In what turned out to be an epic seven hour rescue, a group of three walkers and a dog had been following the route of the old Pennine way across the middle of the plateau between Kinder Downfall and Crowden clough.  Just as they reached the half way point, right in the middle of the plateau, one of them slipped down a muddy slope a rolled his ankle.  He heard an ominous snap of his ankle and realised they weren’t going to be able to walk out of there.  He dialled 999 to call for help, but there was no mobile signal in the middle of the plateau.  Fortunately he had a new iPhone and could use the satellite SOS service to send a text for help.  This is the second time recently this service has been used to send a distress call and both casualties would have struggled to get help without it.  The only downside of this service is that we can’t call back to let them know we are on our way, so it’s a long wait not knowing if we are actually coming or not. 

The accident happened at the furthest point from any of the Kinder edges, right in the centre of the plateau, so it was a long walk in.  By the time we got there, the weather was starting to deteriorate and it was going dark.  I think the group were very pleased to see us arrive.  We splinted the casualty’s ankle, which made him a little more comfortable, but it was going to be a long stretcher ride from that location.

For those unfamiliar with the Kinder plateau, it is a large featureless peat bog, with lots of river channels running through it, called groughs.  These can be deep, steep sided and very slippy so our challenge was to find a route out in the dark, which avoided pushing a stretcher up and down the groughs.  Fortunately we know a route which runs along the watershed towards Kinder Low.  Most of the groughs fan out from this point, so it is the driest route out.  In places the route is only a couple of meters wide and if you miss it, you are quickly in to some very deep territory where pushing a stretcher is almost impossible.  It was a struggle to move the stretcher the first few hundred meters up on to the watershed route, but thankfully, due to some excellent night time navigation by the team we managed to hit the route all the way back to Kinder Low.  It was still an epic stretcher carry and all twenty team members out on the hill took turns to carry and push the stretcher.  Another ten team members were involved in driving and control jobs to make sure the operation ran smoothly.

It was a relief when we finally managed to get the casualty, his two friends and his dog back to our vehicles and could drive them back to our base, before he was taken on to hospital for further treatment.

As the team had been out since 2pm and it was now 9pm at night, one of the team members family turned up with some food for when we got back.  It was warmly welcomed by the tired, wet and very hungry team members.  A big thank you from us all.

We heard the next day that he had been assessed and had fractured both bones in his leg and damaged the ligaments around his ankle.  Everyone in the team wishes him a speedy and successful recovery.

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: 14:00

– Type: Mountain Incident

– Location: Middle of the plateau, Kinder Scout

– Team members: 30

– Duration: 7 hours

– Volunteer hours: 210

– Total callout hours: 4493