Callout 04 in 2004

Incident

1 in 2004

Type

Callout — Injured & Medical

Location

Overbeck, Wasdale

Diagnosis

Leg Injury

The team were called by the police to respond to a call for help from a male walker in his early 60’s who had slipped and injured his ankle whilst walking on the Overbeck to Dorehead path. He was found by a passing walker who used his mobile phone to raise the alarm. The injured person who was a local man, had tried text messaging SOS with accurate details of his location to ‘999’ but he was laying in an area of weak signal. The passing walker took his phone to a higher position on the mountain to get the signal and raise the alarm. Interestingly, if you look at the photograph of where the accident happened you will be surprised that there was no signal. The casualty had set off that day to walk Yewbarrow and then on around the tops. When he got to the second summit of Yewbarrow he saw black storm clouds in the distance so wisely retraced his steps back down to the valley. Rather than just return to the car park he decided to drop down to the lower path which runs alongside the beck. He had only descended 10 metres down the wet grassy slopes when he slipped and fractured his leg.The injured leg was immobilized in an inflatable splint and after suitable anesthesia, the casualty was carried down to Overbeck to be taken to West Cumberland Hospital by ambulance. Photos taken on scene give a good appreciation of the numbers of team members required to effect a rescue of this nature, relatively close to the road. The incident was close at around 1730 hrs. The walker had sustained a nasty double fracture of his lower right leg which required steel pinning. When visited in hospital two days later he was comfortable but resigned to a long recovery period. [Interestingly another local walker had fractured her ankle the following day (Sunday) and was rescued by Cockermouth MRT. She was recovering from her ordeal in the next room to our Wasdale casualty]