A hill walker was rescued from the summit of Scotland’s most northerly Munro this weekend after he lost the path and got into trouble.
The alarm was raised at around 1.30pm on Saturday afternoon after the local man started experiencing difficulty near the top of Ben Hope and the volunteers of the Assynt Mountain Rescue Team were dispatched to go and aid him.
The mountain, which has an elevation of 3,041ft, is a very isolated Munro in Sutherland and is so far north that Orkney can occasionally be spotted from its summit on clear days.
Due to the remote nature of the location, the team arrived at around 5pm, and escorted him from Ben Hope safely.
Sue Agnew, the leader of the team, said the lengthy mission resulted in team members finally getting home at 4am on Sunday.
She said: “We got a call in the early afternoon for a walker who had come off the path at the top of Ben Hope, and couldn’t find his way back on and was slipping on some pretty treacherous ground conditions.
“We deployed the team to go up and help, and as you can understand, Ben Hope is one of our more remote mountains so it took a bit of time to get the team together and up to the location of the walker who was in trouble.
“We got to him, and it was a bit of a night with full-on winter conditions.
“It was snowing on and off, there was poor visibility and a lot of cloud, and freezing conditions with the wind chill, and gusts of about 36mph.
“It’s a very exposed hill with not much in the way of shelter, so not nice at all.
“The walker was fit and well, amazingly.
“He was a very stoic local man.
“He did the right thing to stay put and call for help, and that’s what we’re there for.
“We all do it because we want to help people, and we’re very pleased when it’s a successful outcome like this.”
To support Assynt Mountain Rescue, visit www.assyntmountainrescue.co.uk
Donations can be made by visiting https://www.justgiving.com/assyntmrt
