The year 2000 edition of the Langdale and Ambleside MRT Annual Report, reports on page 35 that at 3:35pm on Saturday 28th August 1999, they attended their 47th call out of the year. Responding to a rock climbing incident on Pavey Ark in Great Langdale. The report of the incident says the following:
“A 30 year-old woman was abseiling from a rock climb when her belays failed. She fell 60ft before coming to rest on a ledge in a gully. The team worked for several hours to get her out, and then she was airlifted to hospital in Carlisle with multiple injuries. Two climbers in the vicinity went to her aid soon after her fall; they stayed with her the whole time. Their actions are worthy of praise, having suffered cold and rock falls to assist.”
It was a hot bank holiday weekend and Rick and myself had decided to take a day trip up to the lakes to climb something a bit bigger than our usual Lancashire quarry or Pennine edge routes. We parked up close to the New Dungeon Ghyll by 10am and made our way up towards Stickle Tarn in the hot morning sun and around to Pavey Ark.
Our chosen route was Rake End Wall, at Very Severe and a couple of hundred feet in length, it promised to be enjoyable without being overly challenging. We had both climbed quite a bit harder, but our experience of multi-pitch mountain routes was limited, so we wanted something quite amenable. A party was on the first pitch when we arrived at the base of the climb, a short scramble up Jack’s Rake, so we had some food and took our time organizing ourselves.
Clad in shorts and t-shirts, with a shared small rucksack containing a warm layer and a small amount of food and drink, we stashed our walking boots and the rest of our kit out of sight and set off up the route. Switching leads, we made steady, unrushed progress on excellent rock, enjoying the exposure and views across Langdale and wider Lake District.
Three pitches of climbing took us to the end of the difficulties and we coiled our ropes and made our way to the rocky summit of Pavey Ark. After enjoying a bar of chocolate and having a chat with a few walkers, we started our descent of Jack’s Rake. Would we have time for another route? Maybe the classic Golden Slipper, a little harder at Hard Very Severe, but Rake End Wall had caused us no problems.
As we reached Golden Slipper, chatting away, Rick suddenly stopped and said, “did you hear that?” I had not heard anything, but we listened quietly for a few seconds and then I did hear something, a cry for help. We looked around, trying to scan as much as the mountain as we could from our position, then we spotted something. Below us and across the face, we saw a figure in a red helmet, seemly clinging on to a small ledge. The calls for help were clearly coming from this person.
We were near by and we had climbing equipment, we felt obliged to do anything that we could to help. Inspecting to the terrain, we concluded that we could abseil down and then traverse to above the climber. Both the abseil and traverse were technically straightforward, although the traverse was loose and poorly protected. Whilst getting to a position above the casualty, we observed a second casualty also clinging to the rock, twenty feet above the first.
We set up a belay by placing protection behind a flake and positioned ourselves on a small ledge above the casualties, whilst we worked out a plan. The first priority seemed to be securing them, as there was an immediate risk that they would fall from the cliff, more than a hundred feet to the scree slopes below. We had seen that people across Stickle Tarn were letting us know that they had called the mountain rescue, so we just had to make them safe and wait for the cavalry.
I heard the thudding of the rotors of an RAF Search and Rescue helicopter. It hovered over us for a minute, we pointed towards the casualties and it flew on.
We were using a typical system of two half ropes to climb with, so I was able to belay Rick on one rope and would be able to belay a casualty on the other. I lowered Rick to the nearest casualty, whose name we learnt was Brian. Rick tied him in to his rope, giving him some security.
Rick informed me that the other casualty was about twenty feet below him. She was getting some assistance from a climber* who had climbed up from below, but that they would be grateful for a rope from above as the climber giving assistance had traverse some distance from her last piece of protection. With Rick as my eyes, I paid out enough rope to reach them and secured them on the belay.
We learnt a little about the incident, Brian and Joanna had been climbing a fairly easy route in the gully above us, but the rock quality had been very poor and they decided to retreat. Joanna was lowering off Brian, the less experienced climber, when her belay gave way. Brian fell around twenty feet before stopping in a shallower part of the gully; Joanna fell past him, falling around sixty feet and having a much harder landing. They were lucky to have stopped where they did, a fall the full length of the face seemingly a much more likely outcome.
It was still quite warm, but I got a request for extra clothing. I had our small climbing rucksack with Rick’s down jacket and my lightweight fleece. I attached these to the rope and slid them down to Rick, who issued the warm clothing to the casualties.
The RAF helicopter flew overhead again and hovered a short distance from the crag and lowered a crewmember from the aircraft to the base of the crag. He climbed up the steep, loose ground to the casualty, with the assistance of the rope from the party that had climbed from below. He also clipped in to our ropes; we now had six people on our belay.
The next few minutes were quite worrying. The helicopter came back overhead, almost directly overhead and only fifty or sixty feet above me. My eyes fixed on the tips of the rotor blades as the pilot tried to maneuver the aircraft close enough to the face of the cliff to pluck winch crewmember and casualty from the mountain. The noise was deafening and the downdraft gave us a serious buffeting. I was extremely concerned that the blades would make contact with the cliff and that would be the end for all of us.
After several attempts, it became clear that the aircraft would not be able to get close enough and I was mighty relieved when it moved away. I could also see more help coming, Langdale and Ambleside Mountain Rescue Team were making progress towards us around Stickle Tarn. A lone member of the team made his way up the rope towards the Joanna and then onwards on our ropes to my stance; we now had seven people on our belay.
The plan was to set up more ropes from my ledge and lower both casualties to the ground, Joanna on a stretcher with assistance from other members of the rescue team. The rescue team member started hammering pitons in to the gap behind the same flake that was providing most of our belay. I was pretty displeased when expansion of the gap caused one of my pieces of protection to fall out. With a rope set up, he proceeded to bring two more members of the team up to our ledge.
We decided we had probably done what we could do and the ledge was about to get pretty crowded. With our ropes still securing multiple people, we retrieved Brian and Joanna’s rope, gave it a quick inspection and decided we would use it to climb out the way that we had climbed in. A few minutes of traversing followed by steep scrambling later, we were back at the point we were interrupted several hours earlier.
Returning to our stashed gear, it was a particular pleasure to take off my super tight climbing shoes and put on some socks and walking boots. After a quick snack and drink, we made our way back down the last hundred feet of Jack’s Rake and walked under the base of Pavey Ark in time to witness the SeaKing performing a low hover to lift Joanna from the base of the cliff. We walked down to the New Dungeon Ghyll and our car with the rescue team and Brian, who despite a few cuts and bruises seemed to be fine. It was just getting dark as we reached the valley, we gave the rescue team some contact detail, Brian handed over my fleece, Rick’s down jacket was flying to the Cumberland Infirmary in Carlisle.
We jumped in Rick’s car and set off down the valley. If the roads were kind and we didn’t bother going home to get changed, we would get to the pub before last orders and we would have a tale to tell.
A few days after the rescue, one of the mountain rescue team members who lived over in Rossendale, delivered our ropes, a few bits of protection and some karabiners and Rick’s slightly blood stained down jacket to my house. We decided that as we were both involved in Scouting, we should write a report of the incident and give it to our District Commissioner. Finding an old copy of that report is what led me to writing this account. Nearly a year later, we where asked to attend the County Scout Association Annual General Meeting, at which we were each presented with the Scout Association Silver Cross by the Chief Scout, George Purdy.
*In 2010, I attended a British Mountaineering Council (BMC) organised climbing festival in the Duddon Valley in the Lake District. On the Saturday night, I was stood at the bar of the Newfield Inn chatting to Nick Colton, Steve Clark and Lynn Robinson. Nick is Deputy CEO of the BMC. I was aware of Steve and Lynn for their guidebook work and Steve’s contributions to the UK Climbing forums and in 2018 Lynn was elected President of the BMC. I discovered that evening that the party that had come to the assistance of Joanna from below was Steve and Lynn; with Lynn climbing up to Joanna and providing medical and moral support.
Thoughts and Memories 