- Incident
- 58 in 2006
- Type
- Callout — Lost
- Location
- Greta Gill, Scafell Pike
Whitehaven Police paged the team to rescue three adult walkers who had become lost on Scafell Pike. They had driven up from Essex that morning and set off to climb Scafell Pike at 1.00 p.m. They had reasonable equipment and lights but on their descent they became disorientated so called the police on their mobile. The team leader was unable to contact the group by mobile but had sufficient information to be able to establish where on the mountain they might be. They had given a height of 1,400 feet to the police from their location, presumably from a GPS. A quick recce in the valley bottom by one of the team members who lives close by established that they were not on the Brown Tongue descent as no light could be seen, however their single light was seen from Gavel Knease (bottom of Great Gable) at a location near Greta Gill. A limited call out was organised and the lost walkers were located and brought back down safely. This was not a night to be on the mountain as it was the first snow of the winter. The group had ended up lost around the top of Piers Gill (now our most popular location for groups to become lost). They had eventually made their way down the corridor route until they came to the rock step at Greta Gill where they made a further navigational error and by-passed the rock step and proceeded down the eastern edge of Greta Gill. At this point their lights packed up bar one and the temperature fell below freezing so they made the ‘999’ call and sat tight.There were five team members involved in locating and walking them back down the mountain and the incident was closed at 2:30 hrs
Incident started at 23:05 and ended at 02:30 making 3.4 hrs in total. There were 5 Wasdale team members involved. Total rescuer hours: 17
