from a horror movie, he was slowly lifted on to a spine-board and lowered down the suspended line, along with a paramedic.

A rope running from the cliff top to a distant field, where the air ambulance had landed, was put under tension to create the slide.

The exercise was so realistic that many onlookers at first thought they were watching a life-and-death situation as the rescuers battled to get Mr Griffiths to the waiting helicopter.

Watching the mock-up was a boy with a strong personal interest.

Thirteen-year-old William Sellers fell 40ft at Longwood Edge last October while out walking his dog, Max.

He fractured his skull, broke numerous bones and damaged knee ligaments during the fall.

For him, the rescue exercise brought back some bad memories.

"I hit rocks going down and I blacked out. I flipped over and hit my head on a rock," he said as he watched from among the crowd of onlookers lining Lindley Moor Road.

Fifty firefighters from Huddersfield, Elland, Halifax, Wakefield and Pontefract took part in the morning exercise.

The event was co-ordinated by Huddersfield Sub-officer Lee Benson, who said it was a mock-up of a difficult rescue.

Mr Griffiths, who weighs more than 16 stones, had ``fallen" into a deep hollow and needed to be lifted and then ferried cross-country over rough terrain.

"We somehow had to lift this guy out of the canyon," said Sub-officer Benson. "We had to see if it was feasible."

And it all had to be done in under 60 minutes. "We call it the golden hour, from the time he's injured to getting him to hospital," added Sub-officer Benson.

At the end of the rescue, he said there would be a de-brief, to allow all those involved to assess the day.

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