Mountain Rescue

[gripo]

Thought I would share this tale with you,

On Wednesday me and my mate Paul decided to go for a walk along Capel y FFin in Wales. We are experienced climbers who have done most major peaks in the UK. Well we got there from the midlands for 10am. Started our walk which we estimated to take just 5 hours. The weather was ok, it had snowed but the trail we were following was easy enough to follow.

On our final loop back we found some Marines on exercise. We spoke to them and asked for advise of our location. At first they were a bit stand off because they were on exercise but eventually got their OS map out and figured out that we needed to go up and over the ridge and back down the other side to make it back to the village we were based at.

So off we went!!!! Half way up it started snowing again. Then the fog came in! We made it to the top and we had a 'white out'. You could not see more than a metre in front of you.

To cut a long story short by 7.30pm we were in pitch black. You couldn't see anything. My mate was not prepared to take the risk of going down the sides as we just couldn't see any of the cliff edge and would have been a big risk.

By 8pm I made the decision to call mountain rescue. It was a 'belittling' decision to make. We were stuck on the top and it was either stay up there all night when it was -10c or make it down somehow in the pitch black.

By 11pm we were getting a little worried. No sign of mountain rescue and no phone signal. We decided that we better prepare for a chilly night up there. We dug in and decided to rest as we were both nackered from walking back and forth to find a way down. It was 1.30am and still no sign of anyone.

I rolled over as i had had enough of hugging my mate. In the distance I saw a torch light. It was 5miles away. We went for it! Falling over every other stride and shouting and blowing the whistle they didn't see us. They were on the other side of a valley. I decided that we should try and clamber down the side.

We got down and foud the rescue team. Apparently we were half an hour away from hypothermia!

2 rescue teams and 350 Army guys were looking for us for around 6 hours. RAF were on stand by for the morning. I felt a prat. What a waste of resources.

Going to have a fund raiser at school for them. They said we wouldn't have made it through the night in that cold
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