Incident Report #6 2008

A tale of two men, two mountains and two days. Sometimes you go up one mountain and by some quirk of fate, accidentally climb another. Two men went up Crinkle Crags on Friday, became disorientated and reported themselves lost, cold and unable to find a way down. An initial search of Crinkle Crags was organised, followed by a more extensive search of Bowfell as well, after we failed to locate them. With four SARDA dogs and Wasdale MRT helping out, they were eventually located at the north end of Bowfell. They had worked out that a bearing of north from where they thought they were would take them to Three Tarns and safety, however in the poor visibility they missed Three Tarns and climbed Bowfell. One of the clues we used was that they reported walking through snow, of which we found none on Crinkle Crags. There was plenty on Bowfell. They were escorted to the valley floor, cold and tired and wiser for their experience, but otherwise unharmed, on Saturday morning about 3am.