Saved by an avalanche!
Scot plunges 600ft down mountain... then lands in snow on edge of chasm
A CLIMBER who plunged 600ft down a mountain cheated death after an earlier avalanche ‘cushioned’ his fall – preventing him going over a cliff.
Richard Tiplady, 53, suffered a broken neck and elbow but was able to contact rescuers and was found within an hour of his fall.
His injuries were so severe rescuers told him he looked like he had been ‘savaged by a mountain lion’. Mr Tiplady, a lecturer in the Scottish Episcopal Church, described his fall as ‘like a toboggan run’ and praised Cockermouth
Mountain Rescue Team for finding him so swiftly.
The experienced mountaineer had been searching for a route to the summit of 2,900ft Pillar in the Lake District when he slipped on March 5.
Mr Tiplady, from Glenboig in Lanarkshire, who had been climbing with a friend, fell more than 600ft before he eventually came to a halt in snow left by the avalanche. It was just 20ft from the edge of another precipice. Speaking from his hospital bed, he said: ‘I’d been going back to reassess my route to the summit when I slipped.
‘I tried to stop the fall by embedding my ice axe in the snow, but unfortunately I lost hold of it.
‘The next thing I knew, my hands were above my head and I was sliding downwards. During all of this, I could have hit a rock or something. I was just in pure damage limitation mode.’
Mr Tiplady suffered a fracture to his neck, broke his elbow, chipped a bone in his ankle and suffered three deep gouges to his head, requiring more than 60 stitches.
He said: ‘I was bleeding heavily from the head. There was blood all over the snow. The rescuers said I looked like I was savaged by a mountain lion when they found me, I had three deep claw grooves in my forehead. I managed to call the emergency services and use Ordnance Survey co-ordinates to give them my exact location.
‘The helicopter arrived within 45 or 50 minutes. I used my headlight to act as a beacon to attract them. I never thought they would be with me so quickly.’
He underwent a two-hour operation at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle on Monday and is due to be discharged today.
Mr Tiplady has one son with his wife Irene, 54, and they are also foster carers. He added: ‘Having become a customer of the mountain rescue teams, it is incomprehensible what they do. The level of care and professionalism among them was remarkable. I can’t praise them enough, they do so much for the mountaineering community.’
Cockermouth Mountain Rescue Team called it a ‘serious, potentially catastrophic fall’, adding: ‘As he said himself, he pretty much hit everything on the way down. Thankfully, this story had a happy ending.’