A pair walkers had arrived in Edale, with a view to heading up Kinder Scout.  They made their way up Jacob’s Ladder and along the Southern Edge path.  When the attempted to take their planned route down Crowden Clough, they mistakenly chose the path on the wrong side of the clough.  This led them on to increasingly steep ground and eventually they found themselves scrambling down the series of waterfalls at the top of Crowden Brook.  They eventually found themselves in a position where it was too steep to continue and they couldn’t get back up.  Due to recent heavy rain, there was a lot of water coming down the brook.  One of them had become completely soaked through and he was now getting very cold, so they called for help.

We managed to get a text through to them using PhoneFind to establish their location, but the phone signal was broken and we couldn’t find out what condition they were in.  This meant we had to use a complicated deployment plan.  An initial fast party was sent out to make contact, with another hill party to back them up.  A further hill party was staged with both a stretcher and rope rescue equipment, waiting to be brought in if needed.  It can take a significant amount of time to drive parties up to Edale Cross and even longer to walk resources in to locations like Crowden Clough, so we often stage hill parties and equipment so that if we need them, they can get to scene in reasonable time.  

When our initial party arrived we were pleased to see that two young men had spotted the casualties in trouble and gone to assist them.  They managed to help them out on to better ground and then up on to the path.  Not only had they managed to rescue them, but the casualty who was soaked through had been given some of their clothing to help get him dry.  The two casualties were warmed up and assessed.  Fortunately they were  uninjured, so the stretcher wouldn’t be needed.  They were fitted with emergency Blizzard jackets and walked back to the vehicles. 

As our second hill party were on the way to the casualty site, they were stopped by a couple of walkers asking for directions back down to Edale train station.  It was now 7pm and due to go dark in the next 20 minutes.  As they didn’t have a torch with them, we felt it was unsafe to direct them down Crowden Clough, so offered to take them with us back down to our base.  All casualties and misplaced people were driven back to our base to head off for onward transport.  The casualty with wet clothes was supplied with a random selection of fetching replacement clothing from our donated spare clothing box, allowing him to catch the train back home in dry clothes.

Kinder Mountain Rescue Team is staffed by volunteers, who give their time free of charge, and is funded entirely by public donations.  If you would like to help us continue to provide this service, please consider donating using the link below.

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– Time: 16:30

– Type: Mountain Incident

– Location: Crowden Clough, Kinder Scout

– Team members: 27

– Duration: 4 hours

– Volunteer hours on this incident: 108 hours

– Total callout hours in 2026: 2426 hours