LOCAL THREE SAVE WOMAN IN CAIRNGORMS RESCUE DRAMA

TWO Galloway Mountain Rescue members were involved in hill rescue - 200 miles from the region. The three Stewartry men, Gerard Macnamara and David McNicol, both team members and Colin Frame have been praised for their quick actions which may have saved the life of a badly injured woman in the Cairngorms.

After making the woman, who suffered a broken arm and head injuries comfortable, Mac was able to climb out of the valley and get a signal on his mobile.

They were able to put their training into action and alert the emergency services who scrambled a rescue helicopter to fly the injured woman to hospital in Inverness.

The accident happened as the woman was walking with her niece and a friend, some 2,500ft up in the mountains on Saturday afternoon. The three Gatehouse hillwakers were out for the weekend when they came across the injured woman, Mrs Christine Harris from Portsoy who fell while crossing a rock field.

She broke her wrist and received head injuries on the 30-mile hike over the “Lairig Ghru” path from Braemar to Aviemore. The Stewartry men were heading for a bothy for an overnight stop at the time.

Mac said yesterday: “The accident had just happened a few minutes before we arrived and they were wondering what to do. We made the woman as comfortable as we could and we set out to try and find a signal for our phones. I went up the mountain while Colin and the woman’s friend went in different directions to try and get a signal. We couldn’t raise a signal because were were in a valley between two of the mountains which are all Monro level in this area. I got through eventually and dialled 999 to alert the emergency services,” said Mac.

The three used their emergency first aid equipment and skills along with their specialised medical packs and their bivouac bag.

When Mac got through to the emergency services they were able to contact him again and he gave them precise map references. “The Braemar Mountain Rescue team told me it would take them five hours to get to the scene and there was no way that the woman could be carried down. As a result a rescue helicopter from Prestwick was called out and the injured lady was taken to hospital.”

Mac and the others prepared and marked out a landing area with their orange survival bag for the helicopter giving the precise grid references from heir maps. Mac added: “If she had not been found in daylight the prospect of her lying there overnight does not bear thinking about. The pilot thanked us for what we had done and said it had made their job pretty easy. Normally they have to drop a man down to find a landing site but we had all this done for them.”

The Braemar Rescue Team and helicopter crew from RAF Prestwick both congratulated the Gatehouse men on their handling of the situation which also involved giving accurate grid reference numbers and laying markers on the ground to assist the helicopter's navigator.

Mac added: “They pilot offered to take us back down but we weren’t going to Inverness and we went on to a bothy where we were staying overnight. We were at the scene for about three hours and we made the woman hot drinks and event made her a hot water bottle out of a drinks bottle. She was wet and damp because it had been rain for most of the day. “It’s not something that you expect but we were just glad we were there to help.”