When Neil Barrow first volunteered with mountain rescue 40 years ago, for weeks on end the Lake District fells would be capped with snow.
Winters with the Patterdale mountain rescue team, of which he is now deputy leader, would involve big and complicated rescues, during which he would bring down the experienced hikers who had become injured or ill tackling the national park’s famous peaks in snow and ice.
But thanks to climate change, the Lake District is no longer a winter destination for experienced mountaineers, and instead their rescues often involve ill-prepared novices who are chasing the sunsets and vistas that they have seen on Instagram and TikTok.
“Years ago, we used to get a lot of big winter jobs, avalanches and stuff like that, but you just don’t get the snow and the weather for it now, it’s all changing,” Barrow said.
The mountaineers, he said, “probably are going to Scotland and abroad” because they can no longer rely on the Lake District for snow in winter.
“So consequently, there’s more people still coming through winter and walking, because they can still do it without needing the crampons,” he added.
“Back in the 70s and 80s, when people used to run winter skills courses, you could lay on a weekend knowing there would be enough snow in the lakes on a February weekend,” Dan Farley, another of the team’s deputies who has volunteered for more than 25 years, added. “You couldn’t guarantee any snow on the ground in any particular February weekend now. That’s just climate change, I guess.”
But the lack of snow doesn’t mean that their job has got less demanding – if anything it’s the opposite. Last year, their busiest in recent memory, they had 110 callouts.
David Gracie, a volunteer of nine years and one of the team’s other deputies, said many of the callouts involved groups of younger people who, pre-pandemic, may not have thought to visit the Lakes.
“I guess people can see on the phones and through social media, there’s more stuff going on, and I think they’re keener to get out and go and see and explore, which is great,” he said.
However, issues arise when walkers are underprepared or overestimate their ability to tackle some of the more challenging hikes.
Often inexperienced hikers will set off too late. One group took the train all the way from Brighton before setting out on a climb the same day, and ended up calling for help in the early hours of the next morning.
Their most recent rescue, Farley said, involved two girls who had been using a navigation app on their phone, and called for help from Striding Edge.
“We went up and they said they’d seen something on TikTok, and they wanted to go up to the top of Helvellyn, and they didn’t quite make it to the top,” he said. “They got a bit stuck, and then got really scared, and then they called for help. I guess that’s a little bit more typical now.”
The fact that almost everyone has a mobile phone within reach means it’s a lot easier to call for help than it would have been in the past, which sometimes leads to people dialling 999 when it may perhaps have been possible for them to find their own way down.
Often when the team go to rescue people they also find they have used an unsuitable app to guide them, either in-built phone navigation, or one with crowdsourced information that may provide wildly inaccurate estimates for how long a walk will take.
“They just unfortunately rely on their phones and rely on the technology too much, and phones don’t work in the Lake District much,” Barrow said.
All of this means the team’s workload has almost doubled – they previously averaged somewhere between 60 and 65 jobs a year. “It’s got more time-consuming, without a doubt,” Barrow said.
The intensity is taking its toll. They are unpaid volunteers, with jobs, and many with young families as well.
The fear, Farley said, was “if the numbers continue to rise, I don’t know whether it is sustainable in the long run.”
Dan Jones is a doctor and a fell-runner – both valuable skills for a mountain rescuer. But he also has two young children, and his wife is 36 weeks pregnant with their third.
“I‘m one of the fitter members of the team and I’ve got all my medical knowledge, and you want to get to them all, but you just can’t,” he said. “Sometimes I physically can’t because I’ve got the boys. Or you want to maintain a family and a relationship.”
Louisa Rodriguez, a mountain rescuer who also runs the team’s social media account, said: “We all love it, and we all do it because we want to help people, and we love the outdoors, but it’s about that sustainability.”
“We have no problem going out,” she said, “but then there are preventable jobs, just because people either don’t know what they’re doing, or they’ve not got the right equipment.”
As well as relying on poor technology, often people do not check the weather, especially the mountain-specific forecast, or they attempt a climb in trainers, or without a map, torch or compass.
“I firmly believe the outdoors should be accessible to everybody,” Rodriguez said. “Why wouldn’t you want to come to the Lake District? It’s a beautiful place.”
But the key, she said, was not to underestimate the mountains – as the consequences could be grave. Last year, mountain rescue teams across the Lakes dealt with 32 deaths.
“By all means, enjoy the outdoors,” Rodriguez said. “But just think a little bit more.”
