Lead-in. You are going to the mountains on your holiday

You are going to the mountains on your holiday. Discuss:

- what you should do before you set out;

- what you should take;

- what you should do in an emergency.

Summer is the busiest season for the volunteers who save those stranded in the mountains. Tony Durrant reports.

AND they’re off. Like alpine cattle heading for the high pastures in the summer months, the nation’s army of fair-weather ramblers, scramblers and danglers is dusting off hiking boots, unknotting ropes, packing egg sandwiches and heading for the hills.

Which is why that hardy band of souls who volunteer for the country’s mountain-rescue teams are busiest when the weather is at its best. That’s right - emergency call-outs do not peak in the bleak midwinter when the winds gust to 100 mph on the summit of Snowdon and the wind chill factor reaches 20 below zero on Scafell Pike’s rocky peak. (And there will be walkers and climbers up there during those times.) No, the silly season for the rescue teams who serve tourist hotspots in Snowdonia and the Lake District is June to September.

The Keswick Mountain Rescue Team, which covers 440 square miles of the Lake District, was called out 67 times last year - 14 times, for example, in September. Six of those were on one day. All serious - a fell runner who crashed 150 ft down a gully; a girl of 10 with a sprained ankle; a heart attack on Helvellyn; a paraglider with a broken leg; a woman with a locked knee; a paraglider falling down a cliff on take-off. Quieter days in the team’s log, such as September 7, read: “Search for suicidal person. Later found in Wigan”.

September 10 reads: “A girl aggravated a previous ankle injury while trying to get a mobile-phone signal to report an aggravated ankle injury.” Meanwhile, on the night of July 12-13, an RAF helicopter, a search dog and 16 members of the Ogwen Valley Mountain Rescue Organization, which covers the northerly peaks of Snowdonia, were looking for a 29-year-old woman who had set out to cross the Glyders - two of the highest mountains in Wales.

The log reads: “She had no equipment and was wearing a light shell suit and training shoes.” She was found unharmed, and presumably put on the first train back to Wigan. The following day at 9.30 pm, six members of the Ogwen team toiled up the west face of 3,000 ft Tryfan to rescue a pet dog stuck in a hole between rocks. And with the dogs, Wigan wanderers and shell suit hikers come the upwardly mobile-phoners. With their map and compass packed at the bottom of their rucksacks, or back in the car boot next to their common sense, they reach for their trusty Nokia, assuming rescue teams are a sort of free AA service for hikers and RAF search and rescue helicopters are a taxpayers’ right.

Mark Hodgson, die Keswick team leader, highlights a particular mobile phone incident as probably the most unnecessary call-out for 1999. It came from a female walker on 2.950 ft Great Gable. “She had all the right equipment and a mobile phone.” says Mark, 45, an estate director at a further education college. “Having lost contact with the rest of her group she sat down, dialed 999 and waited to be shepherded from the mountain. This we did, only to find that her group were drinking in a pub, totally unconcerned.”

The nature of mobile phones also causes confusion. A flummoxed walker in Snowdonia used his to call for help and was put through to a mountain-rescue controller who had never heard of the peak the walker claimed he was lost on.

“I’m in Snowdonia,” came the panicked voice over the airwaves. “That may be, sir,” replied the controller with a lilt to his voice. “But I’m in Dublin,” which was the site of the nearest phone mast to pick up the stranded walker’s signal.

However, the message for mobile users is take it with you if you go into the hills. “In the right hands, mobile phones are incredibly useful,” says Chris Lloyd of the Ogwen Valley team. “They save vital time in an emergency.”

At the other end of the scale from those who call 999 at the drop of a woolly hat are those who would never dream of bothering anybody with their predicament. Like the woman who slipped while out walking in the Lakes then crawled for half a mile with a broken ankle rather than call out the team. Her husband eventually did.

Like her, most users of the mountain-rescue service are neither foolish nor lazy. They are just unlucky. “Around 60 per cent of our call-outs are to people who have slipped on wet grass or rocks, resulting in a broken leg or ankle,” says Mark Hodgson, “You can be an experienced mountaineer wearing good walking boots and still break a leg through slipping.”

Despite the litany of mountain madness, our rescue teams are quick to point out they are all volunteers who do their job because they love the mountains. So they won’t charge you or chew your head off for calling them out in an emergency, day or night, 365 days a year.

As Hodgson advises: “People should do their thing in the mountains. They are there for everybody.” Even if you’re from Wigan.

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