Teen Hikers Rescue Five Adults and Dog From Snow-Covered Helvellyn Ridge
On Jan. 10, 15-year-old Rowan Kay and 16-year-old Caelan Blades helped a group of five stranded adults and a small dog down a snowy ridge of Helvellyn in England’s Lake District, according to U.K. newspapers The Times and the Craven Herald. The papers reported the group were wearing jeans and sneakers and lacked gloves and appropriate climbing equipment for the ascent.
Blades told The Times, "I was extremely shocked, we couldn’t believe what we were seeing, they didn’t have any correct clothing or equipment." The teens were ice climbing and were descending from the summit toward a ridge called Striding Edge when they noticed the adults stuck. With a Coast Guard helicopter and an air ambulance involved in a separate part of the mountain, Kay and Blades opted to help the group themselves; The Times also reported a man in his 70s collapsed and died on the mountain that day.
Video footage captured by Blades and shared with the outlet shows the pair guiding the group down in a zig-zag pattern. The operation took about 30 minutes to reach a path leading down to a nearby village. Blades said one woman carrying her dog had to be helped "down step by step" because she was "frozen up with no gloves, no crampons and she was having a panic attack." As they continued, the teens said they encountered three more groups attempting the climb with about 90 minutes left until sunset and warned them off Striding Edge; Blades said some did not have ice axes, crampons or torches.
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