Alert in 2008

Incident

37 in 2008

Type

Alert — Overdue

Location

Upper Eskdale

Call from the Police regarding a group of 6 female walkers being reported long overdue from arriving at their designated meeting/camping point. Little information available at the start as the informant was at the telephone kiosk at the National Trust Camp Site in Langdale, which doesn’t accept incoming calls. (Another case of being able to make a 999 call but where we couldn’t return a call). The team leader asked the Langdale & Ambleside team leader to go and talk to them. After a little while the informant rang Wasdale team leader back, having moved location to Ambleside in order to get a mobile signal. He was then able to establish that the group of missing girls should have met others at Scar Lathing (Upper Esk), having set off to walk from Cockley Beck at about 3pm that day. Adult staff had already searched for the missing party and had covered the Green Hole, Mosedale, Esk valley to bottom of Hard Knott, Great Moss and Sampson Stones. It was clear that this was an extremely well organised group, who had already put significant effort into keeping track of several different smaller groups (all converging on Scar Lathing) and had done a lot of work to try and locate the one party of 6 that were still overdue. The missing party of 6 had good tents, sleeping bags, stoves, food, good clothing etc and had been doing well on previous days navigating andwalking. The two team leaders agreed that they should wait to see what turned up in the morning and would talk to the group leaders again at about 10:00 hrs and again late morning.Call came in from the Police at 10:25 hrs The girls camped somewhere in the upper Esk last night and were safe and well. They were on their way to the bottom of Hard Knott. Incident closed at 10:25 hrs