- Incident
- 19 in 2000
- Type
- Callout —
- Location
- Unknown Location
Call from Howard Christie at Wasdale Head, reporting that organisers were worried about four participants in a three peaks challenge event. Three men and one woman, all late twenties / early thirties had left Wasdale Head at 1400 hrs, wearing light clothing. One member in particular was reported to be very experienced but one member of the group had not been feeling well, probably not fully recovered from doing Ben Nevis. They had waterproof clothing with them, torches, map and compass and a rope and even had a radio, although no contact could be made. The Wasdale Team Leader decided to wait until 2300 hrs before asking Search Dogs etc to go and look for them and expected that they had simply made a navigational error, probably going down on the Eskdale side of the fell. (Logic that a group of four could split up if one had suffered incapacity for some reason. Also that hundreds of people were already searching the paths for us – doing the peaks event). MRT’s do not guide people off the hills and only respond if they consider, given the specific facts of each situation, there is a realistic probability that someone is at risk of coming to harm. At 2235 hrs the Wasdale team leader was on the phone to Howard Christie when they turned up. They had indeed made a navigational error and had eventually been assisted onto the correct route down by other 3 peaks participants. Several phone calls were involved, checking Eskdale and speaking on two occasions to the informant resulted in a good hour and half workload for the team. This was therefore logged with Police and listed as an incident (standard rescue team policy to ensure that all incidents are properly recorded for statistics and insurance purposes)
Incident started at 21:10.
