A nose for the job is essential for Cumbria's 12 Mountain Rescue teams

Fog, low cloud and poor light shroud Scafell Pike and the surrounding terrain and all the father and his 14-year-old son can tell emergency services is that on the way down they’ve become disorientated and are lost near a stream – and dad has taken a fall.

Wasdale Mountain Rescue Team is mobilised, a larger than normal party of rescuers to cope with any possible complications COVID-19 may cause, and Jess the search dog, who has only been operational for around eight months, sets about her task.

Like all the Lake District Mountain Rescue Search Dogs, Jess has a nose for the job. On this occasion, the stricken walkers’ phones ping a rough location, somewhere on Lingmell, on the east side of Piers Ghyll, below Straight Ghyll crossing.

In the mist and the murk Jess picks up the lost walkers’ scent and leads the rescue team to near the top of Piers Ghyll where they find the father and son on difficult ground. It’s Jess’s first locate and a great result as the team is able to provide the walkers with headtorches and help lead them off the fell.

Thanks to Jess the whole operation has been relatively straightforward; after a 6.30pm call-out, the team is back home for midnight.

But incidents aren’t always this way as Keswick Mountain Rescue Team (MRT) discover when one group of school children get into difficulties. Thirteen pupils and staff manage to tackle the Lake District’s second highest peak in wintry conditions, in ordinary shoes, with no crampons or ice axes and precious little experience.

On the way down, not surprisingly, they get into difficulties with one pupil losing his footing and sliding about 100 feet over hard packed snow, colliding with rocks and injuring his hand and face. Witnessing what is happening, another student becomes so traumatised he runs away down the hill, towards a forest, where he is lost.

Search dogs Beck, Bracken and Rona, who are all Keswick MRT members, are deployed at around 5.30pm for a potential overnight operation to help police successfully track down the missing child, while the Mountain Rescue Team locates and treats the injured child before leading the party to safety using crampons and ice axes to cut steps for the descent.

On this occasion, the search element is over quickly as a delay in the child being reported as missing means that, by the time the dogs are deployed, the child has turned up back at where the group started their walk, and is being looked after by police.

These are just two of countless incidents that the ten Mountain Rescue Teams – Cockermouth, Coniston, Duddon and Furness, Kendal, Keswick, Kirkby Stephen, Langdale Ambleside, Patterdale, Penrith and Wasdale – Cumbria Ore Mines Rescue Unit and Mountain Rescue Search Dogs that together make up the Lake District Search and Mountain Rescue Association (LDSAMRA) deal with year-round responding 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, often in dangerous and inhospitable conditions.

The rescues are prime examples of what can happen to any of the millions of annual visitors drawn to the mountains of Cumbria, whether they are experienced walkers or just plain novices.

The efforts of the dozen teams, who cover one of the busiest mountain regions in the country, have just been recognised with the highest accolade that can be bestowed upon UK community groups, the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service, being awarded to LDSAMRA.

Search dogs have been available and used to great effect by Lake District Mountain Rescue Teams since the late 1960s. In 1992 handlers in the Lake District split from SARDA (Search and Rescue Dog Association) England, with training and provision of search dogs in the Lake District and Cumbria carried out since then by the Lake District Rescue Search Dogs Association. There are currently 12 operational search dogs with a similar number in training, a mixture of Border Collies, Labradors, English Shepherds, a Belgian Malinois and a Lurcher, whose canine contribution has proved invaluable.

To them the serious business of rescue is just a game as they are trained to employ their acute senses to track down lost and injured people.

Lake District Mountain Rescue Search Dogs training officer Andy Peacock explains: “People release scent which is carried on the wind, fanning out like a cone, before falling to earth. The dogs can pick this up from about 1km away.

“Most of our dogs use air scent, which they follow back to any human, and we have a mountain qualified trail dog which will pick up scent initially from the person’s belongings then track this along the ground.

“The great thing is that the dogs don’t care about the weather or visibility or light and in Scotland have even located people buried under 5m of snow.”

The two-year training programme, to earn the dogs a ‘green tag’, begins when an existing mountain rescue team member, already experienced and trained in first aid and survival, opts to volunteer their pet, which must be fully vaccinated.

Through play the dogs are socialised and trained in obedience before the search element is introduced using their favourite toys or food to encourage them to recognise and follow human scent.

As they develop these natural skills, they then attend sessions at night and at the weekends where they must locate ‘Dogs Bodies’, experienced volunteers who hide in the mountains and on the fells waiting to be rescued in an exercise treated like a real-life emergency.

Equipped with high visibility orange jackets, glow sticks and lights, when they locate the missing person the dogs are trained to bark and run between the handler and the stricken walker.

“They certainly save a lot of time,” says Andy, whose Belgian Malinois called Cirque is currently in training. “They are twice as fast as humans, agile and can locate people out of view. It’s a dogs’ world. Most things have a scent signature and it’s just a case of training the dogs to follow it. To them it is just a game, they want to please us and we ensure a lot of positive reinforcement and reward for their work.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic training sessions have been limited but recently resumed using carefully thought-out, safe working protocols, following input from team and regional medical professionals.

These sessions, necessary to keep dogs trained and motivated, involve appropriate social distancing, along with suitable PPE and hygiene procedures, and have been approved by Cumbria Police.

Andy says: “Dogs, handlers and bodies are all very pleased to be able to begin training again to enable the trainee dogs to make progress towards assessments and ultimately grading as operational Lake District Mountain Rescue Search Dogs.”

All 12 Lake District rescue teams are voluntary organisations relying solely on the generosity of public donations to finance the provision of mountain and underground rescue in Cumbria.