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KINDER MOUNTAIN RESCUE TEAM

Saving lives in wild and remote places since 1971

To request Mountain Rescue: Dial 999, ask for the Police, then Mountain Rescue

KINDER MOUNTAIN RESCUE TEAM

 

Saving lives in wild and remote places since 1971

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Kinder Mountain Rescue Team (KMRT) has been in existence since 1971, and is one of seven mountain rescue teams that operate within the Peak District National Park, as part of the Peak District Mountain Rescue Organisation (PDMRO).

Our 50 members operate on an purely voluntary basis and are on call 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to assist members of the public on the hill or in urban search and rescue situations.

We are almost exclusively funded by public donations, and all proceeds from fund raising go towards equipment and resources used on our call outs.

59: Callout – 18 October 2024

A pair of walkers had been attempting a route on Kinder Scout, but a navigational error had pushed them in towards the centre of the plateau.  After losing the path they made several attempts to find their way out, but as it was now starting to get dark, they decided to call for help.  However by this time there was no mobile phone service at their location.  They were aware that even though they had no service from their mobile network the 999 service will attempt to get through on any available network.  But there was no service on any network once they were out in to the plateau.  This is when the first of a couple of fortunate events happened.  One of them happen to have a relatively new model of iPhone, and it offered them to try and raise an SOS call via satellite (this is a new service available on iPhone 14 and above – and apparently free for the first two years of the phone).  They waved the phone at a satellite, as instructed by the app, and it connected them to a call handler who took their details and passed the information on to the police.  The info was passed to us and by the time I called them, they had managed to back track to a location where one of them had signal.  I sent them a PhoneFind message to get their exact location and asked them to stay where they were.  They hadn’t planned to be waiting around to be rescued, so they were getting cold rapidly. 

Two Kinder team hill parties were despatched to their location, but it was clearly going to quite a while for them to walk up to there with our warming gear.   This is when the second fortunate event occurred.  As I was tracking our hill parties progress on our mapping system, I noticed that a Coastguard helicopter was in the area.  There were no other Mountain Rescue jobs running at the time, so there was a good chance they were out training.  I put in a request to see if they were available and if they fancied helping us out.  It would mean the walkers wouldn’t have to wait another 40 minutes for our teams to get there.  The Coastguard said they were happy to help as they were only about a kilometre away. After a tense few moments where the helicopter had to find a path through the low cloud, they had landed and collected the walkers.  They few the walkers down to Hayfield where we collected them and brought them back to our base to warm up and have some hot drinks.  Once they were warmed, we drove them back to their vehicle in Edale.  Although their day had started badly, it ended up with a couple of lucky co-incidences which saved them from an extremely cold few hours waiting in the dark.

Kinder Mountain Rescue Team is staffed by volunteers who give their time free of charge and is funded entirely by public donations.

https://www.justgiving.com/kmrt

  • Time: 17:45
  • Type: Lost Walkers
  • Location: Kinder Downfall, Kinder Scout
  • Team members: 17
  • Duration: 3.5 hours
  • Volunteer hours: 59.5
  • Total callout hours: 3688.5

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