'Mountain rescue gives incredible satisfaction'

A volunteer has described the "incredible sense of achievement" he felt being part of the rescue of a Shropshire man from a Scottish mountain.

Jake Evans, from Shrewsbury, was on the final munro of Scotland's Watershed route on Friday when he was blown over by a sudden and "incredible blast" of wind at about 18:00 GMT, leaving him stranded for hours with a broken ankle.

Ben Dyson from the Assynt Mountain Rescue Team has revealed more details about the painstaking rescue that saw dozens of people scale the mountain to reach him.

"There were quite a few people up that hill who had had maybe an hour or two sleep in 48 hours," he said.

About 40 team members responded to the incident when the call came in from Police Scotland's control desk.

"We knew he was immobile, we knew where he was located was right at the top of one of the munros in our patch, so well over 3,000ft in altitude in winter conditions - which is not really what you want to hear on a Friday night, because you know it's going to be a difficult job."

Initially, the team had hoped to get support from the Coastguard helicopter, but weather conditions meant that it could not land.

"Throughout the night we were looking at keeping an eye on the skies, we asked Jake to let us know if at any point he could start to see the stars, because that would be an indication that the helicopter may be able to get in to him," said Dyson.

He said they were quick to deploy people up the mountain.

"It takes a fit walker two-and-a-half to three hours to get to the summit of Ben Klibreck, but with the fact that they've all got to carry a lot more heavy equipment, and winter conditions, that was going to take a lot longer."

Dyson remained at the bottom of the mountain to begin with.

"By the time they got to him it was gone midnight, it was snowing quite heavily at that stage, very cold, windy, so the first thing our team members have done is provide some shelter to warm him up and make an initial assessment," he said.

This was when he was called up the mountain with four other volunteers, to help get Evans down.

They pulled him about 4.3 miles (7km) down on a stretcher through the snow.

A freelance environmental consultant by day, Dyson is also a summer and winter mountain leader - so has a lot of knowledge about the area and climbing in general.

"Jake was very well prepared… thankfully he had the stuff with him to be able to sit tight and stay warm, it's something that we're always trying to emphasise to people when they're going out in the hills," he said.

"It's a bit different to having an accident on the high street.

"It's nice to see when people are bringing the right stuff with them and prepared to sit and wait it out."

It took about six hours for rescuers to get to him before he was brought down the mountain and taken to hospital in Inverness, where he is scheduled to have an operation.

"It's an incredible sense of achievement for our guys, given how much we train to be able to pull a job like that off," Dyson said.

"It's very satisfying.

"We think in total there was probably about 500 hours volunteered accumulatively on that one rescue."

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