 The boss of the Lake District National Park Authority says that Mountain Rescue is often called out too readily when things 'don't go according to plan'.
What do you think, are modern mountain walkers less skilled and self reliant that they used to be? Is it all down to the mobile phone?
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In a nutshell, yes. An interesting read are the `callouts' of Wasdale Mountain Rescue. e.g. 26/10/08, a callout to 8 walkers `lost' on Wasdale scees path. Is that lost?
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 The mobile phone has been a blessing and a curse for MRT's. It can hekp pinpoint genuine casualties quickly, but is too easily abused by some folk. My friends and i would die of shame if we had to be rescued, unless it was very serious.
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 My friends and i would die of shame if we had to be rescued, unless it was very serious. Was just thinking the same thing. I'd have to be in a really bad way before I'd consider calling them out.
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 mobile phone for sure. BUT how many lives has a mobile phone saved because of the quicker response time..? tricky one ain't it. I don't carry one on the hill, so i shall have to crawl like joe simpson if i go crock.
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I wouldn't mind betting too that a fair proportion of occasional walkers think that MRTs are full time and paid. Just like the other emergency services. (If indeed they think about it at all)
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 I have been watching the Highland Emergency series on Channel 5 and a lot of the action is Mountain Rescues. However the information the crew get is incorrect or the information relayed gives the impression the incident is more serious than what they find when they recover the casualty. En-route the crew prepare for the most serious seranio from the information they have. However a number of the casualities aren't seriously injured or have fairly minor injuries. It gives me the impression that walkers and possibly climbers are to ready to call for help when maybe an alternative is available. For not hill people watching the programme it must give them a poor impression of walkers and climbers preparation and plans for an emergency escape route. I appreciate that they are not going to show fatalities but it is just the impression I get from watching the series and the more programmes I view the more I feel that my instinct may be correct.
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 Mobile phones have been the worst thing since sliced bread for the UK emergency services, certainly for the statutory services at least. Whereas people in the past tended to look after themselves and could not be bothered at 0200 on a freezing night to walk the half mile to the coinbox/get out of bed and go downstairs with rampant toothache, they can easily pass the responsibility to others now with their mobiles. Other problems include 20 calls for ONE Road Traffic Collision all in different places (especially on motorways) and all needing to be checked out, but the biggest problem is that people are too quick to ring 999 WITHOUT checking if someone actually needs help. I have lost count of the number of times an Ambulance has gone racing to a RTC, riskng lives, only to find a frustrated driver in a broken down vehicle, and on one occasion, we attended the same drunk sleeping it off on a park bench 6 times in 2 hours! Yes, mobiles might well have saved a few lives, but they have probably been responsible for far more "false" calls because people are just too careless with them!
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| Edited: 28/11/08 13:40 |
 "mountain walkers less skilled and self reliant that they used to be" probably less educated as to the potential dangers.
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Society in general is becoming far too reliant on others to sort out problems, and are not hill/mountain walkers just following this general trend?
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Walking up Helvellen a couple of weeks ago two men in there early 20s approached my group waving a handheld G.P.S thing in there hands asking very nicely if we knew how to work them as they were leading a group of kids up to the summit.They had no maps or compass with them.My advice was to go back down the hill before the weather closed in. No skills,No preperation.An accident waiting to happen.Being a parent I couldn,t help but wonder if the kids parents were aware of these fools in charge.
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I don't know about less educated. When i started on the hills, there was no internet, no GPS and less media coverage. Very few books were available on hill-walking and the skills needed. It was hard to even find a shop selling hill gear. Every one has a car nowadays, and it is far easier to get to the hills. A point i have raised before is footpaths. These horrible 'pavements' on the hills lead the unwary into trouble. In the past, muddy or non-existant paths stopped the 'day-tripper' from venturing too far from their cars. Now they can follow a 'pavement' high into the hills, without map or compass. They wander off it, the visibility drops, and they are lost.
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 Mike, best not call out the MRT if you'll die of shame anyway... I hear it's a lot more painful than hypothermia... Julian, no doubt that the pair of 'leaders' were CRB cleared so there's nothing to worry about !?! When I carry a telephone on the hills, it is switched OFF and kept with my first aid kit. I treat them with the same attitude; there for emergencies only! Still, there's a fine line between self reliance in a minor emergency and leaving it too late to call the MRT. It's a judgement call... will it get worse (especially in worsening weather) & get out of control? I'm sure that some people have made things worse by thinking they could take care of the situation themselves... I suspect that access to the hills is as much a factor as a 'lack of spine' in the population. I don't have any stats on the matter, but I would expect the number of families out hill walking to have increased proportionately with car ownership. Just as 'crime rates' seemed to go up with the rise in telephone installation in homes (for the reason Tony elaborated); so 'mountain emergencies' have presumably risen with mobile phone ownership. I'd hate to encourage people not to go on the mountains as it is an ideal environment to learn about risk & reward. There's now way of downloading 'experience' into your GPS; you have to get out there and gain it. And that means, at some point, being inexperienced on the hill! The ideal is if someone can pass on their experience but it isn't always that simple.
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Mike, our posts crossed! Looks like we both think that car ownership has a lot to do with it...
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Being inexperienced isn't the same as being a muppet though John
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Car ownership and footpaths John. I'm being very serious about the 'footpath/pavement' thing. I've seen folk dressed in 'street clothes' in the middle of the Cairngorms, that have just followed these horrible things. In the past, you needed to be able to navigate to get to some of these places.
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When i started on the hills, there was no internet, no GPS and less media coverage, and Scotland was still joined to North America.
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never been a muppet at any point sean?
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Lots of times Parky , but no, not on the hill. Have been in a couple of situations through inexperience, but because of lack of muppetry (basic navigation skills and the right gear) managed to get out of them too. Muppetry is the two lads we saw a few months back asking us directions for the way up Helvellyn when we were approaching the bottom an hour or so before nightfall. Urban gear. Carrying nothing but a 500ml bottle of water.
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never been a muppet at any point sean? Look above your original post. 
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