Lake District mountain rescue team’s plea for visitors to stay at home

With the Government announcement of further extensions of areas in tier-four restrictions from midnight yesterday (30 December) the Lake District is out of bounds to people who lived outside Cumbria.

And two recent call outs for a Cumbrian mountain rescue team have prompted a call for potential visitors travelling to the Lake District from Tier 3 or Tier 4 areas to stay at home, warning it is putting people’s lives at risk.

Coniston Mountain Rescue Team was called out on Tuesday (29 December) at around 3.25pm to Dow Crag by Cumbria police to help a solo climber who was stuck.

A spokesperson from the team reported the climber had no climbing gear with him and had climbed past some ice and saw more above and so called for help.

Due to daylight fading, the team requested assistance from a HM Coastguard helicopter and because of concerns over the downwash from the helicopter blowing the climber off the crag, the crew had a practice on a nearby crag first.

It took just over three hours to rescue the climber and 17 volunteer members attended.

Shortly after the team received a call for a second incident on the lower slopes of the Old Man, close to Bursting Stone quarry after a woman had fallen near Boo Tarn and hurt her ankle.

She had self-administered some pain relief before we arrived, was assessed and carried by stretcher to the team’s vehicle. She was then returned to her party’s vehicle for onward transport to Lancaster hospital.

Ten volunteer members attended this incident, which took around two-and-a-half hours.

The team made a plea on social media yesterday (30 December) stating the had "again been called out to rescue people who should not be here."

The spokesperson from Coniston Mountain Rescue Team, said: "The whole country is in the middle of a pandemic and there are restrictions on what you can do and where you can go.

"If you are in a Tier 3 or 4 area you should not be travelling except for work and other essential reasons.

"Going for a walk in the Lake District is not one of those reasons, unlike the first lockdown, you are not allowed to travel for exercise."

The team added people travelling to walk and climb in the Lake District are putting "lives at risk", and not just their own.

A spokesperson from the Coniston Mountain Rescue Team, said: "If you have the virus and have to be rescued every member of the rescue party will have to isolate for 10 days, this will prevent those team members from coming to the aid of other people in distress.

"If any of the team members then become ill or even test positive then other members of their families will then have to isolate, some of those people are NHS workers who will no longer be able to go to work and look after patients.

"We are not being elitists, we are not trying to keep the hills to ourselves, we are trying to look after each other and do our bit to try to control this terrible disease.

"It does not matter whether the government rules are legally enforceable or not, if everyone had followed the rules this situation would have been under control many months ago and we would not be in the situation that we now find ourselves in where thousands of people in the UK have died unnecessarily."

The team added Cumbria police has already fined people that we have had to rescue in recent days for travelling here from Tier 3 areas of Lancashire.

"Please stay at home if you are told to, it’s very simple," a spokesperson from Coniston Mountain Rescue Team said.

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