Helicopter rescues stranded Peak District walkers

A HM Coastguard helicopter was called to assist a mountain rescue operation

A coastguard helicopter was called to the aid of two walkers stranded on a mountain in Derbyshire.

Normally deployed to incidents in and around sea level, an HM Coastguard helicopter on a training exercise was commandeered to assist Kinder Mountain Rescue Team (MRT) near the highest point in the Peak District.

Two walkers whose navigation had taken them away from their intended path ran into trouble as darkness began to fall on Friday.

Their initial attempts to call emergency services from the plateau of Kinder Scout were frustrated by a lack of mobile signal about 600m (1,970ft) above sea level.

Fortunately a feature on one of the pair’s phones allowed an SOS call to be made via satellite which allowed their details to be passed to Derbyshire Police.

Two mountain rescue teams of 17 volunteers in total were then mobilised to their location.

'Happy to help'

A spokesperson for Kinder MRT said: “They hadn’t planned to be waiting around to be rescued, so they were getting cold rapidly.

“Two hill parties were dispatched but it was clearly going to be quite a while for them to walk up there with our warming gear.

“I noticed that a coastguard helicopter was in the area.

“There were no other mountain rescue jobs running, so there was a good chance they were out training.

“The coastguard said they were happy to help as they were only about a kilometre away.

“After a tense few moments where the helicopter had to find a path through the low cloud, they had landed and collected the walkers.”

The pair were flown to Hayfield by the coastguard, before being relayed to the Kinder MRT base to warm up and then returned to their vehicle in Edale unharmed three-and-a-half hours after becoming lost.