Wheelchair Man Abandoned On Snowdon

One of the most bizarre mountain rescue stories we've seen for a good while is doing the rounds of the web sites after six martial arts enthusiasts abandoned a man in a wheelchair during an ascent of Snowdon...

According to the BBC, the martial artists from Coventry were taking part in a fundraising record attempt using the Llanberis path to the summit of Wales' highest mountain, but after leaving the wheelchair-bound 31-year-old to wait while they summited, decided they were too tired to carry him down and called out the local Llanberis Mountain Rescue Team.

Some 15 members of the  team helped the man backk to Llanberis using the Snowdon mountain railway - right, pic by Hamish Fenton - and he was, reportedly found to be suffering from mild exposure.

The Times quotes a climber who witnessed the rescue as saying:

“The poor bloke was sitting there in his wheelchair for quite a while. It was a bit mean of them to leave him there while they carried on to the top. But other climbers went over to talk to him. He was just getting very cold.”

The paper also quotes Ian Henderson of Llanberis MRT as saying: This party were poorly prepared and felt it was OK to carry on to the summit rather than turn around and get him down the mountain,” he said.

“At what point did they think ’it’s OK we’ll get the rescue team to push him down?’

Clearly having a black belt in karate doesn't have much bearing on common sense then. And the story raises all the classic issues about charity mountain outings as well.