Witness account · 4 min read · Set in Larch Hill ·
The Radio Call from Larch Hill
A mountain rescue volunteer on the Larch Hill relay receives a call from a walker reporting a fall on the north face, and when the team reaches the spot there is a dropped rope, a clean print of a boot, and a notebook with the walker's name written in it three times.
- reliability: corroborated
- witness: Priya Dhanoa, mountain rescue radio operator
I have been a radio operator for the Larch Hill mountain rescue team since the summer I turned nineteen, and I have taken calls from walkers with broken ankles, lost dogs, hypothermia, and one memorable man with a hip flask who believed he was in Switzerland. I know the protocol. I know how to take a grid reference without a map, and how to keep a casualty talking while the team gets their kit on. I say this so you understand I am not someone who panics on the air.
On the night of the eighth of November the relay was quiet. The wind was north-west, gusting, and there was sleet on the high ground. Our base is the old signal hut at the foot of the north face, and I was on the early shift, with a flask of tea and a fresh battery in the set.
At twenty to midnight the handset crackled, and a voice said, very clearly, "Larch Hill base, this is Walter Hollis, I've come off the north face, I'm on the ledge below the cairn. I think my leg's gone."
I took his grid reference. It was correct to within twenty metres. I asked him to confirm he was alone. He said he was. I asked him to describe the ground around him, and he did, in plain sentences: the ledge was narrow, there was a crack running down to the left, the rock was wet and cold. He sounded calm, a little breathless, and quite sure of where he was. I logged the call, woke the team leader, and started the callout.
For the next forty minutes I kept Walter talking. He told me he was a retired surveyor, that he had climbed the north face three times before, that his wife would be worried because he had said he was going for a short walk. He asked me what the weather was doing at the summit. I told him. He said he could hear the wind changing. Then, at about ten past midnight, he stopped answering.
I called him twice more. Nothing. I tried the team leader's handset. Nothing. I was about to call the coastguard when the handset crackled again and Walter's voice came back, lighter now, almost cheerful.
"Priya, is it? I'm sorry, I dropped the set. Could you tell the lads I've got a rope? They needn't bother with the stretcher."
I did not remember telling him my name. I had not used it on the air. I said I would pass the message on, and I asked him to stay exactly where he was.
The team reached the ledge at half past one. I was not with them. I was in the hut listening to the radio, as I always am, and I heard the leader's voice come through, low and tight. He said there was no one on the ledge. He said there was a rope, a good one, climbing rope in red and blue, tied off at the cairn and running down over the edge. There was a boot print in the wet mud at the top of the crack, a clean deep print in a pattern I did not recognise. And there was a small black notebook, wedged under a stone, open at a page with the name *Walter Hollis* written on it three times in a neat hand.
The team radioed that they would check the crack. They went down it with lights. They were gone for twenty minutes. When they came back up the leader said the crack ran for thirty feet and ended in a sheer wall, and there was nothing at the bottom but scree and ice, and no body, and no sign that a man had fallen or been carried.
We tried the number Walter had given when he was first registered as a walker at the visitor centre. It rang out. We tried the address. The house was empty, the windows boarded. The electoral roll had a Walter Hollis at that address, born in 1941, died in 1989.
I sent the log to the coastguard as I am required to. I did not add my own notes. But I kept the handset on the table that night, turned up loud, and I have kept it on every night since. Walter does not call often now. When he does, it is always in the small hours, always from the same grid reference, always to say that he has found the rope and that he thinks he can manage the crack by himself, thank you, and would I please tell the lads not to come.