Members of Keswick Mountain Rescue Team featured prominently in the first episode of a new documentary focusing on the work of volunteers as they attend incidents on the fells and mountains in the national park.
The opening episode of Lake District Rescue was screened on More 4 on Sunday night and showed members of the Keswick team going to the aid of a student who had fallen from a rock face in Bram Crag Quarry at St John’s-in-the-Vale.
He was climbing the route and clipping in bolts on the way up when he lost his grip and fell onto the bolt below. As he fell onto the bolt a section of the wall – a 16kg chunk of rock bigger than a rugby ball, was dislodged and fell the 10m with him. Rowan ended up on his back in the rocks and boulders underneath the route and the stone was on his stomach.
At the time he was being belayed by his partner Leah and she was catapulted into the air because of the weight difference when Rowan fell and sustained bad bruising to her legs. She described how the top of Rowan’s thumb was hanging off with blood running down his hand.
Viewers were told that Bram Crag was notorious for weak and fractured rock faces and they watched as members of the team stabilised the casualty and then stretchered him away from the scene of the accident. He was taken by ambulance to Cumberland Infirmary in Carlisle.
Other mountain rescue teams in the Lakes were also featured in the first episode with the volunteers agreeing to wear bodycams for the first time during a busy summer for call-outs last year.
There are three more episodes to be shown and programme makers promise that they will be “packed full of drama and human emotion – set against the stunning backdrop of Britain’s most beautiful, yet perilous landscape.”
Viewers were told that the Lake District welcomes 18 million visitors a year; many woefully underprepared for the wild terrain and weather that can change in an instant.
It said that the 400 members of the Lake District Mountain Rescue Association are on call 24/7 to assist anyone in need on the fells.
Through candid interviews with both rescuers and rescued, the series tells the stories of just some of the hundreds of emergencies the teams were called to in 2023.
They range from paragliders crashing into the mountainside, to scramblers who have fallen down waterfalls or adventurers becoming lost in the tunnel systems of disused quarries.
In the first episode, the Wasdale Mountain Rescue Team were dispatched to help a wild swimmer who had dislocated his shoulder at the popular Eskdale Pools. Even after being administered advanced pain relief, the man was still in agony. Miles from the nearest road, the challenge of how to transport the casualty to a hospital proved to be a difficult one for the team leader.
The Wasdale team were also shown attending to a woman who had suffered a severe fracture above her right ankle joint. She suffered the agony of a re-alignment. And members of Coniston MRT were seen going to help a dog that was bleeding heavily after cutting its paw.
Last year rescuers in Cumbria responded to more than 600 callouts, up mountains and this year rescue teams are anticipating an average of 60 callouts a month with over 100 a month over the busy summer in June, July and August.
Richard Warren, former chair of the Lake District Mountain Rescue Association, said the first episode of the new show had helped boost fundraising efforts.
Mountain rescue are entirely volunteer run and led and the Lake District’s teams need £1m in donations every year to operate the service.
Richard said: “We’re very pleased with the documentary. A lot of effort has gone into organising it and getting things done and there have been all kinds of challenges to face including the safety of the film crews and the environment up there.
“We’ve also had a good response to it on social media too and we’ve raised around £3,000 through fundraising after the first episode aired.”
