Snowbound men saved by first ski rescue

A RESCUE team had to ski across Ireland’s Wicklow Mountains to reach four men trapped in their 4x4s by heavy snow drifts during a freezing nine-hour ordeal.

One of the men, who stumbled across the others while trying to find a house, had to wrap himself in a wetsuit and tarpaulin to keep warm overnight.

Mountain rescue teams, who believe it was the first ski rescue in Ireland, said the stranded group were lucky to have picked up a mobile phone signal.

The remote hills are a notorious telecoms black spot and the contact allowed them to be located and airlifted to safety.

Richard Fleming was crossing the mountains from Dublin towards his home in Ballysax, The Curragh, Co Kildare, when he got trapped.

After his Range Rover went off the road into snow-covered bogland, he tried to walk several miles towards a house he had seen further back the road.

The 42-year-old said he couldn’t distinguish between the roads and the mountains and became disoriented, but after trekking for a round half an hour stumbled upon two other men braving the blizzard-like conditions in a Land Rover Discovery.

The three soon became trapped once again when that 4x4 also slid off into snow-carpeted bog near the 520-metre-high Sally Gap crossroads.

A fourth man joined them after his car suffered the same fate, just as the light was beginning to fail yesterday evening, and all four concentrated on trying to clear a path for the Land Rover Discovery.

“We drove as far as we could, we were getting cold, the wind and the snow up there was getting horrendous — it was bitter cold,” said Mr Fleming, who telephoned his wife, Shauna, at home to summon the emergency services at around 10pm.

“My legs had started to freeze, so I had to get back to the car, take off my wet clothes and warm up using the heaters.

“One of the lads got a wetsuit and a tarpaulin from his car, and he cut the sleeves out of the wetsuit so I could pull them over my legs, and then I wrapped the tarpaulin around me.”

Throughout the night, the Dublin and Wicklow Mountain Rescue Team kept in contact with the men as they tried in vain to reach them. They advised them to clear the snow from the exhausts to allow the fumes escape, to dry off clothes and not to run down batteries.

Ann Fitzgerald, one of the rescue team, said, despite using winches, jacks and other specialist techniques to try to manoeuvre through the hills in their off-road rescue vehicle, they were constantly forced to turn around because of extreme conditions. “The snow was so bad, that the snow and the mountains were one. You couldn’t discern anything up there, it was completely blizzard conditions, huge snow drifts,” she said.

In the early hours of morning, the team changed tack and came in by a western approach to mountains and eventually got to a spot about three miles from the stranded motorists. Two of the more advanced rescuers had to ski the rest of the way carrying special “blizzard bags” with thermal insulation gear, flasks of hot tea and chocolate for the stranded group.

They arrived shortly before 7am and built a snow shelter at the back of one of the trapped 4x4s, where they all waited until the Irish Coast Guard Sikorsky S-61 helicopter airlifted them, unharmed, to Blessington school, several miles away.

“We think this is the first time people were rescued by skis in Ireland,” said Ms Fitzgerald. “We are not 100% sure, but unless someone puts their head up and says otherwise, we believe it’s a first.”