Rescue team pays tribute to one of its own
TRIBUTES to a ‘kind-hearted gentleman’ have been pouring in this week for a mountain rescue stalwart who died alongside his friend in Glen Coe shortly after lunch time on Saturday.
Experienced climber Joe Smith, 23, was involved in an accident on the 1,106-metre high Stob Coire nam Beith. He died alongside his climbing friend Simon Davidson, 34, who lived in Edinburgh. Both men were ‘skilled climbers’.
Mr Smith was a member of Glencoe Mountain Rescue Team and had been on a life-saving call- out only one week before. He had been a member of the mountain rescue team for two years.
Mountain rescue leader Andy Nelson, who was the rescue co- ordinator on Saturday afternoon when the emergency call was made, said it began to dawn on the team quite early on that it might be one of their own when Mr Smith, the ‘man who would do anything for anyone’, did not come down the hillside to help as he would have normally done.
Mr Nelson said: ‘We knew that Joe was climbing on the mountain because he had told some of the team he was planning to do that. So when he didn’t come straight down and we didn’t hear from him on his radio, which he had with him, I had a suspicion early on that it might be him.’
Mr Smith has been described as an enthusiastic and fun-loving man, who would go out of his way to help people.
Mr Nelson said: ‘He was always smiling, always good fun. He could never do enough for you.’
Mr Smith first moved into the Lochaber area around three years ago from Lancashire, and then to Kinlochleven, where he had recently bought a house.
He was a keen member of various groups. Mr Nelson described him as someone who had already made himself a ‘ valued part of the community’.
Commenting on his ability as an experienced climber and mountain trainer, Mr Nelson said: ‘In a little moment something has gone wrong. We may never know why. It is a sad loss to our team. He was a strong man who would go beyond what was asked of him.’
Friend Oliver Millington, one of the team behind the Three Wise Monkeys climbing venue under construction at Fassifern Road, Fort William, said: ‘In my years of climbing, I’ve not met anyone in the sport that has been so keen and grabbed the bull by the horns quite so forcefully as Joe.
‘This may be due to Joe’s background working with cattle, but he brought north with him an awful lot of psyche.
‘That’s probably why two years ago, I spent my 24th birthday trudging up a seldom climbed hill on the Ardnamurchan peninsula, struggling to keep up with Joe who had smelled ice – needless to say there wasn’t any, but he just had to check.
‘And again the next day for good measure, and again the day after that when we got the climbers gondola aiming to have a go at Morwind – no ice there either.
‘That year, Joe’s climbing came on massively as he found numerous partners and got out climbing every day he could, in between the odd jobs he was getting as a newly qualified mountain leader and working on the Jacobite steam train.
‘His climbing ability quickly surpassed mine, and he furiously ticked off climbs all over Scotland, making pretty much everything look horribly easy, usually with toes sticking out the end of his climbing shoes.’
It is understood Mr Smith’s parents arrived in the area from Lancaster on Tuesday, along with his German girlfriend.
No details have been released about funeral arrangements.