Mountain rescue is volunteer-run in more countries than you think

This works through mountain rescue in the order the parts actually depend on each other.

Two very different models

In parts of Britain and Ireland, mountain rescue teams are charities staffed by unpaid volunteers who leave work to attend. In much of the Alps, rescue is a professional service and the cost is billed, frequently to the individual or their insurer. Neighbouring countries can differ entirely, and travellers routinely assume their home model applies.

Some countries run rescue through the police, the army or a civil protection agency rather than through any mountaineering organisation, and the number to call is frequently not the general emergency number, which is precisely the detail nobody looks up before leaving.

Costs can be substantial

Helicopter rescue in some jurisdictions runs to several thousand for a single incident. Ordinary travel insurance frequently excludes mountaineering, off-piste skiing and sometimes hillwalking above a certain altitude.

Specific mountain rescue cover, or membership of an alpine club that includes it, is inexpensive by comparison. The exclusions are written in language worth reading closely, because policies define mountaineering variously by altitude, by whether a rope is used, by glacier travel or by being off a marked piste, and a walker can fall outside cover without doing anything they would call climbing.

What the volunteers actually do

Teams train regularly at their own expense, hold pagers continuously and turn out in the worst conditions by definition. A single callout can occupy twenty people for many hours overnight.

They are funded largely by donation, which is worth knowing when you pass a collection tin at a trailhead. The response also takes longer than people picture, since a volunteer team has to be paged, assemble at a base, drive to a road end and then walk in, so help in remote terrain arrives in hours and somebody has to keep the casualty warm for all of them.

Calling for help properly

Emergency numbers differ, and in several countries a specific number or app is used for mountain incidents. Giving a precise location matters more than anything else, and location-sharing apps or grid references save enormous time. Registering with any national emergency SMS service before a trip takes minutes and works where voice calls do not.

What they need first is the location, then the number of people in the party, then what has happened and to whom, and last a callback number with a note of how much battery it has — in that order, because the first answer is what starts a team moving.

Reducing the chance of needing them

The commonest callouts are not dramatic: benightment, navigation error, minor injury and inadequate equipment. A torch, warm layer, charged phone and a realistic turnaround time prevent a large proportion of them. Leaving route details with someone who will raise the alarm is the other half.

Teams say consistently that they would rather be called early to something that turns out to be manageable than late to something that has deteriorated, and a party that self-evacuates on a suspected fracture usually converts a straightforward job into a difficult one.

What happens after you call

The team works towards a fixed point, so unless you are in immediate danger the standard instruction is to stop moving, get sheltered and stay where the position you gave them actually is. Your phone battery becomes a rescue asset the moment you call: dimming the screen, turning off data and keeping the handset warm against your body all extend the window in which they can call back or locate you. The recognised distress signal in mountain country is six blasts, flashes or shouts spread over a minute followed by a minute's silence, repeated — and a headtorch on a dark hillside carries much further than most people assume.

On the ground, if a helicopter arrives, loose mats and kit have to be secured or they will be blown across the hill and into the rotors, and nobody approaches the aircraft until the crew signals; the rescue services publish this guidance themselves and it is worth reading properly before you need it.

The takeaway

Find out who comes and who pays before you go. It differs across a border.

Go slowly enough to notice, and most of this stops being advice and starts being obvious.