They celebrated Mark Hodgson’s golden anniversary as a mountain rescuer with a can of beer and a slice of cake.
But after 50 years, his colleagues at Keswick Mountain Rescue Team knew their former team leader was not one for a fuss.
They also know he isn’t planning to go anywhere soon — at 67, Mark is still an active member of the emergency services, and ready to respond when and where those services are required.
“That’s the first 50 done,” he said. “Now for the next 50! Even after all this time there’s nothing quite like the buzz of going on a call-out – although when you get to my age, bits of you start dropping off.”
Mark estimates he has been on around 2,000 call-outs since he joined the team as a 17-year-old in 1972.
And while his uncle, former team leader Mike Nixon, had initially brought him in to help tidy the ropes and clean out the Land Rover, he was soon in the thick of the action on the Lakeland fells.
“The first call-out I remember was in Borrowdale,” he says. “A couple of climbers were scaling a crag, they weren’t roped up, and one had slipped and fallen all the way to the bottom.
“Seeing a fatality is something you never forget – but it didn’t put me off at all. In fact it made me all the more determined to do my best to ensure we got people off the mountains in one piece.”
Despite a job as a commercial manager for a design company in West Cumbria, as well as a stint at Lakes College, Mark spent 20 years as Keswick’s team leader. In 2013 his services to mountain rescue were recognised with the award of an MBE.
Yet he remains a passionate advocate of the old maxim: “There’s no ‘I’ in ‘team.”
“I’ve been lucky to be surrounded by some fantastic colleagues, and any honour I might have received over the years is a reflection of the great work they do,” he says.
Mark says he draws his own inspiration from Fiona, his wife of 46 years. Keswick born and bred, the couple still live in the town and when Mark is not out on his bike cycling up to 80 miles at a time, they enjoy walking the fells together.
“She’s unflappable,” Mark says. “The only time she ever used to get worried was when I had to go out in bad weather.”
