Walking Heroes
January
The world has felt dark recently, as January ploughs endlessly on, sodden and busy plagiarising old dystopian novels (MT Andersen’s Feed, anyone?). I have spurned the gloom outdoors and worked long hours, sometimes from bed, and honestly, it’s as if every new year is a fresh opportunity to learn how essential my morning walk really is and how grumpy I become when I avoid it.
So the news from Helvellyn that broke this week was a blast of bright hope. It starts like some nightmarish version of an Enid Blyton story, as five adults and a dog head out for an adventure on a snowy mountain and get perilously trapped on the infamous Striding Edge. To the rescue: two teenagers, who had been expertly tackling Gully 2 with crampons and ice-axes before they noticed the panicked group. The boys took pity on the gang of rookie hikers (who, they note, were wearing trainers and ‘joggers’), calmly advising them to go no further, cutting out steps in the snow to help them descend, and eventually leading them to safety. The lads have rightly been praised by Patterdale Mountain Rescue for their kindness and tagged as potential ‘mountain rescuers of the future.’ It’s a heartwarming tale that has been picked up by the media in an attempt to counter all the awfulness happening everywhere else. On the BBC’s World at One (from 41 minutes), the interviewer is clearly charmed by the heroes – who have snuck out of school on their lunch break to speak to her – and can’t quite believe that they regularly climb in such extreme conditions on their own. She asks if it is dangerous: “it can be if you don’t know what you’re doing,” one of the teens deadpans in reply.
I like to think I witnessed a similar dramatic rescue on our Sunday walk. Like the unprepared adults on Helvellyn, we were perhaps a little naïve about conditions and cheerily set off along the Thames Path with the aim of reaching the riverside pub nearby. Alas, the footpath had become flooded in two places – not excessively, but enough, it turned out, to potentially breach our wellies. One of the youth had stepped out in baggy jeans and short boots, and it looked like we would have to turn back. Then, in a move not dissimilar from plucky mountaineers guiding helpless tourists off a treacherous peak, her father gallantly offered a piggyback and waded across the deep pool with a not insubstantial teenager on his shoulders and water swilling round his knees. Sometimes we all need a little help. After rewards of hot chocolate and chips all round, we made it home along the road with damp socks and a sense of exhilaration surely equal to that experienced by those who make it to the summit of Helvellyn.
