Event Safety Services

22/09/2025

ESS HAS BEEN RUNNING WILD SINCE 2012!

We’ve just clocked up 13 years providing safety consulting, comms and first aid to the excellent Running Wild Trail Association!
Running Wild stage a calendar of Blue Mountains events over spring to autumn and all have become iconic in their categories including the Solitary Ultra, one of the most beautiful, remote and toughest short ultras around. The Kedumba Half is a brutal “little” jaunt down and back up Kedumba Pass, Glenbrook Marathon is a loop course based out of Euroka Clearing and “Saints and Sinners” is a social lap race format in the mid-mtns bush near Springwood.
It’s been a real honour to work with the community-minded Committee over so many years and to contribute in our small way to these great events and the wellbeing of thousands of trail runners.
Running Wild events are a great intro to Trail Running for Blueys and Sydney people and are friendly and welcoming for enthusiasts and fast runners.
The Narrow Neck Night Run is coming up on 15/11/25 - check it out.
https://www.runningwildnsw.com/

Photo: Lucas (3rd from the right) with some of the committee and vollies at Kedumba Half in September 2025.

10/09/2025

Working with the team from Single Track Events to get ready for Hounslow Classic this weekend. Here's our first weather report. It's looking like ideal running conditions and maybe some fast times.
ESS provides the Medical team, remote first aiders, the radio repeater network, advice around weather and conditions and the water filtering/pumping for the new water point in Blue Gum Forest.

WEATHER UPDATE - HOUNSLOW CLASSIC Marathon Sat 13/9/25 & 17km event Sun 14/9/25

• After some rain, heavy at times on Wednesday and lighter on Thursday weather conditions will clear for Friday and the weekend.
• Trails will be wet underfoot and puddles will remain in places.
• Damp rocks in shady and/or sheltered areas such as Grand Canyon will stay slippery into the weekend.
• River level for the crossing at Blue Gum Forest will be a little higher than usual. Possibly knee deep but we’ll get a better idea in coming days.
• Temps at Allview and cliff top tracks will top out in mid-teens (14C to 16C both days).
• Expect temps 10C hotter than that on north facing slopes in the sun (eg the climb up to Lockleys).
• Winds - light westerlies both days.
• Skies alternating sunny/cloudy both days.
• Humidity will be at the lower end of the scale (good news).
• Summary - ideal running conditions. We might see some fast times.

More accurate reports coming daily from now as our data becomes more accurate. Watch this space.

Lucas Trihey, Event Safety Services. Report issued 1100hrs Wednesday 10/9/25

04/07/2025

UTA PLANNING
Spent yesterday in a planning meeting with NPWS, BMCC, Water NSW, Ironman and the course team to review UTA 2025 and plan for 2026. This included ways to manage weather challenges, to further develop contingency course options and the trigger points to enact them. We also looked closely at the course out Narrow Neck (big news coming soon! :-)) as well as improving the erosion mitigation for Bruces Walk and Duncans Pass.
Then it was back to the ESS office with Tanya (Regional Director/Ironman) and Tom Landon-Smith (course marking team/UTA) to tidy up course changes and to fix the congestion issues we saw at Tarros/Duncans this year. UTA 2026 will see significant improvements.

30/05/2025

UTA 2025 - ITS A WRAP…

We just submitted the Medical Report for UTA 2025 to NSW Health, Emergency Services, Land managers and more. It’s been huge! Thanks RN Leanne and for the data crunching and words.

2025 saw 638 treatments (up from 518 in 2024) which reflects the extra 400 Miler runners. Three ambo transfers (a record low for such a huge field), oh, plus one more called by a bystander… oh well.

Since 2021 and despite a slight annual increase in runner numbers we are seeing fewer moderate and serious issues. I think three factors are at play:

(1) the trail running community seems to be maturing. Remember that big, commercial trail runs have only been occurring since 2008 with the first TNF100 and runners, coaches and event organisers are getting better with things like preparation, training, nutrition, hydration. Failures in all those areas used to create dozens more sick runners in past years.

(2) ESS has learned the medical and safety issues around ultra-distance trail running. Our approach is now more focussed on pre-emptive engagement and helping runners understand their bodies and their ailment earlier in the race (and hence help them “stay on the road”) whereas in the early years we waited for sick people to fall over.

(3) ESS has increased the clinical capabilities and staff at our Check Points and Medical Centres. Under the supervision of some of Australia’s most experienced trail running doctors we are now offering a higher level of treatment and supervision of moderately ill runners. Some patients that in earlier years would have been sent straight to hospital are now recovering under our care (under close supervision and with the benefit of better equipment and more medications) and can be released to their family or friends.

One of our aims, with the support of Ironman, has been to minimise the impact on local health and emergency services. Contributing to this has been the development of our “on call stretcher team” that has enabled us to carry out non-complex stretcher evacs off the course. Naturally anything serious is escalated to NSW Ambulance and Police Rescue (thx for being there Damo and ). Most of the stretcher team is made up of students doing the Outdoor Guides course at Katoomba High, Blue Mountains Grammar and TAFE.

Welcoming and looking after 7500 runners plus thousands more family members and supporters is a huge team effort across many organisations and individuals. It brings massive benefits to local businesses and an injection of energy into the whole community.

On behalf of the ESS team I’d like to sincerely thank the following for your engagement and support:

* Uncle King and the Gundungurra mob
* NSW Health
* Blue Mountains Council
* National Parks
* Ambos
* Police Rescue
* Scenic World - especially Aleks and Molly
* Water NSW

And the many runners we met during your many and varied journeys :-)

I particularly want to thank the Ironman and event team for your trust and support around budgets and resourcing - your passion for looking after all these runners really shows. (regional director/trails and RD), (Snr Ops/RD), Landon-Smith Course Team/Founder) Michelle Pepps, Bec and your teams.

Lucas Trihey / Event Safety Services

27/05/2025

Two legends … and me :-)

It was great to spend time with our ESS Medical Director Dr Glenn Singleman (centre) who worked at Finish Medical Centre at UTA last week. And double exciting to bump into one of our early trainers Paul McQuaid (left). Paul is a senior paramedic trainer at Ambulance NSW and did a number of training sessions in pre-hospital care (initial response etc) and whose legacy lives on with much of our training around compressions, injectable adrenaline and more. Many of our trainees will have heard me invoke Paul’s name as the basis for some of our procedures. Congrats Paul on your finish in the 100km event!

12/05/2025

We are just days out from Ultra Trail Australia 2025, the biggest trail run in the Southern Hemisphere. The first repeater was set up today to cover the new Miler course where it does a loop on the Six Foot Track section by the Coxs River. Six more repeaters will come online in coming days to provide comms and a safety net across this monster of an event: huge runner numbers, hundreds of volunteers and about 150 ESS shifts covering first aid and medical, logistics, track prep and erosion mitigation, ops managers and more. Hundreds of runners are arriving in the upper Blue Mountains every day and there's a buzz in the air.

25/03/2025

March - SUPPORTING TWO HIGH PROFILE FILM SHOOTS

Following our retirement from the Bash events late in 2024 we were expecting a bit of down-time before building up more work. Well… two film productions dropped in our lap. Firstly a fun little TV Commercial for Aldi - keep an eye out for the ESS vehicles, radios and other gear used in creative and imaginative ways…

This was followed quickly by the action thriller APEX that filmed in Blue Mountains locations. ESS provided hundreds of staff/days of gear porters, shoot nurse, canyon guides and safety consulting for the more adventurous locations.

In addition to our regular staff we gathered in lots of local students doing their Outdoor Guiding qualification from Katoomba High, BM Grammar and the local TAFE.

Every day I was getting really genuine rave reviews from the film company about how great our team was: hard working, skilled, willing and fun to have on set. It was great to give so much rewarding work to our regulars and all these young new crew.

The pics tell the rest of the story :-)

25/03/2025

TEAM WORK THAT MADE THE (BASH) DREAM WORK

Big Red Bash and Outback Music Festival Group just won the Australian Tourism Awards for BEST FESTIVAL & EVENT!

This is a great acknowledgement of the dream for this event (thanks Greg and family!) and for ESS it’s an acknowledgement of what we did to help make it so successful for eleven years.

It started with the Big Red Run in 2013 where the ESS team did the course design, mapping, logistics, event safety, radio & satellite network and where we began to develop the team of crew and vollies who went on to be the backbone of the Big Red Bash for 11 years.

Our collaborative approach to creating and leading a team, and our quest for - and retention of - crew who embrace those values led to productive teams devoted to delivering great events and a premium customer experience.

Our crew showed the inherent qualities of teams built on collaboration, especially that everyone watched out for each other. These were safe and well organised events.

So this award is also for all the ESS crew over the years who so often went above and beyond the call of duty to deliver excellence.

Thanks ESS team!

03/03/2025

ESS SUPPORTING FILMING OF APEX NETFLIX MOVIE

We have a team of 20 to 30 assisting in the coming two weeks including as canyon guides, registered nurse, water safety staff, porters, a radio network with 3 repeater channels and an emergency stretcher team to extricate a patient.
In the planning stages we’ve worked with the production Safety and Risk team to fine-tune and submit safety plans for the remote locations, consult about canyon equipment and advise on general canyon and water safety.

Starring Charlize Theron, Eric Bana and Taron Egerton Apex has already done a lot for local employment and the next two weeks will boost employment for the ESS crew that includes local guides and recent graduates of Katoomba High School and Blue Mountains Grammar School’s outdoor recreation HSC subject.

Work starts in Glenbrook Gorge tomorrow morning! Next week we'll be in Grand Canyon.

pics courtesy

29/12/2024

FAREWELL BASHES > FOCUSSING ON EVENT SAFETY, ENDURANCE EVENTS AND MEDICAL TEAMS

After 11 busy years helping to set up and conduct the Big Red Bash and Mundi Mundi Bash outback events we have called it a day.

This will allow Lucas and the team to focus on our other event work:

Safety Consulting
We can help you develop your events to build on and improve safety including participant welfare, heat management, crew and workplace safety. As well as the obvious reasons to look after participants and minimise the chances of dramas, lots of land managers and Emergency Services appreciate the work ESS does to help set up and contribute to documented safety plans and permits.

Land Manager and Stakeholders Liaising
We have extensive experience setting up and conducting events in National Parks, with indigenous groups, Councils, Catchment and all sorts of private land owners.

“Can-Do” Risk Management
Our role is often to come up with innovative risk mitigation measures to allow events to proceed rather than to shut things down. With an approach grounded in formal risk management yet informed by decades of pretty wild expeditions and events we can usually get your great idea up and running.

Medical Teams for Endurance Events
Our doctors, nurses and first aiders are active adventurers. Our company culture is based in compassionate and informed participant welfare but with a solid understanding of resourcing and budgets. The service can include everything from a mini field hospital for a multi-day event to a solo first aider for a half day.

Radio and Satellite Comms
With specialised radio repeaters, multiple dedicated commercial channels and hundreds of radios we can cover events of all sizes in remote or urban areas. Our satellite-linked radio repeaters even allow supervisors and team leaders to remotely monitor comms and teams in isolated areas.

Patient Extraction
We continue to build our experience with extraction of patients from remote areas. Under the guidance of our Emergency Doctors and using specialised equipment we can carry out patient extraction of minor and moderately injured or ill participants. If you want to really look after your entrants and minimise the strain you place on local health or emergency services we can help you with this valued capability.

Site Design, Surveying and Mapping
Our team surveyed and created the beautiful layout for the massive campground at Mundi Mundi Bash and we continue producing online and paper course maps for endurance events.

Go to our website for more details: https://www.eventsafetyservices.com.au/

And for more about what we did for the Bash events over 11 years have a look here: https://www.eventsafetyservices.com.au/the-sun-sets-for-ess-on-big-red-and-mundi-mundi-bash-events/

10/11/2024

We have so many trail running events in the calendar now and our team of three Leanne Nora, Mack and Kennedy went back to one of our first events on the weekend as they provided first aid for over 360 runners at the classic Running Wild Narrow Neck Night Run.
Our safety and first aid business grew around Australia’s first trail runs including North Face 100 (now Ultra Trail) in 2008 and we’ve serviced the Running Wild NSW events for over 10 years.
Event pics courtesy www.jodimcconaghyphotography.com.au

22/10/2024

At the recent Mundi Mundi Bash we had the performers and film crew for HEADLINERS. Great story, great performers and the film crew were everything you'd want in the way of quality journalism and story telling. I also got to meet up and work again with Nunnari, disability advocate and previous collaborator for the funding for the accesible loos we created for the Mundi site. The show is on 8pm on Tuesday 19/11/24.