These people never knew just how lucky they were that we turned up to help!

A Rescue..

Only once was I involved in what I would call a real mountain rescue. I tend to ignore the chap we stumbled across who was marooned half way up Gillercombe Buttress because his mate was around and presumably would have sorted something out eventually. Exactly how he became separated from their rope was something we never did find out. We just tied him onto one of our ropes and he managed the climb easily although we were rather concerned when he started to have an asthma attack on the final pitch. His mate never even had the grace to come and thank us but we had the last laugh because he left quite a proportion of his kit behind.

No, what I consider our one real rescue happened on Dow Crag because I suppose it did have some potential to become serious because there was nobody else around that day. The only slightly remarkable thing about it was the sequence of chance events that led us to being in that particular place at that particular time on that particular day.

I’d planned a two week holiday in the Lakes when out of the blue Scott rang to say that whilst he couldn’t meet up with me then, he could manage it if I could get away a few days earlier. I said I could but only if he would promise to do a couple of climbs with me. He agreed but only if we could stay in Coniston, his favourite part of the Lakes. This was fine by me, as Dow Crag was one of the places I had a mind to climb on.

That was the first event, the second concerned the guidebook. I was going to be carrying a lot of luggage and knew I’d only need the book for the one day so to save carrying it I tried to be clever. I scanned and printed out copies of the pages with the route descriptions I wanted. Unfortunately when we reached the crag I discovered I’d not been as clever as I thought because the ink had ran and the pages were unreadable. Scott thought this was quite funny, he also thought it meant that he wouldn't have to do a climb. Unfortunately for him there was one route on the crag that I knew the line of and that was why we found ourselves on Giant’s Crawl instead of Murray’s or C Ordinary. It was a lovely sunny day, we had the crag to ourselves and we thoroughly enjoyed the route.

The third event was born of laziness and a chance sighting of those we were to rescue. I had reached the belay on Easy Terrace and we were both feeling a bit lazy. We knew the climb could finish here but we weren’t absolutely sure of the easy way off. Just then I saw a couple of people walking a little way below us. When Scott came up I said they definitely weren’t climbers so if we follow them we’ll find the easy way off the crag. This was a fine idea bit it had one fatal flaw. It assumed those we were following knew where they were going. When we had traversed off the climb into the wide gully that separates B and C buttresses we saw them up above where the gully seemed to get a bit steeper. We scrambled upwards and it became apparent that they were in a bit of bother.

When we reached them it was clear that to descend from where they were perched would be tricky to say the least and the only reasonable way upwards was by a smooth slab of rock on the left side of the gully. One of them had made several attempts on this whilst we were climbing up to them. After we had introduced ourselves, they were a retired, married couple from Yorkshire, we learned they had been looking for Easy Terrace as a means of getting to the top of Dow Crag.

I discussed the options with Scott. It was clear we’d have to use our single rope to get them, and us for that matter out of here and the only question was which way? It looked possible to traverse off to either side but this ran the risk of ending up on harder ground. Also with one rope and four on it, pitches would have to be short. I didn’t want to end up having to untie an end and throw it down to the third or fourth person only to find they couldn’t retrieve it. So we decided to stay in the gully reasoning that if necessary we’d be able to keep the pitches short. With a rope and a small rock for protection the slab was easy enough and I got a good belay above the chockstone.

I thought for a moment that I’d have to reverse it when Scott temporarily forgot how to tie someone into the middle of a rope. Thankfully our two new companions were pretty experienced scramblers and were totally unfazed by having to tie onto a rope. We scrambled on a bit further and had to rope up for steep little wall. This ended up being a little worrying as I ran out all the rope I could and only found two small wires for a belay of sorts. I managed to brace myself against a piece of rock for some extra security and kept the rope as taut as possible. I needn’t have worried as everyone came up without any trouble. That was the end of the difficulties and we unroped and scrambled out of the gully and onto the top of the crag.

We shook hands on the summit, they thanked us and then we went our separate ways. They headed off for Swirl Howe and Weatherlam and we walked back to the Walna Scar car park buoyed up by the warm glow engendered by the knowledge of a good deed well done.