Mobiles prove a blessing and a curse for rescuers

From a distance, Ingleborough seems like the gentlest of the Yorkshire Dales’ famous Three Peaks.

Its flat table-topped summit could have been created using a spirit level. At this time of year and with another bank holiday available it looks an inviting place to take some sandwiches and a thermos flask to blow away the Christmas cobwebs.

But Ingleborough’s benign appearance is deceptive. Compared to other mountains in northern England, including the Lake District fells, it has a bad accident record.

Ingleborough sees twice the number of mountain rescues than the combined totals of its two neighbours, the great reclining lion of Pen-y-Ghent and Yorkshire’s highest summit, Whernside.

In the extreme winter weather of the last few years the narrow summit ridge encountered on the ascent from the village of Clapham and the exit from the summit to paths leading towards Simons Fell and Chapel-le-Dale have been transformed into slippery challenges of almost Alpine difficulty.

Yet apart from wrapping up against the cold, the equipment carried by many walkers in winter is the same as they would have on a fine summer’s day.

We know of Ingleborough’s accident record because of the annual call-out reports compiled by the local rescue team, incidents like one New Year’s Day rescue in which a couple and their two young children had to be attached to ropes and helped off the mountain inch-by-inch.

Another, last December, saw the team’s paramedics give emergency treatment to a 25-year-old man who had fallen badly on ice before he was air-lifted to hospital by helicopter.

But even in summer Ingleborough has more rescue call-outs than its neighbouring summits, according to the team’s secretary Pam Hickin.

“Thousands of people do the Three Peaks challenge walk every year and it’s traditional to start by doing Pen-y-Ghent, by which stage everyone’s still feeling fresh and up for it. But by the time they’ve come down off Whernside and climbed onto Ingleborough they are tired and prone to get lost.”

Above the door of the team’s headquarters in Clapham the name reads “Cave Rescue Organisation”, yet in the current year only 10 per cent of the team’s rescues have involved potholers.

“We help far more walkers than cavers,” Pam acknowledges, “and people are always suggesting we change the name.

“But we came into existence in the 1930s as an emergency service for cavers, so there’s a lot of sentiment attached to being members of the Cave Rescue Organisation.”

This reluctance to adopt a name which better reflects their work – Three Peaks Rescue has been suggested – probably means missing out on donations from the tens of thousands of walkers who visit the area every year and are less likely to put their hands in their pockets for cavers.

By comparison, the other two organisations covering the Yorkshire Dales – the Upper Wharfedale Fell Rescue Association and the Swaledale Mountain Rescue Team – are believed to do better with their collection tins.

Keeping in touch with the hi-tech control room at Clapham is a vital part of each incident.

The team’s chairman, Jack Pickup, a member of the CRO for almost 50 years, says: “Everything used to be done on a wing and a prayer. I remember a lot of shouting going on during rescues, and we kept our fingers crossed that the radios would work.

“Now everything is GPS enabled and we can see precise locations of everyone on the screen in our control room.”

The team’s operational area extends from Malham in the east to Kirkby Lonsdale in west, bounded by Dentdale and Widdale to the north and on the south side by the A65 road dividing the Yorkshire Dales from the Forest of Bowland.

For years walkers and cavers in difficulty relied on a variety of methods to raise the alarm, usually another walker or caver hurrying to the nearest telephone or the police being alerted that someone had failed to return from a day out. Now mobile phones produce most call-outs and they are, according to Jack Pickup, “both a blessing and a pain in the neck.”

Before mobiles, he says, people made more effort to get themselves out of trouble. But the ease with which they can now get help means that some people ask to be rescued when they encounter the slightest difficulty.

One party of four walkers on Ingleborough used a mobile phone to say they were “in distress” because of low cloud. Contact with the mobile was then lost.

While the rescue team was out searching, the walkers called to say they had managed to get down safely.

“But,” Jack says, “the blessing about mobiles is that those who genuinely need help because of an accident can quickly raise the alarm. Also, there’s a new system where we can send them a text and if they click on it their precise location shows up on the screen in our control room. That’s very useful.” Getting a geo-fix from a mobile is sometimes difficult, however, as the team found during one of its biggest-ever rescue operations last March when a light-aircraft crashed on the eastern flank of Ingleborough. The badly-injured pilot used his mobile to call for help but hadn’t a clue where he was. The signal was picked up by a transmitter to the east of Settle, and for a while the search was in the wrong place.

Even when the incident was traced to Ingleborough, poor visibility meant that the team on the ground relied on the old-fashioned use of dogs to find the wreckage. Both the pilot and co-pilot survived.

The other big accident hotspot covered by the team is the popular Ingleton Waterfalls walk. The four-and-a-half mile trail along the steep banks of two rivers, the Twiss and the Doe, was laid out in Victorian times and has always had accidents. They still happen, despite fencing and handrails.

Some have been killed by jumping off the top of the famous waterfall, Thornton Force, not realising they are going to hit water that’s only 2ft deep.

But the CRO’s policy is never publicly to blame people. “We try not to judge those we rescue,” says Jack, “but climbing a mountain like Ingleborough or the path to the top of Malham Cove is out of the comfort zone of many people.

“Still, they come up here to enjoy the beautiful Dales landscape and at the end of the day, we’re always there to help them out.”

Financial costs of saving lives

The CRO team at Clapham needs to raise £20,000 a year to meet its running costs.

In the next 18 months they must find a further £45,000 to replace one of a fleet of three Land-Rovers.

There’s also pressure to upgrade the constantly improving satellite and radio communications devices. A new Friends of Cave and Rescue Organisation is being launched shortly to raise funds. Details at www.friendsofcro.org.uk

Details of the CRO’s rescues and activities online – at www.cro.org.uk