#51 Callout - Investigation of suspicious item on Kinder

51: Callout - 17th October 2026

A member of the public was walking along the Southern Edge path of Kinder Scout when they spotted a large suspicious item at the bottom of a crevice near Crowden Tower rocks.  They were unable to get to it to find out what it was, but they were concerned enough to report it to the police when they got down.  The police asked us if we would go up and investigate.

We deployed a single hill party to investigate. As we didn’t have a detailed understanding of where this might be, there was a chance of it needing some form of rope access or risky scrambling to get to the item.  In order to remove the risk to our team members, they took our Water team’s extendable reach pole.  This is a fibre glass pole which can extend out to 15 meters and is used to grab items out of the water, without our team members having to risk going in.  It comes with a handy set of attachments which go on the end to grab or hook things.  In this case, they were able to extend the pole down in to the crevice and pull the item(s) out.

As we half expected, the items turned out to be three black bin bags full of fly camping rubbish.  The team carried the bags off the hill and disposed of them back at base.