The group hill walk on Sunday 4 February 2018 on Meall a’ Ghiubhais in the Torridon area was wonderful: lots of snow, bright sunshine, little wind. We descended at leisure, contented, pleasantly tired. Lower down we came on the Beinn Eighe National Nature Reserve trail, a well-signposted tourist path, and knew we were nearing the cars.
Then we started hearing a strange sound that repeated itself, the cry of an animal? Wondering what this might be, we looked around and folks with sharper eyes than me discovered a woman high up on a the cliffs, waving. Two dogs were with her. She seemed to be in trouble.

We stopped, unsure what to do. The slope was too steep to climb to help her. Would we phone the Mountain Rescue? Would they send a helicopter? Would we need to pay for that if it wasn’t needed after all?

I realised all this talking was going nowhere and being the leader of the walk, it was my responsibility to make a decision. Luckily we had mobile reception. A bit hesitant I phoned 999 and asked for Mountain Rescue. I was immediately connected with the police. I gave a brief description of the situation and the police officer wanted our coordinates, which I knew because one of us had an app on her phone just for that. The police officer said that she just had received a call from a woman with two dogs, exactly in the area where we were. One of her dogs was hurt and the woman didn’t want to leave it behind. The officer asked us to stay put till the Mountain Rescue arrived.

So there we were, eleven of us, waiting on a snowy path with just one hour of daylight left. We started getting cold and wondered how it would be for the woman and her two dogs. What would happen to her if there hadn’t been any mobile reception? And if we hadn’t heard her calling? The jolly mountains suddenly felt less jolly. Nature can be beautiful – and relentless.

I reflected on phoning 999. It had really been the only right choice. We had had good reason to think this might be an emergency. It turned out to be so. The police officer knew what needed to be done, reporting was all we needed to do.

I took three photos with my dslr of the woman’s position, one maximum wide-angle, one half zoomed in and one maximum tele. Might be helpful, I thought.

Emergency Call

Half an hour later the police officer phoned me, saying we could move on, because the Mountain Rescue was arriving. Down in the parking space, we saw the rescue team just getting out of their van. I showed them my pictures on the screen of my dslr and they took pictures of it with their mobile phone.

Emergency Call

 

We drove to a pub in Kinlochewe and had much to talk about over a beer, before travelling home.

A week later some of us managed to contact the Mountain Rescue. The woman and her dogs had been saved and were well. Our coordinates and the photos of her position had greatly helped the Mountain Rescue team to find her quickly.

This incident got me thinking. I started searching the internet about hazards of hillwalking and was frankly shocked out of my ignorance! I began speaking about the subject with the regulars of the group walks and we decided we needed to do a training, which lead to six of us doing the Summer Mountain Leader Training in August 2018.

Hugo Klip