Another Death On Snowdon

More sad news from North Wales where rescuers searching for a missing 70-year-old man have found a body on Snowdon, the fourth fatality on the mountain in the last ten days and if Weatherline's fell top reports are correct, walkers are under-estimating the conditions.

The BBC is reporting that the dead man is thought to come from the Halifax area, but hasn't yet been formally identified.

Meanwhile, in another incident, two walkers were rescued from the Devil's Kitchen area above Llyn Idwal and helicoptered to safety. The Devil's Kitchen path notoriously takes a lot of drainage and in winter conditions can often be coated in a thick layer of water ice making it lethally dangerous and near impossible to climb or descend without crampons.

The latest incidents follow on from a series of warnings from Mountain Rescue Teams in both North Wales and the Lake District advising inexperienced and under-equipped walkers to stay off the hills.

Current winter conditions in the mountains mean that you should be wearing full winter clothing and footwear and equipped with ice axe and crampons along with the relevant winter skills to use them effectively.

Sadly the onset of full winter conditons on British hills always seems to lead to a stream of mountain accidents, with a combination of slippery cold conditions and sometimes, lack of equipment and experience in snow and ice leads to a number of slips on exposed ground.

No Axes Or Crampons

To put things in perspective, the latest fell top observations from Weatherline reports snow and ice at all levels with drifts up to one metre, cornices along the edge of the summit plateau and advises anyone venturing above the snowline to have axe and crampons.

Even so, the report says that: 'There were people on the summit today without ice axe and crampons. Please remember that many gently ascending paths traverse steep ground covered in ice where an ice axe would be essential to arrest a slip and crampons would hopefully prevent a slide in the first place.'