A woman survived a dramatic 30ft plunge into a lochside gorge but suffered multiple injuries and was trapped for two hours before being rescued.
The 42-year-old agricultural worker fell yesterday morning while she and her partner, armed with high-tech GPS equipment, were mapping field boundaries in Argyll. It is believed she slipped on mud.
The drama happened shortly after 10am at the head of Loch Feochan, a mile south of Kilmore village, 200 yards from the A861 Oban-Kilmore road.
An ambulance crew managed to clamber into the gully to administer first aid before mountain rescuers arrived to extricate her.
She was stretchered to an awaiting air ambulance parked in a layby and flown to hospital in Paisley.
A spokesman for the Scottish Ambulance Service said: “We received a call at 10.21am to attend an incident.
“We dispatched two ambulances, our emergency medical retrieval service and our Helimed air ambulance.
“A female patient was taken to the Royal Alexandra Hospital by air.”
The Oban Mountain Rescue Team was called in at 11.40am by the police to help the paramedics to reach her.
Oban MRT leader Andy Ravenhill said: “The ambulance service got there pretty quickly and then realised they weren’t going to be able to get her out without assistance.
“It was wooded stream gully, pretty steep and muddy. It was probably about 30ft deep, steep-sided with rocky bits. She was lucky she stopped on a shelf about three-quarters of the way down.
“She had lost consciousness, apparently, after the fall but regained consciousness before we arrived.
“She had head injuries, a dislocated or possibly broken shoulder and a leg fracture as well.
“She was in quite a bit of pain but once the ambulance service sorted that out she was quite lucid and talking.”
A spokeswoman for the police confirmed that the woman, who is local but was not identified, was in a “stable” condition in hospital.
