A climber miraculously escaped a 650ft fall from near the top of England’s third highest peak without any serious injury.
The man, whose name has not been disclosed, lost his footing and slipped while he was climbing and hiking to the snow-clad summit of Helvellyn in the Lake District.
Mountain rescue teams were scrambled amid fears that he would not survive the fall but the man was able to get to his feet and walk after the accident last Monday afternoon. He was taken to hospital by air ambulance but is believed to have escaped with no serious harm. One rescuer said: “It’s like he was a human rubber ball and somehow bounced to safety down the mountain side.”
Keswick Mountain Rescue Team said they had received reports of the man “tumbling” down the mountainside and the air ambulance was deployed to locate him.
A spokesman said: “The team were alerted to a man who had taken a 200m tumbling fall from near the summit of Helvellyn. There was some difficulty in contacting the informant to get further information but in the meantime the team were deployed to Swirls car park by Thirlmere. The Great North Air Ambulance Service [GNAAS] took to the sky and were first on scene.”
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The spokesman added that the man was found on the eastern side of the mountain near Red Tarn.
“As this is the Patterdale MRT patch Keswick stood down and passed the incident over to Patterdale,” he said. “It seems the man had slipped whilst ascending a snow slope. Despite the massive fall he was fortunate in being able to walk away. However, due to concern over potential spinal injury, GNAAS airlifted the man to hospital for further checks.”
Helvellyn is 3,117ft high and stands north of the village of Ambleside between the lakes of Thirlmere and Ullswater. It is known to be a dangerous climb because of weather that can change rapidly and catch people out. There have been numerous fatalities on the mountain, particularly on the ridges of Striding Edge ridge on the eastern side.
